It was residues of some of the kerajaan of the 19th century that formed the basis of the considerable inequalities of land tenure that have continued in Bali to the present day. While some raja lost considerable amounts to the Dutch, others were able to retain and even consolidate their holdings (Mortimer 1972; Utrecht 1969). This inequality, combined with population increase, led to intensified competition for scarce productive land and facilitated systems of crop-sharing that favoured the interests of the landowners over those of their tenants. Dutch taxation policies placed considerable hardship on small farmers, which was intensified by the fall of commodity prices during the Great Depression. As a result, many farmers lost some or all of their land, further exacerbating existing inequalities. During the first decade of independence, in the 1950s, access to productive land was one of the burning political issues throughout Indonesia and was a major factor in the rise of the Communist Party (PKI), which lobbied strongly for a program of land reform. This was initiated in the early 1960s but landlords were able to retain significant amounts of land, by using strategies of obstruction and evasion (MacRae 1997: 383-5). The destruction of the PKI in the massacres of 1965-6 put an end to any further land reform program, although the original process has continued, slowly and incrementally, until the present (MacRae 1997: 386-7).

The primary piece of legislation (UUPA 1960) on which land reform was based also provides a set of legal tools for extricating land from the constraints of traditional collective tenure and enabling privatisation and alienation of land through a process of registration of title (sertipikat) in a manner essentially similar to Western models of private ownership.

Since then the economy has been transformed by tourism and associated export industries and the value of land has escalated exponentially (MacRae 1997: 70-8). People have come to think increasingly of land in terms of its exchange rather than use value, or ritual value. A generation ago it was considered highly inauspicious to sell rice fields, let alone convert them to non-agricultural use. Now owners of farm land regularly sell or convert land. The decline in incomes from farming has made this increasingly attractive, especially in major urban and tourist centres where often the least productive but strategically located land fetches astronomical prices. Others have lost their land as a result of compulsory acquisition for hotel construction. This commodification of land has led to new forms of wealth, but also to landlessness and poverty. The process has been aided and abetted by government programs providing the legal basis and moral encouragement to register land under individual, alienable title (sertipikat)—ostensibly to protect people from the depredations of former landlords, but simultaneously facilitating the sale and purchase of such land. Tanah pekarangan desa is also subject to registration in this way, but to date no one, in Ubud at least, has dared to sell such land. There are, however, partial exceptions and stories of it having happened elsewhere.