The poorest people in the world are those who don’t have land. In India, landlessness is a better predictor of poverty than illiteracy or belonging to castes at the bottom of society. At least 17 million rural households in India are completely landless, living on others’ land and working as sharecroppers or day laborers tending other peoples’ crops.
Landlessness is a huge problem all over the world. More equal distribution of land is a valuable goal — it is efficient in both fighting poverty and producing food.
But redistributing land is one of the most difficult and controversial of all political tasks. A history of land reform is a history of revolution. The concentration of land in the hands of the rich is a prime source of conflict. When a leftist movement has won, its first action has often been land reform — the further to the left the new government, the less likely it is to compensate landowners (and the more likely to shoot them, which was the norm in China and the Soviet Union).
But confiscatory land reform is not the only kind. Many programs have paid landowners market value for their land. Perhaps the world’s most influential architect of a more democratic land reform is the University of Washington law professor Roy Prosterman, who founded the Rural Development Institute, now known as Landesa. Prosterman and his group have worked with dozens of countries to design market-based land reform. But his ideas, too, have been used for political ends; if you know Prosterman’s name, it’s because you’ve heard of Land to the Tiller, the United States-backed land reform in Vietnam during the war. The United States adopted Prosterman’s ideas in Vietnam, the Philippines and El Salvador to turn peasants away from leftist guerrillas.
Today, political forces are arrayed against land reform. India, for example, had a land reform program since the 1960s that set ceilings on land ownership. The government could expropriate anything above the ceiling; compensation was typically well below market value. But the law was put to wide use only in the few states with Communist governments. “With very small exceptions, the ceiling surplus approach was not going anywhere because people who owned the land and stood to lose were much more politically powerful than those who were going to gain,” said Tim Hanstad, the president and chief executive of Landesa.
Democratic land reform has a different problem: buying large swaths of land at market price is too costly. But hundreds of millions of people still lack land. Is there a more politically realistic way to help them? Landesa thinks there is. (...)
In 2000, Landesa began researching the impact of microplots in India. It then took its findings to the governments of four states and encouraged them to try a different kind of land reform. “The conventional wisdom had been that in order to provide meaningful benefits you’d need a full-size farm,” said Hanstad. “But when families had a small fraction of an acre they are often able to use that as a big bump up and foundation for a path out of poverty.”
“The family gets a permanent address,” said Supriya Chattopadhyay, who manages advocacy and communications for Landesa in West Bengal. “That’s very important — if a family wants to get any support from a government program, the first thing it needs is a permanent address.” Women traditionally do not leave their homes to work, so having a garden right outside their door gives the family a second income, he said. “And they get social recognition, social dignity” — for some families the most important factor of all.
The government doesn’t have to spend much to buy a tenth of an acre — in India, between $200 and $600. And there is no expropriation, so the program does not lower property values, cause legal uncertainties about ownership or create political opposition. Landesa has worked with four state governments in India to help them set up microplot programs — so far, about 200,000 families have received one.
Landlessness is a huge problem all over the world. More equal distribution of land is a valuable goal — it is efficient in both fighting poverty and producing food.
But redistributing land is one of the most difficult and controversial of all political tasks. A history of land reform is a history of revolution. The concentration of land in the hands of the rich is a prime source of conflict. When a leftist movement has won, its first action has often been land reform — the further to the left the new government, the less likely it is to compensate landowners (and the more likely to shoot them, which was the norm in China and the Soviet Union).But confiscatory land reform is not the only kind. Many programs have paid landowners market value for their land. Perhaps the world’s most influential architect of a more democratic land reform is the University of Washington law professor Roy Prosterman, who founded the Rural Development Institute, now known as Landesa. Prosterman and his group have worked with dozens of countries to design market-based land reform. But his ideas, too, have been used for political ends; if you know Prosterman’s name, it’s because you’ve heard of Land to the Tiller, the United States-backed land reform in Vietnam during the war. The United States adopted Prosterman’s ideas in Vietnam, the Philippines and El Salvador to turn peasants away from leftist guerrillas.
Today, political forces are arrayed against land reform. India, for example, had a land reform program since the 1960s that set ceilings on land ownership. The government could expropriate anything above the ceiling; compensation was typically well below market value. But the law was put to wide use only in the few states with Communist governments. “With very small exceptions, the ceiling surplus approach was not going anywhere because people who owned the land and stood to lose were much more politically powerful than those who were going to gain,” said Tim Hanstad, the president and chief executive of Landesa.
Democratic land reform has a different problem: buying large swaths of land at market price is too costly. But hundreds of millions of people still lack land. Is there a more politically realistic way to help them? Landesa thinks there is. (...)
In 2000, Landesa began researching the impact of microplots in India. It then took its findings to the governments of four states and encouraged them to try a different kind of land reform. “The conventional wisdom had been that in order to provide meaningful benefits you’d need a full-size farm,” said Hanstad. “But when families had a small fraction of an acre they are often able to use that as a big bump up and foundation for a path out of poverty.”
“The family gets a permanent address,” said Supriya Chattopadhyay, who manages advocacy and communications for Landesa in West Bengal. “That’s very important — if a family wants to get any support from a government program, the first thing it needs is a permanent address.” Women traditionally do not leave their homes to work, so having a garden right outside their door gives the family a second income, he said. “And they get social recognition, social dignity” — for some families the most important factor of all.
The government doesn’t have to spend much to buy a tenth of an acre — in India, between $200 and $600. And there is no expropriation, so the program does not lower property values, cause legal uncertainties about ownership or create political opposition. Landesa has worked with four state governments in India to help them set up microplot programs — so far, about 200,000 families have received one.
