 Hello. Can everyone hear me okay? It's great to hear you. Welcome to the webinar on Building a Land Information Ecosystem in India, co-hosted by the Centre for Policy Research Land Rights Initiative, the Land Portal Foundation, NRMC Centre for Land Governance, Omidya Network India and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. An information ecosystem is a vast and cluttered space, more so when it comes to land in India with its myriad federal, state, and customary laws, and a clash of traditional and modern systems as the country gradually moves towards conclusive titling. What data exists in India? Is it up to date? Is it reliable? Who owns and controls the data? How can it empower people? To help make sense of this complex legal, economic, and social structure in which land in India is governed, we are very pleased to have with us today a set of expert panelists who will address some of these questions. My name is Reena Chandran. I'm a journalist with the Thomson Reuters Foundation and I will attempt to moderate the session. Joining me remotely today are Namita Wahee from the Land Rights Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research, Shreya Dev at the Omidya Network India, and Pranab Chaudhary of NRMC and the Centre for Land Governance. I will have a brief interaction with our panelists and then invite questions from participants. Please use the questions feature to pose your questions. We'll try and make sure that they're addressed in turn. Okay, Namita, let's begin with you. What makes the land data system in India so complex and complicated? Thanks, Reena, and thanks to Land Portal for organizing this webinar and for my fellow panelists for joining in. I think, Reena, the question that you're asking has many facets to it. So the first thing is that when we speak about land data in India, most of what we are referring to is government data. The first thing I'd like to note is that government data, not just pertaining to land but with respect to other aspects as well, has for the longest time been a black hole. You know, prior to the enactment of the Right to Information Act of 2005, most government data was not available publicly in an online accessible form. Now, pursuant to the RTI Act, there are obligations on government, pursuant to Section 4 and the report of the Task Force for implementation of the RTI Act to actually proactively disclose all data in the public domain. But even though there is this obligation now, at the same time we find that while state various government departments have been trying to comply with this obligation, particularly with respect to land in India, as you rightly noted in your introduction, that the land is a state subject under the Indian constitution. What it means is that different states have different laws relating to land. But there are also some subjects relating to land which are in the concurrent list, which means that both the Union Parliament and state legislatures can make laws on that. So we actually have a multiplicity of legal regulation relating to land. And at the same time, a multiplicity of administrative practices relating to land because many of these administrative practices date back to the colonial times. And much of the administrative manuals with government departments have not really been updated consistently. So that's the first sort of big problem, the sort of absence of publicly available data. The second problem being the dispersal of data across multiple government departments and various repositories that exist. And then the third problem is outdated data. So we find that even with respect to say some land records, which now the government is trying to digitize versus went to the DLRMP, the digitalization of land records and modernization program, we find that in many states, not so much in the southern states, but in the northern states and in the northeastern states in particular, land surveys have not been done for like decades. So in Bihar, for instance, land surveys have not actually got done, updated land surveys completely since the 70s. And so basically a lot of the data is inaccurate. So I would say first is the absence of publicly available data, secondly, the multiplicity of sources and absence of consolidation. And the third is outdated data. Thanks, Namita. Shreya, given these challenges, what's keeping us from thinking more urgently about these challenges and acting on them? So, you know, one of the things that I've been working in this space for a few years now and one of the things that strikes me is just the lack of understanding about these issues among most people, the general public and even some very smart intellectuals who have great ideas about, you know, the economic policy, how education needs to be transformed in the country, but they don't, you know, they've never really engaged on the issues around land. And perhaps one of the reasons why that is so is because a land or a property transaction, it only happens a handful of times in someone's life, I mean, probably once or twice. You know, it's only when you have a transaction, buying or selling, that's when you really grapple with the process, with the challenges and with the lack of data. So it's not like you're dealing with it on a daily basis, unlike, you know, say, it's like banking or, you know, underwriting a loan or even education or my children learning well in school, you don't deal with it on a day-to-day basis. So perhaps that's why people don't realize it's an issue and that's why not too many people are engaging on it. I mean, you know, over the last few years, I've had conversations with some very, very smart and experienced people from the industry, like a banker who asks me, well, why do you even need a map when you're, you know, buying a property? I mean, you just know there's a CTS plot number, why do you need a map or someone else who's like financing some large real estate projects and they'll say, oh, we don't take any land title risk. We are only financing the building that's being built and we'll only do it once all the permissions are in place. But on the other hand, it's the people who actually grapple with it on a day-to-day basis, which could be a real estate developer. Someone was telling me that, you know, when I'm looking to buy a land, plot for the next housing project that I'm going to build, every document that I have access to tells me this plot of land is 40,000 square meters. But I've got the government surveyors to come in and survey it multiple times. I've used private surveyors to survey it. Every time I get a different answer of what the actual area of the plot is and none of those areas match what is there on the official documents. So at some level, this is really deep. It's kind of, you know, just understanding that there are these inaccuracies of the data. Once we understand and acknowledge that, I think that's when we'll start moving forward in terms of finding solutions. Great. Thanks, Shreya. Namita, how has a lack of land information affected communities? I know you have some examples of this. Sure. So, I mean, to put this into context, you know, when we talk about lack of land information, we are talking about information at various levels. The first is at the level of law itself. The second is at the level of administrative practice and the third is at the level of judicial decision-making. And at each of those levels, just to give you an example, you know, we don't even know how many laws on land there are in India. And if, for instance, you know, there are a series of laws that were enacted during the colonial period. Now in the post-colonial period, the government has enacted a series of other laws and there are multiple conflicts between these kinds of laws. So if I'm a community or an individual, for that matter, there's a plethora of legislation that is applying to me possibly. And I don't know what are my rights under some of those legislation which have perhaps been enacted recently but have not been really put out into the public domain. So if I don't know the extent of legal regulation, then that's the level of disempowerment to begin with. Because what that then means is that if there are two laws, one of which protect my rights and another which doesn't, the government can decide which law to apply and because I don't have that knowledge, I'm not able to counter that. Then at the level of administrative practice, so under laws we have rules and delegated legislation which the executive makes. And many times, you know, it's important to sort of understand what this delegated legislation does because many times the delegated legislation may actually derogate from the existing law. But it is the delegated legislation pursuant to which the executive is going to function, to give you an example. Under the earlier land acquisition act of 1894, the law clearly provided that, you know, people have to be paid market value compensation, even the previous law did. And it was also said that while assessing market value, the collector should look at circle rates or they should look at the average or registered sale deeds or both. But in terms of the delegated legislation that many of the states, you know, put out, usually people were looking, you know, the government was really looking only at circle rates and the circle rates were inaccurate so, you know, the compensation was not adequate. Now, for example, if people were aware of, you know, people were aware of the legal requirements, they would be able to sort of challenge the executive as well when they are not complying with that. And finally, the fact of the matter remains that, you know, in India, we've had, you know, two narratives over land. One is the state or the government's narrative, which has been basically what the colonial state's narrative was, that all land that is not privately owned belongs to the government. The other has, of course, been the people's narrative and by the people, I mean people who are dependent upon the land. So not necessarily people like us who are in urban centers, but the large vast majority of India's population is still dependent upon agriculture and other land-related activities, like pastoralists, forest dwellers, fisherfolk and, you know, cattle grazers. So many of these communities are dependent upon their land, but their rights are not recognized. To give you an example, we have, you know, the fisherfolk community in Gujarat who I represented in litigation many years ago against the Bundra Port. I mean, in the case of the fisherfolk, you have the Department of Fishing that has given them these fishing permits, the person to which they collect the fish, right? And yet when it came to building the port and acquiring the land and the mangrove forest land where they were doing this fishing, you know, their rights were completely not recognized. And so even though they have these fishing permits, they have hutments to which the government actually provides water and sanitation services during the months that they are there fishing. They're not there all the time because of the monsoon season. They have to, during the monsoon season, they're not there. But the rest of the time the government itself recognizes their existence on the land, provides them these services, but when it comes to acquiring land for a project, they completely re-recognize them. So I think I'll stop there, but of course there are other examples. I'm not sure. So there are examples of forest rights, right? You know, where first of all there are disputes between the forest department and the revenue department. You know, whether if something is forest land to begin with. So the revenue department has given these people revenue receipts because they've been paying revenue for all these years. But the forest department claims that this is forest land and therefore it comes to evict these people from the forest land. Now really this, you know, the government can fix this, right? You know, the forest department and the revenue department can really figure out which is their land, which is the land of the forest department, which is the land of the revenue department. But for the people in question, you know, they've been living on the land for decades and they've been paying revenue and they have these revenue receipts and yet that is not regarded as proof and they are evicted. All right. Thanks, Namita. Shreya, I wanted to come to you for some solutions at this. I know you've been looking at this area in terms of how we address how to improve exchange and engagement with land data and information. So what are some solutions that you have found along your way? Sure. You know, we've actually seen some very interesting solutions that a few state governments have been adopting. Shreya would have some very recently had decided that they would give land, right? Hi, can you hear me? Hi, Reena, I'm sorry, are you able to hear me now? Yeah, you're sure, but I don't think Reena can. Maybe I'll just continue. We seem to be having some kind of technical problem here. All right. Namita, why don't you talk to us about the projects that you're engaged in for improving the exchange and engagement with land data and information? Sure, if you can hear me. We decided that, you know, the first building block of understanding regulation relating to land is the actual law itself. And yet we don't have the laws in the public domain. You know, central government has the central government parliament. They have actually put out a list of laws and that are central laws. But neither the Department of Land Resources, which is the central government department, does not have a list of all the land laws that are applicable, you know, pursuant either to the parliament's enactment of those laws post the constitution or pre-colonial laws which were by the central government. At the same time, the state governments also vary a lot in whether they have put out the applicable state laws in the public domain. But certainly there was no consolidated repository of land laws. So what we did was that we started with putting together a database of central laws and then the laws of eight states. So we chose these eight states to have sort of geographical diversity as well as diversity in terms of the kinds of land, in terms of the kinds of land that they have. Because, you know, land is a very diverse thing. Land can be, and because it's geographically diverse, the regulation of it is also diverse. So we have, you know, coastal land. We have mountains. We have forest land. We have agricultural land. We have common lands which are not under agricultural use, but are being used for other purposes like pastoralism and for cattle grazing and so on. And there are different laws applicable. And then of course there's urban land and then there is, you know, industrial land on which industries are there. So essentially we chose eight states including Punjab in the north, Gujarat in the west, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in the south, Bihar and Jharkhand in the east and Assam and Meghalaya in the northeast. And the idea was to at least put together the laws of all of these states because they represented these different kinds of land photographically as well as from a regulatory standpoint. For instance, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat also have and of course Jharkhand also have land under the fifth schedule and the northeastern states of Assam and Meghalaya have lands under the sixth schedule which has a completely different regulatory framework under the constitution itself, let alone other laws. So essentially when we started out I didn't expect to find so many laws and we found that there were over a thousand laws for just the center and for these eight states. And so we can imagine that now for 29 states how many laws there will be but we can easily estimate that there will be about 2,000 to 3,000 laws that we might find. And so that was the first step and it was not an easy step. We tried to access these laws from various sources including both the government sources, we filed the libraries that the governments have, the databases, some of them have put them up online and then also we looked at, we filed RTI requests, we spoke with stakeholders and we found regulations that are really not there, that the government doesn't use so much but that are there and communities are using. And so it was a pretty mammoth undertaking to put the project together and the idea now is to sort of create an architecture which we can put out into the public domain but put it out in a way that is accessible to not just lawyers, not only lawyers can make sense of it or people with specialized knowledge of the law but that would be accessible to the general public. Can you hear me? Shreya, can you tell us about your experiences with improving this approach to accessing information and data? Sure. We've actually seen some good examples in a few states. One was Orissa where they implemented the JAGA mission which aimed to give titles to over 200,000 slum dwellers across the state and they did this really in a very interesting manner. They used drones to fly across the whole state, collect information about all these various households and map them and then on the ground they partnered with NGOs who were using the cadastra app to collect the household level information. So they put in a lot of effort to collect information about the households, map them on a proper map and then started to distribute land rights certificates to them. So that's I think something really innovative. We haven't seen it anywhere else in the world so that's at this scale. So that's something very interesting that the government in India is actually trying to do. Nina? Yes, sorry. Let's go on to some more success stories while we're still trying to get Pranab online. I do apologize for this. You've been having massive technical difficulties. So we've been talking about a fairly gloomy scenario with data that's not recorded properly, absence of data, lack of accessibility to data but there are success stories and I know you've seen and experienced many of those. So Shreya, do you want to talk about some of the stories that you've encountered? Absolutely. I think as I mentioned, the Orissa one is one which is really massive at scale but another one that is very interesting and not really being talked about too much is what the Telangana government has been doing. So in 2018, the Telangana government declared they decided to offer direct transfer benefits to all the farmers across the state. That's a little over 1.5 million farmers across the state land-owning farmers and they wanted to do this. It was a scheme that's designed that the cash will go directly into the bank account of the farmer and it was linked to the area of their land holding and for them, while this was a scheme that was announced in 2018, the preparation for it started much in advance. So in 2017, the state government launched a massive statewide operation to update land records and across the state in a matter of three months which is quite remarkable, they managed to update all the records. There were of course a few records which were in disputes so they kept them aside and said, we'll deal with you in the second phase of the program but in the first phase, they managed to cover at least probably over 90% of the records across the state and once this database was created with reliable information, this was then passed on to the agriculture department who then used it to ensure that direct cash transfers were made to all these small and marginal farmers across the state. So that was a fantastic example of how land information was used in a very solid way to actually provide welfare benefits by the state. Another one which is very recent is one of our partners, NCAR is doing some very interesting work on comparing how effective is the land record digitization process across different states and this is an extremely comprehensive study that they're doing across all the states of India and in this process, they found that there are a few states who have digital land records available online but they're not necessarily signed and digitally and legally usable and when this information was presented to back to the states, one very proactive state bureaucrat just picked up the phone and gave an order saying well make it available online. It hardly took any effort on the side of the government all you required was to just present this evidence have it in a way that the right people in the right positions were able to see and process it and they reacted to it. So it's very useful to start putting out information and evidence if you really want to try to change. Great, thanks Shreya. Pranab, since we finally have Pranab online I'm going to hand the floor to you for a little bit in terms of the challenges that you faced with data collection and how this campus progress in improving land governance. Yeah, Pranab. Thank you, Reena. This is about while trying to collect data for mapping land rights of women in the context of SGZ, we heard some insights the way data ecosystem is organized in India and later also when we try to with land put I'll try to do the state of land information report you also had some understanding. I'll briefly say that when you look at the quantitative data availability around women land rights we find in India there are no described data reach so there are a lot of data sets available one is the agriculture census that FAO does every five years so that provide operational land holding which not exactly the ownership and it also provide data set with respect to head of the household not exactly family members but nevertheless it provides data every five years and it has granularity of the district level and it provides gender disability and caste decision data and it is almost 100% population covered whole India. In contrast to that there are some other data sets like India Human Development Survey taken up by every five years again it goes to sub-family level there is also NFHS data which provides women property ownership there is also socio-economic caste census taken up in 2011 which also talks about women cultivators and land owners so if you look at this data set no data set directly directly refers to the land ownership records but they derive they are derived from other service or other services I print out the cases when you are Data Rich in the見て Data rich is here we would women land moral We don't see criteria We don't see criteria we don't find artery we don't find agriculture in India which is data rich It says. Data rich says it comes from something Yeah there is some echo also I can see No, there seems to be some echoing there. Okay, Pranab, while you fix that, can I just... Alright, hang on. Pranab, while you fix that, I'm going to turn to Shreya. Shreya, you mentioned the previous question. There's a massive echo there. Sorry, Namita, can you talk to us about the work that you're doing in terms of improved access to land definition? Sure, Reena. So, we do have some success stories to talk of. The first was our land acquisition report that we put together and released in 2017. This report was a comprehensive study of all Supreme Court cases of land acquisition from 1950, which is when the Supreme Court came into being until 2016, which was the time period of the report. And we looked at 1,269 land acquisition cases to identify why was it that people were going to court and what was problematic about the provisions of the earlier land acquisition law, which had then been replaced by the new law. But there was a lot of policy sort of turmoil about the new law because it was believed that it was going to be very counterproductive to development and investment and everything. And we really wanted to understand why were people going to court and how was the court adjudicating these disputes and how could we think about this issue in a way that would actually resolve the reasons why people were going to court to begin with. I'm happy to say that the report has had a significant impact. First of all, it has made this information, this comprehensive land data available. But also, what our goal was that just putting the data out, like if we put out this data set of 1,000 cases, that doesn't really help. What does help is that if we analyze the cases to identify the particular issue so that both the litigants and the government and the judiciary can understand what is really going on. And we've had, as soon as the report came out, I've been getting calls. And even before the report came out, actually, I've been getting calls from litigants all over the country who had found out about the report. The report is in English. Many of those litigants didn't speak English, but they still had come to know the report and had accessed the findings and were using them in litigation. And then, at the same time, the issues with respect to interpretation of Section 24, which is a retrospective application clause of the Act, have led to a lot of litigation under the new Act as well. And this issue has now, in 2018, went up to a constitutional bench, which has been hearing the case, it was hearing the case last October in November, and we found out that the solicitor general actually cited our report before the Supreme Court. So basically, we have multiple stakeholders using this database, including litigants against the government and also government in making its claims before the court. The second database that we put together was a database on the schedule areas. These are areas which are demarcated under the Constitution, under the fifth and sixth schedules of the Constitution. But the Ministry of Tribal Affairs doesn't have a map of these areas. It doesn't really have information that they are aware of or they have put out on how much geographical land in India is in the schedule areas. So what we did was essentially, and that's also because the districts and the administrative boundaries of districts have changed over time. But the information is available in the census and it is available to the government. So what we did was we went through a painstaking exercise of identifying exactly what are the current districts and parts of districts that are within the scheduled areas. And so based on that, we were able to create a map of the scheduled areas. Based on that original map, we were able to show, you know, sort of map the forest cover in these areas, the mining activity in those areas and the dams, that dam activity that was coming up and able to show correlations with forests and dams in scheduled areas. And once this report was out, it is being used extensively again both by the Ministry, the National Commission for Schedule Tribes, adopted the report as part of it and will report under the Constitution the year that it came out. Subsequently, the National Human Rights Commission has referred to this. I have worked with the Jharkhand government recently in drafting a tribal sub-plan law based on the information that they put out in this report and other reports. And of course it is being used by civil society organizations all over the country. So these are two success stories of work that we have done, which has actually had a policy impact and has also empowered people to ask questions that have then led to the kinds of policy impacts that we are seeing. Great. Thanks, Samita. I'm going to take up a few of the questions from participants before we move on to our final questions. How are civil society organizations involved in the process? I'm guessing it's in the collection of data. Does someone want to answer that? Well, I can take a short. Sure. So, I mean, I guess we consider all of us perhaps on this panel are part of civil society organizations. And so I think the response to the question would be exactly what we've said thus far about the work that we have been doing in trying to figure out this data, whether it's a land law database or the land acquisition disputes database or the schedule areas database as well as the other databases that Shreya referred to the work that NCAR is doing. You know, all of these are civil society organizations and they are basically trying to use whatever information is available in the public domain and also sort of, you know, scour out other information that may not be and then try to put together these databases and put them up. Nina, can I respond to this couple of questions? What data are you done? Sorry, my audio. Yeah, in the country. We have a question on what data set. Sorry, Pranav, yes. Yeah, regarding the cost data set that we've seen. And this is available like I told it is every five years and it is available up to sub-district wise information. And then coming to the last question regarding Westlands. Yes, India follows a ninefold classification, FAO's ninefold classification. And as per that, there are some categories of Westland like cultural waste, unculturable waste, barren and rocky lands and this classification is data set is available almost every year and it is available for sub-district level in India. And it is easily available from different websites, regularly updated. There are also now this satellite based data which is coming into supplement that earlier it was collected through the department of statistics, now it is collected. And just to briefly respond to the first question about civil society in India in data. So civil society in India collects a lot of data, but they remain as great data. They never get integrated into the mainstream data systems. So far all the data which we use or curate are collected and disseminated by the government. Because government of India has a right to information policy where they start voluntary disclosure of all the data. So most of the data are available in the websites in public domain and also in a digital form. Though they are not in the open data format always, but they are available either in PDA for sometimes in Excel. No matter when they are now trying to put them in XML and geogestion, but it is a long way to go. But the data primarily to conclude in the data is primarily created and disseminated by the government, which is fairly available. But civil society data is not available in the public domain which can be used by others. Reena, if I may just add on to that. There is one civil society organization which is called FES Foundation for Ecological Security. They have actually now recently taken on the effort of putting a lot of their data available openly for others to use. Not only their own data, this is an open platform that others can even contribute to. So it's called IndiaObservatory.org.in. And it actually has information about the barren land, fallow land, et cetera, that FES has been collecting over many decades. It also integrates a number of public data, government data sources as well. Thank you. There's a question from Raksha Kumar on what data sets give out caste figures of land ownership. Is this the SEC data breakdown? Yeah, I already responded to that. It is one is agriculture sensors that is providing the data set every five years. Right. So socioeconomic caste sensors also provide, but it is only one year 2011. But agriculture sensors data provide broad categories, scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and other caste. And it is available every five years up to sub-district level. Thanks, Panna. There's a question from Raksha Ram Samayaji on the wasteland. We have data on wasteland for country-wise and state-wise. Yeah, that's the one that I... Rina, responding to that, actually, FES's IndiaObservatory.ovg.in contains a lot of information about wasteland and family. And as Panna mentioned, it's also... This data is also available in many government websites. And the data is available up to sub-district-wise, this land use classification data, which provide all kinds of data about wasteland. So this data is fairly easily available, even in gray... In also hard copies they used to available earlier, now it is online. So the wasteland data availability, because in India way back in 1985, they developed wasteland at last of India. So India has a good data availability on land use, very good data availability. And it goes up to sub-district level. Okay, thanks, Pranab. I had a question for everyone. What is the future that you see or would like to see for land data systems in India? In a perfect scenario, what sort of future do you envision for land data systems in India? Anyone can go first. Shreya, do you want to go first? Sure, Rina. I'm happy to. Actually, the ideal state definitely would be that if we can have a land record system that is accurate, reliable, when you read it, you know that this is the right information about the ownership, all the rights associated with it, encumbrances, mortgage, liens, whatnot, everything is in there, and the map actually reflects what's on the ground. So I think that's the holy grail that we would love to aspire to. But it does another idea that we've been thinking about. You know, for so long it's been the government has been the custodian and has been responsible for maintaining the records, updating them. And clearly at some level, you know, government capacity is perhaps not where it needs to be to ensure that this is kept updated and in a way that is useful for everyone. And there is merit in thinking about property records and land records as a club good, as economists think of that concept of a club good, which, you know, a lot of, which then ensures that there is a sort of a partnership that's possible between the private sector and the government. Government will of course need to play the role of a regulator overseeing, ensuring that citizen interests are protected. But to some extent, the owners of the operations, maintenance, et cetera, can be shifted to the private sector and hopefully the use of more technology in this process can lead to a more, you know, future ready land information system in India. Yes, yes, Reena. I think there are three things which are very critical at this juncture because what government has started is a kind of very good initiative by opening up the information ecosystem through RTI and digitalizing the data. But what government provides is one side data and like other sectors of, you know, finance, population, socio-economic sector, we need to see in land data also a role of non-state actors, particularly civil society, academia in bridging that gap and also complementing supplementing. For example, if you look at ISDS in the Human Development Survey, is the civil society initiative is creating a sample survey data set. NFHS is also a non-government initiative. So in that context, we need to see how non-government initiatives are coming up around land data. There are a lot of land data collected as a great data by NGOs in the failed academicians and it is now important with no big data ecosystem coming up, how we bring this data and how we curate and how we supplement the government data. Second thing is important is that building capacity. While government of India has opened up the data ecosystem and now moving towards open data policy, we see a lot of data is not available in open data format. Data standards vary, interoperability vary, many times data are there and then the data is removed. So there is also a requirement to see how different actors can be able to scrape the data and the data is put in a format which is interoperable because if you look at land record, land record data is the biggest database in India. There are issues around spatial data but the textual data is one of the best source of data but they are in different languages. One, finding it difficult to really make it cumulative and so some kind of comparative analysis. So in that context, what is missing here is the capacity of the state actors where government need to invest and also civil society and others need to complement and supplement so that the capacity building of the land ecosystem actors who are involved in collecting and managing data that is also required. So that is the second initiative on which more work need to be done. It has to also a kind of component of mapping these actors. Hard on not the least, as the data is getting open and more available, land data has also a personal data involved in that. So in that context, the data of ethics and privacy comes in. Government of India is now working on a draft policy to control personal information and they envisage that the personal information will be stored in a server in India but as you look at most of the data being collected around no land by non-state actors, they have servers in cloud servers and which is available elsewhere. And particularly when you collect land data, even many private sector and NGOs, they collect the data, there is lack of free prior informed consent of the person providing the data. So in that context, a lot need to be done now the way data, ethics and privacy need to be addressed and increasingly we are making invisible data visible particularly in the context of indigenous communities and other areas. So these three things I think are critical to address if you really want to improve the land ecosystem in India. Thanks Pranav. Namita, do you have anything to add to that in terms of what you envision for the future of land data systems in India? Sure. So Rina, to add to what Pranav and Shera said, I think that there's definitely a role that civil society can play in helping the government put this data out. I do want to strike a cautionary note here in the sense that, yes, indeed state capacity has been an issue with respect to multiple areas of government functioning but I think the larger issue that we also see in our work is that there is state unwillingness. So the Indian state has often been described as a cunning state in the sense that sometimes when it decides to do something it can do it but often when it is unwilling to do something, there isn't a lot of effort put into that. And I think that we have to be aware of this aspect of it. When we think about state and private partnerships and when we think about bringing technology in because none of these things are neutral things. Especially with respect to land management, like I said, throughout our colonial history there has been a government narrative and there has been a people's narrative. So it's not as if the state itself has not been neutral with respect to land management because there has been a constant tussle between the people and the state with respect to their rights over the land. And these have been recognized over a period of time by various legislations. So we have, for instance, the forest acts of the 19th century and the 1927 Indian Forest Act which asserted the government's control over all land and said that all forest dwelling communities were essentially illegal. But after decades of struggle, we have the Forest Rights Act of 2006 which has actually recognized the property rights of forest dwelling communities. So basically this is a contested space even in terms of whose rights are there and whose rights are not. And even after this new law came into being recently there were proposed amendments to the Indian Forest Act which would have again given a lot of powers to the state to dispossess and evict people. Now these amendments have been rolled back for now but we don't know what's going to happen in the future. So first of all, the state itself is not fully neutral in this exercise and certainly any kind of state-private-party partnership is not going to be. And the third thing is that the role of technology and I think Pranav very rightly highlighted the data protection bill which is currently being thought of and will be passed into law at some point. It gives a lot of powers, a lot of exceptions to government with respect to data that may pertain even to private individuals like the land records data and so on. There are numerous exceptions under several of the sections for government to make data public. So again I want to draw a distinction between the kind of data that we have put together which is all government data which is meant to be publicly accessible like laws and legal regulations but things like land record information which includes the private information of the people there has to be a debate about what data can be included and what cannot and let us just be aware of the fact that none of these things are neutral in themselves. So we have to think through very carefully as we think about land data management. I think the best way to go forward is to have multiple stakeholders together like the government should make whatever policies it makes and in whatever way civil society can add and contribute to building capacity for the state. That is great but it has to be through conversation and through dialogue and not the state deciding for itself the way forward. Thank you Namita. We do have a fourth panelist Prerna Prabhakar at NCAER. Prerna is working on the issues that we have been discussing. Prerna, we'd like to hear from you on what sort of work you've been doing in terms of building a land information database. Hi, that's Prerna and hello everyone. So as Prerna has already mentioned that at NCAER we have been involved in computing an index which is called NCAER land records and services index and under the image of this index we are focusing on two broad components. The first being the extent of digitization of land records in Indian states and cities and the second is the quality of it to broadly capture the accuracy and the comprehensiveness of land records and we have many sub-components to these two broad components of the index and based on which we arrive at a score for a state and we have tried to rank states based on the scores that they obtain. So the NLRSI scores we call it. So one of the observations while doing this work was that some states are performing better in some of the parameters of land records, let's say registration. So what we have observed is that a state like Maharashtra is very ahead of other states as far as the digitization of registration process is concerned. So even if it is availability of circle rates or online provision for stamp duty payment or getting your registered document attested by the registered office through a digital signature or even online delivery of the registered document. So Maharashtra is one state that has all these steps digitized and computerized. So the other states have a lot to learn from a state like Maharashtra. Then there are other states that are well ahead of the other states in terms of the legally usable availability of the copies of the record of rights which we say are the textual records. So there are textual records, there are spatial records and one of the features that could define how usable these copies that are made available online is that they should be available with a digital signature. That is something that defines the usability of that copy that is digitized. So there are states that have this provision but still there are many states that do not have this provision and one has to still go to the revenue department or the office to get the copy from the concerned official. So again the other states that are lagging behind in terms of the provision of legally usable copy online should be adopting the lessons from the states that have already implemented this. So again then talking about the spatial records, there are different types of digitization that states have adopted. So some states are ahead in terms of the digitization of spatial records because they have vectorized maps available online. But there are some states like Karnataka and Tripura where the maps are there but then not in a vectorized format you cannot identify a particular plot on a map and get its information per se. So there is no linkage between the textual record and the spatial record for that particular plot. So in that sense that spatial record is not that useful. So our observation was that there is no state that completely performs well on all the parameters of land records. So what we are trying to do is we are trying to come up with policy breeze for states to help them give policy suggestions and to adopt something that the other states are doing well in. So a comparative analysis of states on all these categories of land records has helped us understand that which state is doing well in which category or which parameter and what that particular state can learn from some other state which is doing well in the category. So that was one of the observations from the work. And the second critical observation was that for an accurate record and for a record which is available in an updated form it is very important that these different departments of land records the revenue department, the survey and settlement department and the registration department are linked closely so that if there is an instance of transaction and registration takes place such real-time updating of records it is important for the real-time updating of records that these departments are linked closely. So one of the observations from this work that has come out is that these departments are not linked that efficiently and because of that there is a problem of accurate updation of the land records. So for example the registration department and the revenue department so the ideal scenario should be that whenever a transaction takes place a mutation which is like a consequent change in ownership should happen within like a few days. But then as we see that this provision, this automatic mutation is missing in all the states. So there is no state with the provision of automatic mutations that takes place. So as a result of a registration there is a change in ownership in the textual records. There is no state with such a provision. So the maximum state can have is that because of a registration there is a note that is automatically sent to the textual record and it appears as a remark that on such and such state a transaction took place and there is just a note that appears but only 7 states have this provision. So the maximum any state has is the provision of this note but then there are only 7 states that have this provision. So from this analysis we can see how weak is the linkage between the departments that are the student of land records. In this case the registration department and the revenue department. Then possibly another kind of linkage can be between the survey and settlement department and the revenue department because it is very important. So whatever is reflected in the textual record that are maintained by the revenue department is actually reflected and is consistent with what is maintained by the survey and settlement department that are the student of the spatial records. But then as we have observed that there is a huge variation between let's say something like land area between the textual record and the spatial record. So the linkage again is missing. That is that was another observation that has come out of the work that to have an accurate and an updated record it is very important that these 3 departments are well integrated to have a better quality of records that are accurate and comprehensive. So these are some of the observations and now we are going to go to the final rankings next week when we launch the index on 27th February. But then yeah, these are some of the insights that have come out of the work. Great. Thanks for that. And in an ideal world, what is the future for the land data systems that you see in India, accurate, updated and easily accessible records or what sort of future do you envision? Yeah, definitely a system of accurate comprehensive land records that is something that is ideal for limited litigation cases and for higher transaction intensity. These are the things that are important because one of the things that we have noticed in the work is like for example, I just give a small example. There are certain restrictions and conditions that are generally noted in a textual record of a plot of land like whether there's any, if that particular plot is under a mod gauge or if there's any revenue pool case or a civil pool case running on that particular plot. Now, if such things are not updated in the record of a particular plot of a land and a transaction happens and if later the transacting party gets to know about the actual scenario with regard to let's say a revenue pool case on that particular piece of land. So then obviously you have a chance of an angle litigation case and then there are chances of increased disputes. So it's very important that whatever is there on ground, whatever is the reality should be reflected in the record and there should be a system of a software linkage of these civil court cases and these civil courts and revenue courts. They have their database. Ideally what we are suggesting is that there should be a database linkage between these courts and the revenue department so that whenever an institution of a revenue court case or a civil court case or any land acquisition proceeding takes place, it should be reflected in the records so that if you're a potential buyer for that particular plot of land should be aware of these restriction conditions or information that it should be accurate, should be a reflection of the ground situation. Great, thanks Prerna. I am going to ask for last comments from our panelists here before we wrap up unless there are more questions from participants. Namita, can we begin with you? Do you have any last comments to make to wrap up? We lost Namita. Shreya, do you want to add on to and do have any more remarks? Sure, Reena. I think the conversation that we've had has been very positive. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Yes, we can hear you. Okay, great. The conversation I think has been very positive because starting out with what we were saying that there's the absence of data, there's the dispersal of data but I think from what the work that Prerna is talking about which has happened at NCEA, the work that Prana, Ben, Shreya have mentioned and our own work, I feel like we really have a conversation going about the importance of this issue and a lot of work has been done by all of us together and by others who are not on this panel but have been working on these issues. A lot of this information is being put together as we speak and I think that is a very positive thing to a very positive note to end with. I would like to thank Land Portal for bringing us all together because it is important for us to know from each other what is also going on and at the same time work through some of the... When one database is consolidated with another database then it leads to a third database and I can see how all our works can come together to create even more information that will make the land sector less obscure and make land policy perhaps more transparent and the government more accountable as we go forward. Thanks, Namita. Shreya, do you have some comments to wrap up with? Sure, thanks, Reena. I agree with Namita. We've had a very good conversation. I'm glad we're discussing this topic, the fact that we need more data and information and it's an entire ecosystem so multiple stakeholders need to come to the table. It's great to have this dialogue going forward. It's great, it's very encouraging to hear all the positive success stories that other panelists have mentioned. Reena shared a lot of good stuff that's happening in the state governments so I do think government is also moving ahead in the right direction and hopefully we are at the tipping point when things will just start moving at a much faster pace than they have in the past. Thanks, Shreya. Pranab, what are your closing remarks? Yeah, I think the land ecosystem in India is expanding with a lot of non-stect actors coming in and working around that so it will grow and there is also a kind of, I would say, three-way pressure points to bring in more data and information for a better functioning of democracy and development. One is from the global angle, which SDG is trying to put a pressure to report good quality data and provide a monitoring framework the way land rights are advancing. So in that context, I think good progress will be made. Now, Government of India started this dashboard on SDG, though in Umer land rights space they are only reporting the agriculture census data but as per SDG requirement they have to provide annual data sets and more granular. So I think that will be progressed towards that. The national level as Pranab's study indicates that there are issues still there though computerization has really provided good ecosystem. So now Government of India looking at conclusive titling, which is incumbent upon a data which is updated data where textual, actual and spatial records sink. So in that context, I think investments are going to come in and the land record data system at the national level will go up. It is very important in the Indian context at the state level. State is in India land a state subject and state depending upon their legal system land data are organized and disseminated. And if the advocacy has to be done, if the democracy has to work around land issues, so at the state level data should be available and the stakeholder at the state level should be involved in not only data use but also in data collection and data management. That is something is very important in Indian context and we have really strengthened how different state actors get engaged in this land database both in land records as well as in terms of other database quality and quantity database and which will really make the land democracy and land governance function better. Thanks Pranab. We are going to wrap up this session there. I know it's a lot of information to take in. Land Portal will be sending through a link to the webinar. Thank you so much for joining and for your questions. We do apologize for the technical difficulties that we encountered. A big thanks to our panelists, Namita at the Centre for Policy Research, Shreya at Umeda Network India and Pranab at NRMC and Prerna at NCAER. Thanks so much to Land Portal for hosting us. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you Reena for a great moderation.