[00:00:00] You're listening to the Queen's Podcast. Welcome to Season 2 of the Queen's Spot Nightly Podcast, Land of a Billion. We aim to bring you expert conversations about the most contentious of the Holy Roti Kapraha Macantronity. That is, the Macan over our heads and the larger ecosystem that governs it.

[00:00:33] This podcast is produced in association with the Property Rights Research Consortium, supported by Omidya Network India. I'm Bargavri, a researcher interested in Land and Access to Finance and your host for this season. To a large extent Indian society continues to keep gender minorities in the periphery.

[00:00:58] In the mind of an average Indian, the word transgender may evoke standards, stereotype damages largely popularized by the media and pop culture. The position of trans people in India has been recorded in a major and various ways actually.

[00:01:10] For example, from having specific roles in Hindu mythology to receiving patronage from Mughal Emperor's Parath and Culture, one can say that the trans community has been ubiquitous to the Indian subcontinent. They've been made visible and yet also in visible in many ways.

[00:01:25] In the history of modern India, however, transgender people have helped public offices, their exercise voting rights and some states have specific policies that aim to secure their welfare. In 2011, when the census introduced the other gender category nearly half a million people identified themselves in that category.

[00:01:42] A 2014 estimate suggests that there are at least 3 million trans persons in India. Yet, they largely made outliers and their access to basic rights continue to be challenged both socially and legally. Then this includes their right to own rent and inherited property.

[00:01:58] Today we have with us Karan Gulati from the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy to speak about his latest research on the rights of trans persons under Indian inheritance laws. But before that, I wanted to bring you some voices from the trans community.

[00:02:13] Voices of those who's lived experiences attest to the challenges faced by trans persons in India and exercising their right to land in housing. We asked them to share the experience that they have faced in trying to rent by or inherited property and here's what they had to say.

[00:02:33] As a transgender person, we have to face a lot of problems. For my homes to the world outside, we face so many issues as a transgender person just to survive. From food to shelter, we're also bilingual because not all people will treat us to see.

[00:02:49] No doubt there are good people that's why I've been able to survive this far and I've been living in the same place in Delhi for the last three to four years. But as a transgender person, I have to face a lot of challenges and therefore hateful

[00:03:02] to those NGOs which help us with this. When we go to see the room on rent, we don't find a room that easily. And that is because people ask us, what type of person are you?

[00:03:21] Your lifestyle is different and so we can't give you a room on rent. So we face a lot of issues in renting a house. transgender and queer people often get excommunicated from their native families that deprive them of their inheritance rights even if the inheritance is ancestral.

[00:03:49] Often civil litigation is agitated and complications are created to create criminal litigation out of that. And the institutional challenges are galore. The law enforcement, the criminal justice system and the legal fraternity is not very helpful. There is a huge dirt for pro bono lawyers.

[00:04:16] The district legal services authorities, the state legal services authorities are from time to time in act incompetent and at times even unethical and corrupt. At the past, those transgender persons who are trying to also develop in the real estate

[00:04:33] sector as real estate brokers are given toll promises, they barely paid their brokerage, they pay barely paid given any incentives from time and again they are defrauded. The property rights of friends have we got the judgment in or was he? Or was he the searcher?

[00:04:53] The family, the judgeman, the judge came from Madurai High Codebench and through that I will now say it didn't get any property from her family because they are saying the officials also they are saying you should go to there.

[00:05:11] So that kind of issues we are facing and in India we have the rights to get the property rights but the family in that we are facing too much of oppression. We need property rights and we have a judgment but then the counter reality it is completely different.

[00:05:32] So government should create a clear clarification for the property rights for the trans persons. In the order we heard, the voices were that of Shital Bhakshi and Monesh Kumar from Delhi, Wajanti who is a transgender activist and works closely with institutes such as the

[00:05:50] Center for Law and Policy Research and is based out of Hyderabad and Grace Bhanu who is a transgender activist and founding director of trans rights now collective. And now moving on to our guest for the day, we have with us Karan Gulati, Karan is a lawyer

[00:06:09] in Delhi, he is a research fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and Interdisciplinary Team. He researchers and rights on property rights in judicial administration and has often written for the law and economics policy blog, the Indian Express and the Times of India.

[00:06:28] He holds a dual law and management degree from Symbais University. Welcome Karan to the land of a billion podcasts. Thank you so much for being a land of subterranean so happen. Great. So Karan when before we get to the point of discussing the property rights of transgender

[00:06:44] persons in India, I want to ask you why is this an important issue and why is an important issue now? Right. So just before I start I mean some caveats, I speak from what I can with the research that

[00:06:56] we've done my co-author and I go shout the sharanans hopefully we've covered all the bases however we understand that we don't have lived experiences and we hope to make up for that as best as possible. On the issue of why is this important?

[00:07:10] I mean there's multiple ways of looking at it. We think that two are good approach to take. One is wise property important and the second is why is it important for transgender persons? So, a moving property in India is a largest asset holding of individuals and access property

[00:07:29] alleviates social standing of persons. So if you have property you have good titling, you have possession. It's likely that your social standing is like Bill Dries. Now that's all well in Goethe you have property but how are people acquiring property in India?

[00:07:43] Again we have a lot of research in India saying that in heritance is really how most people in India are acquiring property. There is a study from 2016 saying that close to 80% of all property in rural India is inherited. We have similar numbers for urban India as well.

[00:07:59] This means that one person needs property, second they usually get it why are inheritance. Now is this important for transgender persons as well notwithstanding it's the fact that it's important for everyone. Transgender persons often have low income, they don't have savings and they don't have access to housing.

[00:08:18] The National Human Rights Commission of India conducted a study in Utilization Delhi and found that 30% of transgender persons did not have any access to housing. So this was housing by a shelter homes, while government schemes their own property etc. And they couldn't access any property.

[00:08:34] This is much larger than non-transgender persons in India. We have similar comparisons again for income and savings. That means it's ideal if transgender persons could access property not only with this alleviate their social standing, it could often bring them at power without the persons in society.

[00:08:52] Now if all of property is rarely being acquired by inheritance it becomes an important question to understand why don't transgender persons have property because if they don't it's more likely than not that this is because they don't have inheritance rights.

[00:09:05] And that's why we look into what extent to transgender persons in India have inheritance rights, what does the law say about it, what do codes say about it? But we'll get to it in the course of this discussion.

[00:09:16] The other thing which I'm before we move on, I must to try. Is that there's also a question of how our transgender persons being denied their rights. It's possible that they could get these rights if they can form to the binary standards

[00:09:29] of the gender which was assigned to them at birth. This is especially problematic because transgender persons don't have property and don't have inheritance rights because they're transgender. So if they were to conform to their binary standards or genderstein to them at birth

[00:09:43] they would have to face, which is highly problematic given the constitution of India against these are equal rights without sex. Thanks, Karan. That makes sense to me. I mean we always think of succession laws as whether they treat the daughter and the son equally.

[00:09:59] We rarely think so much about whether they treat people of the other gender in equal terms and our succession laws have been amended and there is a lot of discourse on how by treating the daughter equally under a succession laws we're actually making her better off.

[00:10:14] And it makes sense that the same logic is extended to transgender persons. And the point that you mentioned about, you know, people transgender persons are deprived of inheritance rights because of their very gender. That's interesting.

[00:10:29] I mean it reminds me of an incident that actually told me about when in 2003 this was I think the matter of page 3 news in Bombay where a really famous person underwent sex change operation just popularly it was believed because he wanted to claim inheritance

[00:10:47] rights in his father as a state. But apart from that, I mean what is the legal position of a transgender person under the Indian succession laws and do you think that's changed over time or across states? Where does it transgender person fit under today's succession laws in India?

[00:11:04] Right. So just on that point slightly, Ajay Muffat's law case is infamous due to reasons it shouldn't be. This was supposed to be one of the first sex reasons. So she's great hallmarks for the Indian gentleman movement ended up being a legal battle

[00:11:19] about whether any of this was done for inheritance. And that just speaks to the attitude we have to work in inheritance rights, my normities in gender and gender minority. So this includes women as a matter of fact there's other research showing that Indian

[00:11:31] law is not that great on inheritance rights law from an idol but not to digress. Credit were credits due that it's a transgender person's half-dead movement in India over the past few decades. Now this is separate from inheritance rights and I'll now wish that.

[00:11:47] But it's still important to talk about how there is more recognition than the one was. So just to draw a small chronological path in 2011, the census allows us how do we human should transgender persons to identify as others in the census, lose to 500,000 people identify as such.

[00:12:07] Two years later, the central government establishes an expert committee on transgender issues. It gives a wide area of suggestions on improving education and employment of individuals. This was 2013. In another year 2014, we have the landmark documented underbeats Supreme Court in Nalsa versus Union of India.

[00:12:27] This recognizes transgender as a third gender in India and it guarantees them all constitutional protection which is also guaranteed to other citizens in India. In particular, it guarantees them right against discrimination on the basis of their or basis of gender rights.

[00:12:44] We have since then several other changes which come as a follow up to the Jacksonville Supreme Court. There are certain policies of state governments. There are wide array of these Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh come to mind, Karnataka, as I remember correctly as one.

[00:12:58] And we also have a 2019 central law on transgender rights. Now just to draw a benchmark of how far we've come, it is less than 100 years ago, which is in colonial India. When there is an act which specifically criminalizes the fact of being a transgender, it forces

[00:13:15] you to be on a register. You can't transfer property if you are a transgender person. So these are explicit problems in the low and colonial India. Since then we've come a long way. However, just because this progress doesn't mean we've achieved what we should.

[00:13:29] There's much left to be addressed as was now. And I assume mentioned with the offset, this includes property rights and it particularly includes inheritance. Though acts in India do not specifically say anything against inheritance rights of transgender persons, they're often gender diverse and discriminatory.

[00:13:48] Now what do I mean by this? As I try to elude to, we'll all in India aren't great on rights of women in inheritance either. As an example, there is currently debate on certain discrimination levels in the Hindu succession act.

[00:14:02] In differentiates between men and women and how they self-acquired property is transferred. Now here's the problem. If a transgender person wants to be queathed their property under the Hindu succession act, or one wants to inherit property under the act, how does the act acknowledge them?

[00:14:17] Does it acknowledge them as a male or a female? This is important because there's different treatment between men and women. If there was an equilter treatment of both these gender, it won't be as problematic. Now let's consider the situation.

[00:14:31] Imagine a person who is born a female but decided to undergo sexary assignment surgery and identify the male. This is similar to what happened in the case of Ajay Masatla. Now under the Hindu succession act, two things can happen.

[00:14:46] If they have children, there's not much to differ whether they're identified as male or female the property would go with their children. So that's good. But let's imagine they don't have a children. Who does this property go to death?

[00:14:56] If the person is recognized as for the gender at birth, which was assigned to them, which is that of a female, the property will go to their partner's family. Their husband's family, right? Now this is already before the Supreme Court of Firm Not Trump.

[00:15:12] But it's still problematic because on the other hand, had they been recognized as a male person, the gender that with which they recognize, that property would have gone to their mother or other class two class two kids. Let's just take a step back and understand what has happened.

[00:15:28] Just because of how the government has chosen or the court chooses to recognize the person, their property goes to different individuals. If they're identified as a female, the property goes to their partner's relatives. If they're identified as a male, the property goes to their relatives.

[00:15:45] My relatives are mean, their relatives. This means that there is no agency with the person on how they wanted property to move ahead after that device. It is up to persons in charge of removing this property from one individual to another who will choose how this property was.

[00:16:05] This is unlike what any other citizen in this country experiences. Their property goes to whoever they know that this property should go to. There is no arbitrariness by state agencies if you're a non-transgender person. There's still problems because again, female property goes to your husband's partner,

[00:16:24] but at the very least, you know that this is going to happen. Whether they're a transgender person, any and all agency is taken away from you and given to state agencies on how to identify them.

[00:16:34] And I know means to imply that this is a problem specific to the Hindu's equation. In our study, we find several legislation. The Muslim property act of 1937 has similar provisions. Then the session act has similar provisions. There are different problems under all of these acts.

[00:16:49] But the end result is that agency is taken from an individual and given to state agencies. This would immediately take you to the question of self-identification, right? So if we were to just stay with this example, which is that the transgender person's parent passes away

[00:17:05] and the question is how does the property devolve? Doesn't the transgender person have the right to self-identify himself as a man or woman and given that succession laws are inherently tilted towards men. A wouldn't he having sentives to identify himself as a male?

[00:17:23] And how does that play out or is it always left to the court to identify the transgender person as either male or female? Right. So there is of course a third category in India, which is people identify as neither male or female. But sort of keeping that apart.

[00:17:39] You would write technically that's an incentive to identify as a male. But that is a very demonic view to take of transgender persons, the problem which is enforced in us after the colonial realisation of transgender persons. What is better?

[00:17:53] It should be stopped transgender persons from identifying the way they want to in the off chance. That somebody identifies as a male and then tries to acquire property which they wouldn't have otherwise been entitled to. Or is it better that we have non-discriminatory provisions in the law?

[00:18:09] Which don't differ between men and women? This is a rhetoric question but it's still an important one. However, I feel like this question doesn't need to come up in any case. And why is that the case is because transgender persons currently cannot identify themselves as transgender persons.

[00:18:25] Can not identify by the fact that they're now in our hypothetical situation that they're now a male and only a male person. Yes, legally they can. The 2019 act has in fact got some improvements earlier. There was suggestions of medical certification.

[00:18:41] Those requirements have now been taken away under the rules. So there is some movement on this fact. But if you look at the data, in 2016 there was a question post and largest of number of how many people had hard cards which identified them as transgender persons.

[00:18:58] I forget the number of but I remember the percentage. This is 8% of the 500,000 who identify the sexes. Similar numbers are therefore voter ID cards in 2019 that only 8% of people in India or close to let's do 2% plus or minus 10% of people in India have an identity card which

[00:19:19] recognizes them as a transgender person. Now we're trying to get similarly numbers for banking as well that let exercise is in progress and I'll try to update the community as far as possible with what answers we get.

[00:19:31] But the larger ideas this, the transgender persons face difficulties and identify themselves. They don't have documentation. Now this is well understood. There are government policies in fact in Canada which says that because transgender persons

[00:19:44] will not be able to identify themselves as government documentation, we need to take certain steps. This is well acknowledged that individuals do not possess documentation. Not only in India but in fact there are several international reports which talk about the fact that transgender persons don't have documentation.

[00:20:01] This makes the challenge of first level 1. Instead of talking about who will identify as what? It's perhaps better to first answer the fact that our people are able to identify themselves the way they want to. Now yes again as I mentioned earlier, there's some progress.

[00:20:16] There is now a cent online portal which one can approach to get documentation changed. But we're well aware of difficulties of online systems in India especially when it targets marginalized communities and how accessibility is it. And there are some reports that this has entirely been accessible.

[00:20:34] Marginal numbers of identification documents have been issued over the last year or so. So there's movement and hopefully it results in something. But as of today it's difficult for individuals to have identification and documentation

[00:20:47] and this makes this making them a legal non entity because what they're having to do is to abide by that assignment gender instead of the one that they wish to identify as. Understood. So how do the courts really play this?

[00:21:01] Then do the courts support transgender persons rights in say for example in an inheritance suit? How have courts viewed this? Right. So that's a wonderful summary just to sort of back traffic. There are rarely as before I'm going to go to two problems in India.

[00:21:19] So that we know what courts are doing about these problems. One is that there are gendered laws and it gives the example of the Hindu succession. There are similar but very situations under Indian session act, the Muslim personal act has mandated themselves.

[00:21:32] So we have gendered regions where we should have them. So other is identifying successes. So one of this is the fact that transgender persons don't have identity documents but then this is also related to the fact that they can't identify them. There are other problems of identifying successes.

[00:21:47] So what do I mean by this? If a person cannot adopt a child, right, they still taking care of the child. Let's see. But they can't adopt this child. No law in India currently recognizes the inheritance of a person who's not your child.

[00:22:02] It can't be just someone living in your house or someone you're taking care of. There are very particular problems whether you're allowed to get married or not. Unmarried partner doesn't get your property, your man. You're actual partner in marriage, that's your property.

[00:22:16] So transgender persons are also facing these other challenges which are of course challenges in themselves and deserve due recognition and research separately whether India which is can adopt a married but he's also having interplay on inheritance. Now what if courts don't adopt this?

[00:22:31] So we try to address this problem as it's off strictly as we could. We looked at all decisions as all courts in India since 1950 that mentioned the term transgender.

[00:22:41] Particularly on inheritance there are only two cases which has come up with all courts or two that we could find. What do these two, these are interesting cases? The first, it's just to give you a noble view in the Madras High Court.

[00:22:54] There was a case where a transgender person or guru belonging to the huge drug community passed away. There were two persons who claimed that they had to will sign by this person.

[00:23:03] Let's further a person, a person, b person, a was just an individual not of too much concern. Person b was the chala of this school. Now the question before the court was how does this property move forward?

[00:23:16] The will to person, a which is the non-chala person was said to be forged and that's why this case really on the law of it was settled because they would only have one valid will

[00:23:26] that will also to the chala so you don't need to get into too much detail. But the good didn't make some interesting observations. It said that because the guru in this case was a Muslim individual and under Muslim personal law

[00:23:40] will can only transfer one third of your property so you can't build a way more than one third of your property. Two third of your property has to proceed as to customary practices.

[00:23:49] The court said that if this is the case which it is, this property has to move, at least two third of this property will move to customary practices which means it will move through the chala of this individual. This is an important judgment.

[00:24:03] It says that at least in the Muslim community, property of transgender persons has to move within the community because that is a customary practice. We have another similar case, just that the relationship was inverse. In the second case, the chala passed today.

[00:24:20] The guru was now demanding inheritance in that property. The Hema Chata, the Hish High, which is the court of concern in this case, had a similar discussion. It's just that there were no Muslim individuals, so there was no one third or two third property building of it.

[00:24:34] The court had, that since there is no other claimant to this property and the religion of the individuals has not been proved. It goes without saying that property shall move as per customary practices of the individuals. That's why this property went from the chala to the building.

[00:24:51] There are only these two cases which we know in India, which regard inheritance rights is transgender persons. Both of which transfer property within the transgender community.

[00:25:02] The only problem with this is that this has left whether to transfer property within the community to the subjective satisfaction of the court. The court gets to decide whether you are in a guru chala relationship first.

[00:25:16] That is also if you are a hishra person, if you are a non-hishra transgender, the guru chala relationship will be this. But the court first decides what this relationship is curated. Then it decides is this customary enough that it is widely followed.

[00:25:30] Then it decides within your community what is the practice. It sounds things like questions for you. And then it decides how much of that property will go to agreement. Current, the two situations where we have, courts have had positively. That property will move within the community.

[00:25:44] But there is no guarantee that this precedent will be followed throughout the rest of the country. There is also no guarantee to individuals whether their specific relation will be enforced by a court. This is not the case for other persons in India.

[00:25:57] If you have property which you ordinarily expect to move to you, you don't need to approach a court to go so. No one will fight you on that case. Of course, that's the exception as well you have inheritance cases in courts.

[00:26:07] But ordinary, you would expect that property to move to you. On the other hand, transgender persons are the mercy of the court to give them property. Not only this, they have to again identify either as a part of the community which has already enforced rights in court.

[00:26:25] So do I mean by this? Courts have the principle of falling precedent. Which means because of these two cases now we have to show that you are in a good way of relationship or something similar. That will help your case and the future dispute.

[00:26:37] That means you have to pocket yourself to what the court is looking for, not what you are in a case. But you're right, leaving them to the mercy of liberal judges is not the right thing to do.

[00:26:49] But apart from that I mean the listeners would know that there are huge transaction costs in approaching courts. But I wonder if this is the case. Is this a feature of emerging economy? Is this a feature of underdeveloped economies?

[00:27:04] Do you see other countries doing better and if yes, which ones do you think do better on this? Right. So to some extent property rights are transgender individuals in New South China. In the United States, the term transgender was coined in the 1990s.

[00:27:24] So we've had many 30 years of history as an example in the US, which is transgender particular rights. Now that means that similar challenges are faced across the world. But what other countries are doing which India is not, is at least guaranteeing civil rights to transgender persons who want.

[00:27:44] So they can identify themselves, right? So they have documentation which says there are transgender individuals and how do they identify? Do they can marry, third they can adopt? So they can prove relation to a deceased person and inherit property. How can the inherit property be?

[00:28:00] Is because laws in these countries are gendered individuals. It don't talk about female rights as an example. We talk about a spouse. We have some examples of this in India as well, not to say that India is doing so poorly.

[00:28:13] The Indian succession act, though, has some problematic exceptions. It also has some good marks, some of which talk about a child and not a male child or a female child. So here's some examples in India as well.

[00:28:24] But they're not as ubiquitous in India as there are in other parts of the world. Now there is a wide range of everywhere. As I said, this is a new site. Some parts of the world who started identifying civil rights.

[00:28:36] So you have, as an example, you have no way you have a straight USP. All of these countries have recognized joint ownership of property. They recognize inheritance rights. But then you have other countries as well which not only don't let you directly inherit property,

[00:28:51] they also need to also need medical sanction to prove that you're a transgender person. Which means you have to get a physical examination done to say that you're a transgender individual.

[00:29:01] This was in fact introduced in India as well, but after protests has been withdrawn under the new rules which are notified by the government. So now you don't need any medical examination, you only need a self-affirid effect that you're a transgender individual.

[00:29:13] There is a spectrum across the world as well about what extent are individuals around the ranks. However, it's interesting is that this is not developed world situation. Pakistan and Inputia, near India, passed to transgender rights Act in 2018.

[00:29:31] The same name as the Act in India which is passed on your later in 2019. The Pakistan Act says very specifically what will happen when a transgender person needs to inherit property. There's a particular section on inheritance. This is markedly lacking in the Indian legislation. What does it say?

[00:29:50] It says that if you're a person who now identifies as a female, you will inherit property as a female. If you're a person who now identifies as a female, you will inherit property as a female.

[00:30:03] If you identify as neither of these, it's a disfian option, not being stuck within the binary framework. Then you will inherit the average of what a male person and a female person would inherit. Sure, this seems slightly propped. The third one seems slightly problematic.

[00:30:19] There are discussions to be had in this. But at the very least, it shows that other countries, neighboring countries, are already thinking about property and inheritance sizes, individuals, and they've figured out within legislation of how to do so. What does this do? It guarantees these types.

[00:30:36] It's a confirmed right. As to the situation, how do we get human-shend that I have to go to a bank or have to go to a sub-resistant cruise that I am the legal heir. None of these problems are expected to arise in Pakistan anymore.

[00:30:48] None of these problems are expected to arise in Europe, countries where you have gender neutral laws. And that's where India can learn from other countries. Not only is this, there's another aspect to the international learnings to be had.

[00:31:04] There's one is country-tester, what are other countries in the world too? There's also India has sort of international obligations. It's a stable instrument. The universal declaration of human rights is an example. There's something called the Yogya Karta Principles. One of these talk about civil rights of individuals,

[00:31:22] in particularly the Yogya Karta Principles talk about the rights of transgender individuals. India is bound by these documents, because it has known conflicting domestic law. So not only should India learn from other countries, it also needs to follow its own international obligations and guarantee rights to transgender individuals

[00:31:42] as their guarantee to other members of society. What obligations does it have just to touch upon? The first one we've been talking about throughout the last part is that all international principles state that a person should be able to identify how they want to identify

[00:31:57] and that they should have documentation which proves this identity equation. So that's the first level thing we're sharing in India. The second which international principles, is the long talk about what countries talk about, is that you need gender neutral provisions. These are two learnings in their context from

[00:32:12] both other countries as well as international forces. Fascinating. So it's amazing that when we trace legal reform and the history of legal reform, some things are just so counterintuitive, great Karan. This was really good and keeping in line with the spirit of the name of our podcast,

[00:32:31] land of a billion. I would like to ask you, if you had to pick one court challenge that India needs to focus on to secure land rights for a billion, what would you say we all should put our weight behind? One court challenge.

[00:32:43] So it's difficult just because of how complicated land rights are in India, but perhaps what our study shows, not exclusively for transgender individuals is that when you have a deal about it, there are problems of course, let's say land that clearly is problem.

[00:32:58] But what do you do about it? You end up in court to enforce that land actually. So I feel like what a court's doing about land disputes is an immensely important question to answer. So we saw that courts have some degree of subjective satisfaction for transgender rights

[00:33:15] and we've been left wanting for these great judges who will solve all our problems. Is that how we should be looking at this? Now, there are some suggestions in the right guys. Courts are supposedly immensely evicted and that's why nothing is getting done.

[00:33:29] But that seems much more like a first-level problem. Given that land is the largest holding of any individual in India, we need to look into how our land disputes moving through courts, how long does it take? How many land disputes are there?

[00:33:44] Does this vary across states and districts, cultures, communities? Can we do something about them? I know there are some work on this fact that there are too many land disputes. So there are too many laws about land.

[00:33:57] So it seems like any other problem which individuals might have regarding land and property. Yeah, those problems are justified and deserve tension as well. But all of the problems eventually end up in court. And so it's important to sort of understand what works out in our land disputes.

[00:34:12] Thanks, Karan. That's an interesting way of looking at the problem. Right? Most people say that let's solve the law, let's solve the capacity of the local subredist route, the capacity of the local land records, offices, and we should be able to solve land related problems.

[00:34:26] You are taking an opposite approach, which is that let's identify through court litigation, what are the patterns of disputes in connection with land and then target solving those problems? So thanks, Karan.

[00:34:38] This was great and I look forward to reading more about this from both you and the Shad. Thank you so much for being here. We are in a land dispute in the Indian so happen. Thanks for tuning into our podcast, Land of a Billion,

[00:34:52] produced in association with the property rights research consortium. Don't forget to catch new episodes every alternate Friday where I will bring you a rundown on the latest Church of the Land and Housing in India.