ISAS Working Papers

The paper traces Indian policy towards land use and ownership from pre-independence times till today. It notes that ‘land reform’ – an ill-defined term – began to disappear from political platforms and policy agendas from the 1970s and offers, as a heuristic device, four naive explanations. In dealing with each explanation, the paper exposes its inadequacy and analyzes essential features of land questions in India. The paper concludes that by the first decade of the 21st century ‘land’ for various socio-economic groups had become ‘real estate’ – a platform for people to buy, sell and build on, not a place on which to live and grow food.