Access to land is widely acknowledged as key correlate of poverty reduction. The conventional land reform debate has remained at an impasse, however, in all the major South Asian countries. This desk-based study was commissioned by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) through the Rural Support Programmes Network, and the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) of the University of Greenwich. Its aim was to assess the current state of policy and to identify new directions of change with respect to “access to land” in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. The research was led and coordinate by Julian Quan (NRI) and Haris Gazdar (Collective). Country papers were prepared by Dr Abul Barkat (Dhaka University, Bangladesh), Dr Ravi Srivastava (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India) and Haris Gazdar (Pakistan). The findings were discussed at a national workshop at the Administrative Staff College Lahore in April 2004.