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The land of Zimbabwe bleeds by land battles. Zimbabweans’ invasions of the white-owned land is probably a backlash of ignorance of land issues. A report in "The Economist, April 8-14, 2000", alleged that the President of the country, Mr Robert Mugabe, himself encouraged his supporters to invade the white-owned farms. Another report published in the April 15-21, 2000 issue of the same journal reports a recent opinion poll of 1,900 Zimbabweans which found that only 30% of them wanted all the white farms to be seized. Three quarters of the people questioned blamed the government, rather than the white farmers for the fact that land reforms had still not been implemented even after 20 years of independence. In 1980, Robert Mugabe planned to resettle 162,000 families in five years, but only 70,000 families have been resettled so far.
In India, even after 50 years of independence, land reforms are yet to take place in their true spirit in several states. The struggle for land between landlords and landless often takes a violent turn especially in Bihar. The violence over land highlights the urgency of Land Information System, which is not only efficient and operational but also is just and flexible to local needs and cultural milieu.
The relationship between man and land is dynamic. The trend of the dynamics depends upon the priorities set by the society. During the feudal era, human beings were tied up with physical land where land was the symbol of wealth and status. The Industrial Revolution, however, initiated a process of breaking that tie as people started visualising land as a commodity. The concept of land planning came with the population explosion after the second World War. In the1980s environmental degradation and sustainable development had widened the approach towards land as evident in Agenda 21. The Agenda 21 requires creating efficient and accessible land markets that meet community needs by improving land registry systems and streamlining procedures in land transactions and to establish appropriate land tenure to provide security for all land users, especially indigenous peoples.
The Cadastral System
The word ‘cadastral’ is a Latin term that refers to the registry of lands. It has something to do with determining and defining land ownership and boundaries. The cadastral system should be systematic, sustainable and sensitive to local requirements, culture and needs. The key to the success of the cadastral system lies in how it protects the land rights and permits those rights to be traded. It is not important how sophisticated are the legal or technical aspects.
Cadastral issues around the world
Ian Williamson in some of his papers (www.geom.unimelb.edu/research/publications/IPW) discussed the state of cadastral records and issues in various countries. The following paragraphs will quote his work quite liberally. According to his study, countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and Korea rely on a well-established cadastral system, supporting an efficient land market. All lands are included in the system with the result that they can be bought, sold, leased or mortgaged with security and relative ease. This is not to say that the cadastral systems in these developed countries are efficient or ideal. However, these rich countries can afford relatively expensive systems, which the developing countries will find difficult to afford. Access to the latest technology and to highly skilled personnel are not the major issues in the developed world. The major issues are concerned with appropriate government policy with regard to the development, modernisation and maintenance of cadastral systems, appropriate institutional arrangements, standards and data certification, development of a spatial data infrastructure, and the role of the cadastre as a central component in a broader land information economy. Countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia, which are in the early stages of development, have agrarian societies with limited land registration, cadastral surveying and mapping and land information system expertise. However, many of them recognise the importance of developing land markets to support economic development. Countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and China with rapidly expanding economies are basically agrarian societies but have major growing industrial bases. They have the ability to use the latest technologies and in general have good educational systems, but often insufficient trained manpower to serve the expanding land market. These countries appear to recognise the social, political and economic importance of an efficient cadastral system. They are also considering options to privatise certain aspects of their systems but to a much lesser extent than the developed countries.
The countries in Eastern and Central Europe, and some African countries are primarily concerned with establishing complete cadastral systems in a short time. Such countries often wish to develop cadastral and land information systems modelled on their Western European neighbours and to use the latest technologies. Unfortunately, there is a lack of recognition that the countries in Western Europe are building on well-established "complete" systems, which are over 100 years old and are now applying technologies from a highly sophisticated industrial and educational base. It would thus be difficult for Central and European countries to develop systems similar to those found in Western Europe in short to medium term if they follow the same approaches.
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