Technology to Improve Land Governance - Technical Session 1, ILDC 2018

Sri G. Mathivathanan, Commissioner cum Secretary, H&UD Department, Govt. of Odisha sharing the story of land settlement to slum dwellers in Odisha

Mr. Frank Pichel, Co-Founder of Cadasta Foundation moderated the session on technological innovation to improve land governance in India constituting sharing of experience from Odisha, UP and North Eastern States including the opportunity to include block chain technology in land governance space.

Shri G. Mathivathanan, IAS Commissioner cum Secretary, Housing and Urban Development Department, Govt. of Odisha, shared a video documentation on the historic step taken by the Odisha Government for providing land rights to the slum dwellers through a new legislation - “The Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Act, 2017”. It showed the exhaustive, participatory process followed for the same and it is expected that around 2000 existing slums will have basic services such as electricity, water, sanitation etc. Land rights given under the Act are heritable, only for residential purposes, mortgable but non-transferable (to keep out the land mafia). The process was started with drone mapping so that the process does not trigger further slum settlements. Provision of land rights are followed by further support for development of the area such that the slums are transformed into liveable habitats.

Mr Munnangi, IIT Kanpur, presented the role of IIT Kanpur in bringing technology into the land consolidation (Chakbandi) process in Uttar Pradesh. The current process is manual and often takes years, at times upto 20 years. In India, 17 States and one UT have Land Consolidation Acts. Use of information technology is empowering the consolidation officers to reduce the time required to complete the process while increasing transparency. It promotes inter-agency cooperation and digitization of the records through the automated processes.

Mr. Sharma, researcher from IIT Kanpur, spoke about the need for IT in land consolidation related to spatial data. Use of modern survey techniques can reduce errors between ROR data and data collected through latest techniques. The department is currently planning to prepare complete village maps using several techniques.

Mr Sachin Garg from George Mason University presented the technologies available for Land Administration with a focus on blockchain technology and how it can be used in land administration. However, building consensus on the technology is quite expensive which is in terms of computing requirement. The concern is also that the blockchain technology has to integrate with the existing technologies. The use of blockchain technology can be best used in land registration due to its immutability. One of the key requisite of the technology is the presence of stable institutions, which India has. But before that, more research is needed to identify if the problem exists and the scale of problem (frauds).

Pranab Ranjan Choudhury, Center for Land Governance, NRMC presented on Community Led Land Mapping model using mobile technology. There are issues in updating land record relating spatial, textual and actual mapping of un-surveyed areas and integrating new rights. In DILRMP, 70% of the land records are digitized; however only 40% of the maps are digitized. Further, only 2% are updated. A community mapping approach is proposed in this scenario which combines different aspects. Pilots have been conducted with Pradan in Odisha and RNBA in Noth-East India.