India is an exceptionally diverse country -- socio-economically, politically, religiously, and culturally -- and faces enormous challenges in building a socially, economically, and environmentally just development.

Responsible land governance remains a complex issue aggravated by a combination of systematic legal and institutional failures. Institutions that govern land, markets, and societies are fundamentally weak when addressing land and property issues of poor rural women and men, Tribals, and Dalits.

In India, there is absolute landlessness, illegal tenancy, land alienation of all kinds, and failure of implementation of land ceiling laws. For example, land administration of revenue and forests has not effectively addressed the control of ownership of forests by state and powerful private landowners. Likewise, there is no incentive to identify landless, tenants, single women, Tribals, Dalits, and other marginalised communities. Meanwhile, market logic demands more land for industries, infrastructure, and mines, provoking large-scale land acquisition by the public or private sector without just and adequate information or compensation for local communities. Complicating things further, social institutions of castes and patriarchy and their politics create and maintain social barriers against women, Dalits, and Tribals, particularly when it comes to ownership of land.