Land tenure in Asia

The book deals with land tenure - the bundle of rights to land and the resulting social relations within the rural society - in Asia. The first part gives an overview of the state of and trends in land tenure over the last 50 years in the most important regions of Asia. Special emphasis is laid on the relationship of land tenure and social and economic development and vice versa. In the second chapter, the same 50 years of land tenure development are examined from another angle. The way in which these changes affect human relations, income and its distribution, production and productivity and the land market are dealt with. Important features are the degeneration of traditional local institutions, the reduction of farm sizes because of partition in the inheritance process and the increasing phasing out of smallholders who leave agriculture as soon as non-agricultural jobs become available. In the formerly socialistic countries, freedom of land management on the basis of 40 year lease contracts seem to give enough incentives to work without giving up land owned by the state. The third chapter elaborates the effects of different types of land tenure on development projects and programmes. In recent times, the scale of access to land has had at least as much effect as the type of tenure. A new socio- economic classification of land cultivating households is proposed to categorize their varying situation and interest in land. Of utmost importance is that households, whose land is insufficient to support the family (those are 3/4 of all land cultivating households in Asia), tend to lose interest in cultivation. Especially for the younger generation, cultivation is one option as long as no suitable non-agricultural job is available. While 50 years ago 'access to land' was the slogan during the land-to-the- tiller reforms, today, 'access to income' is the desire of the rural youth, wherever it may come from. The last chapter discusses the possibilities and limitations of including land tenure in development cooperation activities.