76 SOCIAL SCIENTIST households my attention was constantly drawn to the following f actors '.-how important control over resources in the realm of social production is in determining the status of women and gender roles; the issues of women's right to property especially land; how dowry, usually regarded as only a social custom, has become important in the reallocation of the most essential factor of production i.e. land; how women's participation in social production is determined by their economic role in household formation. While analysing the data of 317 households I realised how closely interlinked the land question is to the gender question. To understand the linkages I will highlight two main features of the post land reform developments in West Bengal that set in motion several new correlates of the gender question. In this paper I have not addressed any of these issues within any predetermined theoretical framework. I have simply stated the features that have emerged in the process of introducing major land reform measures in the state since 1977. At present the context may appear too specific given West Bengal's political formation and its role in altering the structure of material and political power within the local community. However, the problems I have raised here need not be perceived as an isolated experience. They are the product of a socio-economic and political process which is part of a wider, continuous process of change in agrarian relations and cannot be entirely localized even though each region has its own specific contours. Specificity is different from an isolated experience. General conclusions do not emerge from a social vacuum as it were. In this sense the experience of West Bengal can contribute to the understanding of certain larger questions. RESTRICTED LAND MOVEMENT Following the Abolition of Intermediaries Act in the 1950's, West Bengal recognised three categories among the cultivating population: the raiyats, the earlier tenants of the zamindars who were made direct tenants of the State, the bargadars (sharecroppers) and the agricultural labourers. These tenurial and class categories prior to 1977 were an expression of land concentration among the tenants (called raiyats after the Abolition of Intermediaries Act), of insecurity of tenure as most of the bargadars were unregistered and were treated as tenants at will by the raiyats, and of landlessness among the agricultural labourers. The implication of the measures adopted since 1977 were as follows: Land exceeding the nationally prescribed ceiling was declared as surplus. The bargadars were registered and rules for resumption of land by the owners under the clause of personal cultivation were clearly defined. Personal cultivation now includes physical participation in agricultural activity. Physical participation and residence witnin