Legal, political, technical and commercial issues of Land Information Systems


A revenue village has always been accepted as the basic sub-unit of the administrative boundary in our country. Thanks god that the village boundaries unlike State / District boundaries are still intact and have not been disturbed by the administrators as well as the politicians. This Modern Cadastral System has to be prepared revenue village wise keeping in mind the following technological issues -
  • Reference Grid System
  • Specification of Surveys
  • Instruments
  • Provision of Ground Control
  • Scale of Survey
  • Accuracy Standards
  • Computerization of Maps and Land Records
  • Development of Land Information System
Parcel based Village Level Land Information




Integrated Land Information System is the ultimate answer as it will provide legal information such as encumbrances, transactions, mortgages, charges, caveats, court orders and restricted covenants for the future buyers who will be too glad to pay the charges for such information. Singapore has already done it.


The Ultimate Model


Commercial
Though land parcel Cadastral Maps were required to be updated every 30 years through Survey & Settlement Operations, but it has not been done in many of the States during the last 50 years. Government of India and State Governments are well aware of this precarious situation. Study groups have been formed; pilot projects have been undertaken; workshops on computerization of land records have been held; number of recommendations have been made by various conferences; seminars and meetings, but no visible results can be seen on the ground. The main reasons are -
  • Political will is lacking for the reasons best known to them.
  • Bureaucracy and Administration is irresponsive
  • No serious initiatives have been taken to resolve technological issues.
  • Postpone because it is involving huge expenditure.
There is no doubt that the task is laborious, time consuming and cost intensive but there is no escape to further postpone the work. Commercially, the calculations for the entire cost of this project can be estimated as under -

Total area of the country32,87,263 sq.km
Area required to be undertaken for Settlement and13,14,905 sq.km
Survey operations at 40% of the total area (assumption) 
Approximate rate of Survey and Settlement operationRs.85,000/- per sq.km
Estimated cost of the total project+Rs.10,000 Crores


This job should not be postponed and has to be undertaken on war footing basis. The question of funding this project has to be evolved by the Government by taking a pragmatic approach. If Government can guarantee the ownership rights of the land through this process, majority of the land owners will not mind to pay Rs.1,000/- per acre and the whole cost of the project can be recovered even if marginal land owners below poverty line do not pay.

Recommendations
This National Conference on Land Information System, jointly organized by Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India and Centre for Spatial Database Management and Solution (CSDMS) should recommend to Department of Land Resources of Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India to come out with a white paper on this subject stating the current situation in various States and action plan for taking up Survey and Settlement operations after resolving the Legal, Technical and also Commercial issues as mentioned in this paper. They should go rather one step ahead to recommend to the States for development of Integrated Land Information System (ILIS), Internet based using the latest Web Technology to bring maps and textual land information via Internet to act as one stop information service integrating various aspects of land information from the Registry of Titles, Land records and Survey Departments as conceived in the diagram. This is the need of the day as this information will be useful for members of the public, banks, land surveyors, lawyers, developers, property agents, valuers and architects.


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