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.

Land resources are limited and finite. There is bound to be conflict over land use. In a developing country like India, land use planning is applied at four broad scale: national, state, district and village (or small watershed). Different kinds of decisions are taken at such level, where the methods of planning and kinds of plan also differ.

1805: Nilambur Kovilgam, a ruler of a Kerala province, annexes 40,500 ha of Gudalur 1845: Kovilagam's successors (jenmies) start leasing out land to plantation companies. They also employ

Main provisions of the Janmom act

Notwithstanding the legislative provisions to safeguard their landed interests, tribals are getting driven to circumstances in which retaining hold over the land under their possession is becoming difficult. The quality of land held by them is so poor that, in its present form, it cannot promise them any reasonable returns. The low returns leave little surplus for tribals to plough it back into agriculture to improve the quality of the land.

The Bundelkhand region of India is a semi-arid plateau, which consists of twelve districts of northern Madhya Pradesh and five districts of southern Uttar Pradesh. The region suffers from severe ecological degradation induced primarily by the factors such as soil degradation and deforestation. Temporary and long-term migration of villagers from the rural areas of the region in search of alternative sources of livelihood has become increasingly common. This situation has created a vast market for the short term land lease market in the region.

This paper examines the main ways in which Payments for Environmental Services (PES) might affect poverty. PES may reduce poverty mainly by making payments to poor natural resource managers in upper watersheds. The extent of the impact depends on how many PES participants are in fact poor, on the poor’s ability to participate, and on the amounts paid. Although PES programs are not designed for poverty reduction, there can be important synergies when program design is well thought out and local conditions are favorable.

The condition of India’s forest and her forest dwellers is extremely grave. A fresh round of police attacks on tribal people