India's states have employed several land reform measures, including reforming tenancy, imposing land ceilings, distributing government wasteland, and allocating house sites and homestead plots. With relatively modest revisions, some of the existing laws and policies can further their original intent of increasing the poor's access to rural land and providing for secure land tenure. But old land reform approaches, such as blind adherence to land ceilings and tenancy reform, need reconsideration.

The national economy is growing at near double-digit rates but neither industry nor non-agricultural activities in rural India have been able to provide livelihoods for millions of rural workers. It is this failure that underlies the spurt in rural violence that has highlighted once again the issue of the poor's access to land, water and forests. It is gradually being recognised that further deterioration of economic, social and political conditions of the rural poor can neither be arrested nor reversed without a significant policy shift towards a comprehensive land reform programme.

This article outlines some key elements of a human-rights based approach to the compulsory acquisition of land. It shows that the compulsory acquisition of land often proceeds rapidly where the political, economic and legal power of those affected directly is weakest. While expropriation should be a powerful and beneficial tool for disadvantaged people, they are in fact often its victims.