31 Another major root cause of land conflict is the misappropriation of State domains. In the history of many Asian countries, the colonial State took over all lands outside of permanent settlements and brought these lands under the “public domain.” These included those lands that local people had previously regarded as “communal lands” or those under shifting cultivation. These included lands outside of land registries that were considered as belonging to the public domain regardless of their possession, occupation, or use. After independence, national governments continued to manage these lands as an important source of State revenue. But large valuable lands under State control have also made them conducive to mismanagement, poor resource utilization, and corruption (Quizon, 2013b). Especially in Cambodia and Indonesia, State capture by big business interests has led to the awarding of large-scale concessions to private corporations for plantations, mining, and logging operations. In Indonesia, land conflicts between small farming communities and corporations have become widespread. This escalated during the reformasi era (after the fall of Suharto in May 1998), which marked the start of open and liberal politics where extensive autonomy was transferred to the regions, away from the center (decentralization). Yet along with power, corruption was decentralized to the regional level where land concessions and permits for mining and logging were granted on a large scale by local officials, usually without proper monitoring or administration. KPA notes that during the 11 years between 2004 to 2015, there have been 1,770 agrarian conflicts with a contested land area of nearly seven million hectares affecting over one million households in Indonesia (KPA, 2018). Moreover, in all countries, the multiplicity of laws, overlapping agency jurisdictions and sectoral arrangements on land administration often undermine people’s interests on land. In Indonesia, sectoral arrangements Regional Summary: A Perspective Overview of Land Conflicts in Six Asian Countries since the 1950s. However, the implementation of reforms fell short of their objectives, due to the lack of political will. In Bangladesh, India and Nepal, the abolition of rent-collecting intermediaries (zamindars) proved successful, in contrast to their poor implementation of land ceilings and tenancy reforms. In other countries (i.e., Indonesia, Cambodia) land reforms had little or no impact, as these reforms were stopped in their tracks or left un-implemented by military-backed regimes, and their gains later reversed by anti-reform policies (Quizon, 2013b). In the Philippines, agrarian reform has had limited success, but land conflicts have been increasing since 2009, due to the ongoing resistance to reforms by large landowners.