How Can Technology Help in Providing Secure Property Rights?

[00:00:00] We aim to bring you expert conversations about the most contentious of the Holy Roti Kapraha Macantunity, that is, the Macant over our heads and the larger ecosystem that governs it. This podcast is produced in association with the Property Rights Research Consortium supported by Omidya Network India.

[00:00:40] I am Bargavee, a researcher interested in land and access to finance and your host for this season. Like in all other fields, technology has made significant inroads in land and administration as well. Just about 10 years ago, getting a copy of your land record would require a trek

[00:01:02] to the Tesla's office. Today, in a majority of the districts, in a majority of the states, copies of land records can be viewed and retrieved digitally. And digitally, sign copies are available for a lot of districts in India.

[00:01:15] Similarly, recently, into some bit the scheme, we saw drones being used to map about the areas and generate property records for land parcels in these areas. And yet much of transaction interface in the field of land is oblivious to technology improvements.

[00:01:32] For example, Pikany Lantern, Land Transaction Document, and notice in a land lawyers office and notice the manner in which land is described in this document. It is normally described with reference to a survey number which would have been assigned to that land parcel prior to independence.

[00:01:48] And generally, the boundaries are defined with respect to what is lying to the north of the land, the south of the land, the west of the land and the east plant. For example, it would generally go something, read something like this that all those

[00:02:00] piece and partuses of land with all the trees and the structures standing on it, admiring so and so, bearing cadastron number 278, but our number so and so. And bounded on the east by Kodbander Road on the west by the sea, on the south by

[00:02:14] and the north by property belonging to Ashakti Mills or something. And in a day and age where consumers can actually tell Uber drivers and so, Mattoe partners to deliver a parcel or pick them up from an exact location, it seems or that you wouldn't

[00:02:32] use geocord in its end documents as important as land transaction documents. Similarly, most of land transactions actually rely on paper documents, credit is advanced on the basis of land documents. A sale of land is not possible without seeing the paper documents in so on.

[00:02:49] Now, partly this is attributable to professional moors and trench to in the conventional land-loiling community, but part of this may also reflect what people really prefer right as per the the real preference theory in economics.

[00:03:01] And it really tells us some of the dual challenges in scaling technology in land administration to discuss these challenges I have with me two guests, Drey Sanjay Kumar who is a member of the Indian Administrative Service with over nine years of experience in handling land administration in India.

[00:03:18] Sanjay has done field work in Argentina and Rwanda on informal settlements and land reforms, currently he secretary to the government of Goa and pursuing his passion to modernize property records in Goa. We also have with us Jagdish Pupala who was the chief executive of Foundation for Ecological

[00:03:34] Security, right from its inception in 2021 to 2020. Amongst the many other things that Jagdish has done he has been instrumental in setting up the India Observatory, a data and technology platform that works towards improved governance of land and water for the benefit of local communities in India.

[00:03:49] Welcome Sanjay and Jagdish to the land of a billion podcast. Thanks, Nagy. Thank you, Bhagavad Giri. So Sanjay, just to begin with as we all know since the last few decades India has been increasingly adopted in technology in its governance.

[00:04:03] Could you give us some idea of how tech-based approaches are being used for land and property administration in India and what are your views on the same? Let us say that there are different aspect of land and mission and technology has been used differently.

[00:04:15] In registration it is a only textual data entry, it was a kind of an MIS. So NGDRS software was made, agent-rix software and then it actually streamlines the processes. I don't know how whether it indicates enhances the user experience or not but it creates

[00:04:32] a kind of an MIS. Maps were because these were cadastral map, servers then more than 100 years ago. So they were scanned and then they were vectorized so that the cadastral map is available

[00:04:43] in auto-cads, the salt and in ROR this is the biggest success of that textual data, the ROR entry to the codified entry has been destroys across India and most of the places the codified sites are available in textual and computerized form and which has changed the user experience.

[00:05:00] In maps I think that we have not been successfully able to describe and improve the use of GIS as user and I would like to also add to it that you said drones and these modern technology, some I feel that there is also a part of the problem.

[00:05:17] These cadastral maps were prepared through chainservy method anything less than 20 centimeter the link size of chain was rounded off so these maps were not very accurate. So now we really use new technology drones at light in a region or anything.

[00:05:32] The area comes different and what is currently recorded in land records so in which has a legal sense check it and this problem is not unique to India. Unfortunately what you have said you feel that as if we are only at faulting edge, grease

[00:05:46] for the last 25 year with one billion dollar funding, European experts and European funding have not been able to cover even 6% of the earth and now in others they have passed from legislation to put all the disputes there and I am saying that technology is part of the problem.

[00:06:02] For example let us also discuss and understand how our technology can help, why do you need geo coordinates of a plot which can be known simply by the addresses in urban area

[00:06:15] one can find his house in the third street my house is poor and by the relative position one identify one house is rather than by geo coordinates. New Zealand has to pass an act in 2016 to deal and to declare that all geo coordinates

[00:06:31] have zero validity, their legal validity was defiled why because arc is continuously moving and these geo coordinates are changing, these are high cost solutions and I would prefer that the investment can be better utilized in better technology in choice of selection can be done.

[00:06:48] So, you are completely with you on how actually for the average person and address is a much better marker of a land parcel than anything else but I guess one sort of possible utility of defining land parcel through geo coordinates is the ability to extract information

[00:07:11] without being physically there. So for example today if I were to pull out information about an undivided parcel of land which has not actually undergone revenue subdivision but they belong to two different people.

[00:07:24] Currently what I use is I use the cadastron number and I use the subdivision number on the other hand geo coordinates may be sitting remotely it's easier for me to pull out my land parcel and I agree with you there is a technology element to it and there

[00:07:38] is a legal validity element to it and like you said maybe we should separate the two and maybe one is useful for identification and reducing information or symmetry whereas the other is useful when it comes to enforcing legal rights and maybe that's the right approach

[00:07:51] to be taken maybe New Zealanders done it's a good example that you've given. So coming to Jagdish apart from government you know where have you seen some ways in which civil society organizations have been using technology in the area of property rights you've

[00:08:06] done a lot of work in this area put you give us an overview of the work that you have done in this space. Yeah, before I get into my particular work or of our organizations work I think laying

[00:08:16] out the canvas much broader you were talking about the slums and how segment rights were given in certain parts of India I think because the combination of the ornament of Odisha, Nata Pras, Omedia Network and Cadastra which used innovative ways of people actually

[00:08:32] crowdsourcing data from local communities and settling the rights of local communities so we have many such examples even ordinary citizens have used technology to ascertain their rights. Maharashtra for instance there was a case in the court where people took you made to

[00:08:49] these of say 10 years prior and treated to the court that it was not a land like value to be given away to someone but that this was arable land. So ordinary citizens to do that and from the civil society space like NGO and other

[00:09:03] citizens you have very active people who increase the accountability of governments or other actors by working alongside governments and with contacts and with local communities like in Rajasthan the jumpsuchna portal which came up.

[00:09:19] The white all sorts of information under one rules it was an initiative to done by the civil society groups and government members ideas and you have information from some 20 plus departments all put together.

[00:09:31] So you have a piece of land you know probably whether it is being left for fascists or if it was likely to be given away for money. So that kind of information actually improves agency and moves it towards local city engagement.

[00:09:46] There are other cases of the same thing like in the right to employment guarantee at again a group of civil society organizations scripts huge public data and actually held local communities the local level of officials to see how energy implementation can happen again using GIS and so on.

[00:10:05] So there was change of situation it was happening in the last 10 to 15 years. Our story is a foundation for ecological security and what we call as India's regulatory art. So it goes back some 20 years ago.

[00:10:18] We realize that we work basically on foreign pastures and water bodies land which is collectively owned not by as individual parcels by individual ownership but collectively had lands. And if you want to work on foreign pastures of water bodies these are spread across human settlements.

[00:10:36] You need the bird said you to plan a different conservation or sort of extraction or just preservation. When we were born with this you needed actually a bird said you to plan for such things. What satellites and remote sensing and the images that were being thrown out were

[00:10:52] offering I would say probably better than a bird said you not exactly like a hawks you but definitely conservation action could be improved using satellite images. There were some mistakes there was some gaps as usually many such ecologists won't properly economy, second one is one problem, social scientists.

[00:11:11] What we list people do is basically thinking systems that license all about systems and that don't dot-spitting the cities of disciplines. Now what we try to do under India observation is how do you give what sets of data being

[00:11:24] justified them and present it in a context so that local citizens can actually plan for the bio-ence line and talk in each such agricultural activities or groundwater research and so on. So India observation was basically an interdisciplinary thing with clear forecasters from action.

[00:11:42] I will take you off into a small story in South and the Paradesh. On 32 villages started working around the forest and the forest department handed over the land to the mother of so-called joint forest landing wintering winds and the villages were growing pretty well.

[00:11:57] And soon there realized according to their perception that the forest was improving when we had this remote sensing and gas facility and we partnered with scientists from Indian Institute of Science we tried to analyze what was the change in the biomass basically the

[00:12:11] green matter that you see above ground and we saw that yes the forest was increasing but it was not increasing at the age it should meaning that people were also extracting higher so we could show this to the village people but they couldn't make sense of satellite

[00:12:25] inventories that challenge us. So we had to do surveys in the villages where we had to calculate every household how much of our wood is being collected and then we presented to the village people if each

[00:12:39] of your village actually harvest more than seven cartelodes in a month your forest is depleting that they could easily translate into action when they realized that because seven cartelodes became us with roofs and regulations we also worked alongside

[00:12:54] in the neighboring small casmas to reduce the consumption in the in the dabas. That resulted in a much better conservation planning in the local areas. Good science contextualized it make it intelligible and do then move it towards action where

[00:13:10] we relate people or ordinary citizens are in the center of this making that's the kind of potential that India of the weekly has. Thanks to a huge such fantastic so just to quickly recap right what you are suggesting is

[00:13:21] that actually technology tools especially when used by civil service organizations and communities can aid in planning or exercising accountability over governments as well as governing the comments. So that's an interesting experience of how you were even able to use it to be able

[00:13:40] to convince the households around the forest that actually more needed to be done to ensure that the forest grows at a pace that you would like it to grow. So this actually takes me this

[00:13:49] reminds me of an intervention I mean many people talk about it that it's used in the US which is communities living around forests and how do you incentivize them to invest in the forest and

[00:13:59] they are actually given a subsidy to keep their land value. So they do not end up encroaching on the forest and I think that's an interesting approach as well and I suspect that you know

[00:14:10] to be able to monitor these kind of interventions you do need the kind of satellite imagery which gives you a near-rear time view even if it is rough even if it is not precise at the level

[00:14:20] that Sanjay mentioned in the beginning it gives you a picture of what is the land being used for and does the record reflect it as real time as who would like it to be and even if not for

[00:14:32] record keeping for management it's useful. So thanks for that perspective. So Sanjay you seem to be a little wary of the risks that come with over-techno-light raising land governance and administration.

[00:14:44] So what are some of the sort of risks that you would like to highlight on the over-use of technology in land administration and governance? You mentioned a couple in the beginning but you know would you like to elaborate on them or some other ones?

[00:14:55] Yeah. Thanks for the question of whether to clarify myself I think I did not make myself clear earlier. I have not said that technology is but I said that there are cheaper ways to adopt those

[00:15:06] technology as the thesis. I am in support of that. Like I am saying adopt the GIS map as United very cheap. Without drones early the made it on tabletop, telangana municipal administration and thunder full work on tabletop without going in field. On Google Earth you will get 10

[00:15:24] time more accurate location as compared to by going in field and capturing the geoconnet by your mobile phone or a Google device. That is what I want to explain that there are cheaper and better

[00:15:36] solutions with less money and we can get it done rather than sometimes driven by the solution which are pushed by the vendor since people claiming that it is a centimeter accurate and when

[00:15:46] I am saying that the earth is in your plate is moving about 4 to 5 centimeter per year. And so any coordinate which you will capture centimeter accuracy will not be within six months the location will

[00:15:56] change. And as I said now there is a total research and that has said that going for such a high technological solution is completely waste of money and there are cheaper better solution. I feel United State has adopted GIS based solution very cheaply, very easily and they

[00:16:11] there the data is easily shareable. Where you go for this high accuracy surveyed you don't even share the data in US you can find the GIS parcel on any municipality website. I even wrote

[00:16:24] to one municipality that I was doing research at a degree of IO and I asked that I want this analysis and student at MIT so they immediately made the kind of did the spatial analysis and

[00:16:37] scientific to me and you must understand that I have not invested that high cost drawn. We must see how other countries has evolved to this state rather than what has been told to us

[00:16:50] that this has happened we should go and see because what vendor or technological solution provider are telling us is not what actually happened there. This is what my point is. Okay point taken the significance of GIS based technologies has also been growing over the last few

[00:17:05] years right especially when it comes to land and property rights. The draft national geospatial policy which was released earlier this year has also created a considerable excitement in this regard. Who do you tell us what you think would be the potential strengths and challenges of this policy

[00:17:18] with respect to land administration? I think it's very core what the policy has done is if democratized that space for many, many decades land records and survey records were held by a couple of you know ministries departments and very close the end and it was a

[00:17:40] right way to get the data out into the public domain and about a decade ago they started selling it but now it actually the policy encourages the the holders of such data to share this information

[00:17:57] and create a new ecosystem where a geospatial economy could be built like say if he had one example which of friend of mine Sanjay Kurohichi uses is all of us had maps for centuries

[00:18:11] whatever sketches and yet the invention of the blue dot on your GPS that blue dot revolutionized the way that a 3G came in Uber came in everything moved towards the agency of the

[00:18:24] individual if that kind of a ecosystem could be built this is just an example where several things rights from climate to groundwater to a range of economic opportunities could be cultivated you have a wonderful economy built around using the whatever the records are to be available.

[00:18:44] Great I mean I guess so would you say that a lot of this depends on the procurement capacity of the relevant department because it seems to me that it would be really hard to identify

[00:18:55] if there are about 10 or 15 solutions that are being proposed to deploy technology in land administration you need to have a certain level of sophistication to understand which one suits your purpose best and which is actually bank for buck would you say that this links to the procurement

[00:19:11] capacities of governments in land administration let me take the example of a wonder the wonder had no land record they prepared their land record from 2013 to 2012 when every country failed in improvement of their land record wonder was successful it done it

[00:19:28] at very low cost at very very low cost they solution very simple they took the printout of satellite imagery they asked people to walk with them and mark their boundary on that printout of that satellite imagery by pen whatever they marked as a their boundary they scanned it

[00:19:46] and they vectorized it and then immediately the their survey plan now imagine that without serve without machine without anything they have a satellite imagery where both parties have signed an agreed for a boundary which never require any serve air in the future and they did it

[00:20:04] and that in accurate term that is a legal demarcation because both parties have a greater wonderful solution but I feel because and there are European vendors who are pushing the high cost solutions US is fine European vendors and universities are there who are asking

[00:20:21] no wonder to do the survey again because it is a general boundary principle and it is a substandard solution and they have declared it as a fit for purpose solution which is fit for developing nation which is fit for because they can't aim for high tax solution of

[00:20:36] a developed nations this is a false narrative pushed by these agencies and these experts you just go and check how the title 10 of the UK is issued they never did any boundary survey you

[00:20:48] check on Denmark cadastral website I will share the link where they totally explain how their maps are not accurate and how they are boundary because their cadastral is 200 years old must understand the cadastral world came from the continental Europe and their maps were prepared 200 years

[00:21:05] ago so there are even less accurate as compared to India's which were prepared about 100 years ago for some clean goa that will be cost were prepared in 60s and 70s so we are far better

[00:21:16] and whenever we desty these maps there are I don't want to disclose but there are steps where you have to do a rebuar shitting because the cadastral map will not join together there are too many

[00:21:27] things schools and it makes it less accurate so I'm saying it on record the wonder and records are far better they are first in the quality of land administration as for along with the Lithuania the wonder is first on in the quality of land administration world over still

[00:21:43] European went there and said they own all your maps are not accurate or they are not good they have forced the wonder to again ask equal to go for again these surveys whenever they are coming

[00:21:53] for sale the your partition with the help of these technological tools of DGPAs and other solutions even though the rwanda's maps are better than Europe I ask rwanda noficial whenever they are in

[00:22:06] the field they did that you are the first in the quality of land administration why are you now pushing people for these high cost solutions they said no Europe is a gold standard I got you have map

[00:22:15] were not and they were not of that standard so this is a kind of a complex been leaving in India we are also trying for the last 20 years to make destice our maps main problem happens with map

[00:22:28] only why land record could not revolutionize as the respect because of technology I will share only one anecdote you must understand this is that maps for prepare with the chainservy method chain was 20 centimeter long link of a chain so anything less than that was rounded off

[00:22:45] so they are less accurate method and when we use the words survey must understand what is the meaning of survey because that word is wrongly understood by merely everyone survey was to assess the productivity of the land that what is the productivity whether they can all how much

[00:23:00] rice you produce so based on that to fix your lagoon your land revenue somehow we linked it with ownership or boundary measurement which is a wrong tool to use solve another problem so then we now

[00:23:13] do the reserve with the dgps at light the area of the new survey which is the high technology instrument doesn't match with the area which we recorded in the old survey records which were prepared more than 100 years ago and that is where every country is facing problems

[00:23:30] South Korea after spending 4 billion dollars if I am correct with the figure they their area did not match they have to declare that new record does not have any value you record don't have any

[00:23:41] legal value today so why you are wasting so much investment and the Lithuania and Ravanda could do it they are the first in the quality of the administration because they never had any land record

[00:23:51] so there was no question of mismatching so here US has provided a solution very simple very usable and without putting too much cost what they did they deal in that digital boundary

[00:24:05] use of GIS they revolutionize by dealing can get to the legal boundary is that it is a GIS digital boundary and legal boundary is different legal boundary they will determine when someone

[00:24:15] will apply someone will then they will go in field they will see their document they will see the possession they will take a field evidence but we are trying or the countries are trying that

[00:24:24] while modernizing the anchor we want to settle all the boundary disputes which will never happen so that is my point and I hope I made it clear and in the US by dealing

[00:24:34] they have revolutionized the users GIS and because we are not being able to modernize land record and saying we are holding back urban planning, infrastructure planning and all other respect large GIS can be often mentioned at the outset and I totally agree with that that so many things

[00:24:49] while chasing accuracy of these epsilon notion of accuracy we are losing on the approximate boundary can serve better and in more affordable that so. Corridor Sanjay so I think it will be a bit of a shocker to our listeners right

[00:25:06] Ravanda doing much better than India when it comes to maintenance of land records but good for them and I completely agree with you actually the original purpose the most original purpose of this survey you know since the best recorded history in India actually comes

[00:25:19] begins only in the early 19th century the most original purpose of this survey was defense purposes or rather marking the territory of the British and then slowly as things stabilise the purpose of the survey change to collection of revenue and it is only recently

[00:25:35] that our approach towards land survey has changed to and focus like Sanjay saying on determining legal rights or property rights for the landholders so indeed for a country which has a rich transaction history unlike Ravanda or for that matter even Australia right

[00:25:50] in a country like India there are bound to be inconsistencies across land records and point totally taken that land is a much more complex asset than a lot of other assets whose markets have

[00:25:59] been completely digitised in India so. Judd this what you have to say I mean when civil society organizations or communities use technological solutions for advancement of property rights what are some of the warnings that you would give them what are challenges that you also seen in

[00:26:14] this area. No many but firstly to begin with what Sanjay was speaking about earlier appreciate what is said and it's about land is a you know it's a potential bomb in villages and if you are

[00:26:28] a few centimeters or inches this side of the side you could actually create an unintended conflict of unimaginable proportions so it's not just technology technology alone but he being a civil servant a regulator very high value they have to look at Launder the ratios and accuracy which is

[00:26:49] the legitimate is by putting their seal so it's better to have a great degree of caution and I also see how he's looking at public policy wherein the economics of the whole solution is being

[00:27:01] looked at rather than just a attack the tail wagging the dog so I think it's a phenomenal thing and yes I think what it brings out is what is the purpose so he clearly differentiated

[00:27:14] what the legal entatlement or the title is should be a different instrument and the development of value whether it is for climate seeing the carbon credits for the you know the new markets that are emerging around land that could be a different developmental objective where you

[00:27:31] could use other kind of technology which may not be that centimeter accurate but still you can probably achieve a lot more to ascertain that the whatever the benefits coming from the internet to markets are actually reaching the middle of people or whoever is the end user there's several

[00:27:47] lists that I see in this game first and foremost to bag us away little you know we have these tech products coming in data algorithms you know everyday coming in but are they really reaching

[00:28:00] the ground in an intelligible manner that is one thing in it well if it is reaching there then easy to lead into the desired action that you're looking at that is another question now

[00:28:12] last one I would say is it improving the agency of the village people or whoever the end user is so that person can apply in some esewa or some jumpsuits my portal and get the relevant information

[00:28:24] I think that's the larger kind of a moment we have to go to my influence of second race the technology could also be a monster of its on its wall and this it has the human element

[00:28:38] of what the Sunday Instructing of bringing in a larger decision making ethics of a T1 about data privacy or taking a prior informed consent I think these are the challenges which one has to look at and in a dynamic manner because about the anti exchange almost increased season

[00:28:57] so how do you create that kind of an infrastructure where in the agency of the village people or the end users is in fact that is central and where their consent is taken towards whatever

[00:29:10] the use is put to you know that's the larger kind of risks that I keep seeing you know what's happening all around the world with data and how do you secure people's custody of their

[00:29:23] always sources that is something we need to be very watchful about. Yeah thanks Drish that's helpful I guess that's applicable to technological solutions being applied across the board whether it's for land or for any other purpose so just to you know before we conclude I wanted

[00:29:39] to since the name of this podcast is land of a billion let's begin with Jadish you know if there was one core challenge that you would put your weight behind what would it be to

[00:29:51] secure land rights for a billion? I think the new geospatial policy I think it touches on that already well we have to wait for it to get operationalize and actually improve action but my point

[00:30:04] is something like this ownership of land that is a property right is a beginning what you do on the land and what are the other benefits you get from that is the actual challenge in order to

[00:30:14] do that what I see in the public policy and again as I said the geospatial geospatial practice already talking about it which is how can you enable various actors to interact with one

[00:30:27] if I have to interact with Sundays land records in Goa could there be an API so that I can build up a climate resilience model around it or a groundwater recharge kind of application so how can

[00:30:41] his server talk to my server and how can my server talk to say a wildlife institute server how to and maintaining the integrity of each server and yet creating an ecosystem which you know

[00:30:54] does away the redundancy of each one trying to reinvent whereas we should build something where each one of us can reuse rebuild and reimagine. Got it and Sanjay what would that challenge be

[00:31:05] for you to secure land rights for billion one challenge I know there are many but you know if you had to pick one which one would you rather put your weight behind? I would take forward what

[00:31:14] Jaldi says policy is revolutionary but there may be that data may not come out so what and my goal will be that if this GIS data is free and downloadedable anywhere as it happens in the

[00:31:28] United States that will be a big big plus because as he said either through API or through directly downloadable data even free I'm saying because how will that researcher in academia they will do

[00:31:42] research how will the spatial analysis will happen there is immense possibility how GIS can be and if we are just holding on to data and the data is not really available then it will be an issue.

[00:31:55] Got it so open access to most data management systems and I wonder how you would do that since it's spread across so many different departments of the state but I think I agree with you it's a

[00:32:06] fantastic solution. Thank you so. Thanks Sanjay thanks, Jadbi. Thank you Sanjay thank you Thanks for tuning into our podcast Land of a Billion produced in association with the Property Rights Research Consortium don't forget to catch new episodes every alternate Friday

[00:32:24] where I will bring you a rundown on the latest structure around land and housing in India. Thanks for listening log on to the quince website and check out our other podcast