Access to Land as Instrument of Poverty Alleviation (First Published in Vol.9, No.1, January,1990)

The ideological framework within which national economic planning has been pursued since independence has laid stress on achieving economic development with social justice. The concept of social justice has been articulated in terms of reduction of disparities in income and wealth, establishing greater equality of Opportunity and more even distribution of economic assets and power. In effect, it envisages that the benefit of development should accrue in increasing measure to the weaker, disadvantaged and deprived sections of society. In the process of concretising this goal, a stimulating intellectual debate has been thrown upon the poverty situation in India and the people who could be broadly identified as constituting the poverty group.