Land for life: promise and performance of land reforms in Madhya Pradesh

This report by the National Centre for Advocacy Studies, India, presents the finings of a participatory analysis of land distribution in Madhya Pradesh, India. The study was undertaken by trained villagers with 1078 families in the regions of Chambal, Bundelkhand, Banghelkhand, Mahakoushal and Malwa. The introduction of the report gives an overview of issues within land distribution, livelihoods and land reform with focus on social hierarchy and Dalits and Adivasis in India; struggles for land; promises of land reforms; broken promises; escalation in land alienation; campaign for land rights, renewing the agenda; and the methodology of the study. The findings of the study are presented in two sections. The first section focuses on land reform in Madhya Pradesh examining land profile and reform, agricultural land ceiling acts, entitlement without possession, laws and alienation of Adivasi land, and land alienation because of conservation acts. Section two looks at landlessness, land alienation, entitlement without possession, possession without entitlement, and encroachment on forestland. The final chapter presents a summary of the findings, conclusions and recommendations. Some of the main findings are that the land reform process in Madhya Pradesh is very tardy; Dalits and Adivasis continue to be alienated from control of natural resources; there are innumerable cases of land entitlements without possession; in conjunction with the land reform big land holders make efforts to snatch away land from the poor and marginalised; with the enactment of the Wildlife Sanctuaries Act and the Forest Conservation Act, original inhabitants of forests have been declared intruders and their customary rights violated. The proposed policy implications and action plan gives recommendation on how to deal with these shortcomings.