Land reform legislation in India, designed to redress issues of poverty and landlessness, has in most cases, suffered from design flaws and a failure of implementation. Land reform efforts are also stymied due to a lack of political will, scarcity of land and resources. Research summarised in this article seeks to offer an innovative and alternative solution, one that involves the provision of amply-sized homestead plots. As experiments in other countries, replicated in certain districts of Karnataka have borne out, such homestead and garden plots hold out the prospect of substantial benefits to poor, rural households, offering them much more than a place to build a house.
