The Law of the Land
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Image: Amit Verma
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SCREEN PLAY This touchscreen kiosk in Kurukshetra, Haryana has prepared the ground for the launch of conclusive land titling
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n modern history, Kurukshetra may be a small, impoverished town in Haryana with a feudatory subplot. But it was here that the mother of all land disputes was settled three thousand years ago, in an 18-day-long epic war of the Mahabharata. It is pertinent, then, that India’s most ambitious piece of land reforms ever should take shape here. A million battles more bitter than the historic one are raging in India’s courts right now, over disputed land ownerships. The underlying curse has been the lack of a clear and conclusive system of land titles, which opens up avenues for manipulation of records and stealing of property.
The early clues of how to resolve this mountain of conflicts is again coming from Kurukshetra. It is the first district in the country to prepare for ushering in the Torrens system of land titling that the central government plans to implement all over the country. A new law will replace the multitude of ancient and inefficient land record systems in vogue today with a uniform, nationwide system of computerised records. District officials in Kurukshetra have taken the first step by integrating the databases of the government’s revenue and land administration departments, a crucial requirement before the Torrens system can take over.
The overhaul of India’s land record system couldn’t have come earlier. The country is brimming with land disputes. A third of the 11 million civil cases pending in the lower courts involve fights over property. As much as 1.3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) is locked away in such fights. Industrial projects worth $100 billion have been held up due to conflicts over acquiring land for them. Property tax collections account for just 0.24 percent of GDP, a third of the average for the developing world. All because India follows the outdated system of presumptive titling where ownership is established by tracing the history of transactions on a given property. The system has its origins in the practice of the British Empire to trace a property’s ownership all the way back to the time the monarch gifted it to a loyal subject. It is a complex, time-consuming affair prone to errors and hence disputes. And there is no king around to confirm such bequeaths lost in the timeless past.
That the new model could reduce that pain is evident from early experience in Kurukshetra. Complaints over land frauds — typically selling the same plot to several buyers — have come down drastically after land records were streamlined and put online, says the local magistrate, Pankaj Aggarwal. District officials have scanned about 200,000 documents covering 416 villages, collected maps showing all the land parcels and put the whole thing on a digital platform. Transactions are recorded with biometric security eliminating chances of identity theft. Villagers just walk into computer kiosks and download titles to the plots they wish to purchase, knowing these documents are the official, unadulterated version.
But what is set to happen is a matter far beyond mere computerisation. The government’s Land Titling Bill will bring about a fundamental shift in the way land records are made, kept and used in India. The old presumptive system will go. And with it, all the complex documentation about past transfers and encumbrance will vanish. It will be replaced by a single register of land titles for the entire country, conclusively establishing the names of current owners. Most importantly, it will come with explicit guarantee of the ownership which means casual and infructuous disputes that the old system encouraged will not be possible anymore. Genuine disputes could still be pursued but not before they have been considered by a tribunal to be set up by a new Land Titling Authority. The owners will also be insured against any error in the register. “It will make the process of understanding titles much easier and ensure that we don’t have property frauds,” says Keki M. Mistry, vice-chairman and CEO of Housing Development Finance Corp. (HDFC).
To ensure that level of credibility, the records should be made fool-proof. So the government plans to verify the details independently. “Ground truthing through aerial surveys will be done to verify the present land records,” says a rural development ministry official, speaking anonymously. “We are working on setting up ground control points to co-ordinate aerial surveys across the country to ensure verification of the land records,” the official says. About 2,500 such control points are being set up in the initial phase. About 42 million field measurement books and about 1 million village maps are also being digitised under the programme.
A Time-Tested Model
Sir Robert Richard Torrens was the premier of South Australia in the 1850s when speculative traders turned their attention to property deals. The British colony also had a confusing system of land grants. Torrens wanted to control speculation and also streamline the records of granted land. In 1858, he launched a single register of land records that succeeded in both these objectives.
But he faced enormous opposition. His political rivals as well as lawyers fearful of loss in income from this simpler system resisted change. But Torrens pushed the system through and evicted fake property owners. In time, the system spread to much of the Commonwealth and beyond.
Single Page View
This project for conclusive titling is going to bring in a drastic change in the way land is being enjoyed, especially by those in power and politics apart from bringing relief to the citizen.
