Land in Development: An Overview

1. Land in Development: An Overview Binayak Choudhury Professor (Planning) and Dean (Academic Affairs) School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal Coordinates: e-mail: binayak@spabhopal.ac.in; binayak2375@gmail.com Mobile No. 88177 76179, 96300 94742

2. Managing Land - Four Functions • Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses – Lionel Robbins • Management of land deals with four functions: • land tenure • land value • land use • land development • Land Administration Systems: The basis for conceptualizing rights, restrictions and responsibilities related to people, policies and places • Property rights normally concerned with ownership and tenure • Restrictions usually control use and activities on land • Responsibilities relate more to a social, ethical commitment or attitude to environmental sustainability and good husbandry

3. Land Information Systems (LIS) and Land Administration System (LAS) • LIS aims to provide current and detailed geospatial information of the status and development of land cover and land use • LIS as a decision making tool yields benefits for various verticals on the economies, such as agriculture, utilities, infrastructure development, etc., sectors, which drive an economy's growth • Well developed LIS is sine qua non for a well developed economy • LAS, an important infrastructure, facilitate implementation of land policies • LAS concerned with the socio – economic and techno – legal framework within which land managers and administrators must operate • LAS support efficient land markets through the administration of land as a natural resource to ensure its sustainable use

4. LAS Architecture • The four land administration functions (land tenure, land value, land use, land development) are different in their professional focus and are normally undertaken by a mix of professions, including surveyors, engineers, lawyers, valuers, land economists, planners, and developers • However, the actual processes of land valuation and taxation, as well as the actual land use planning processes, are often not considered to be part of the land administration activities • Land administration is traditionally centered on the cadastral activities in relation to land tenure and land information management • A normative LAS framework should encourage integration of the four functions

5. LAS Framework

6. Land Administration Functions • ƒLand tenure: • processes and institutions related to securing access to land and their allocation, recording and security • cadastral mapping and legal surveys to determine parcel boundaries • creating new properties or altering existing properties • transfer of property or use from one party to another through sale, lease or credit security • management and adjudication of doubts and disputes regarding land rights and parcel boundaries • Land value: • processes and institutions related to assessment of the value of land and properties • calculation and gathering of revenues through taxation • management and adjudication of land valuation and taxation disputes ƒ

7. Land Administration Functions • Land use: • processes and institutions related to control / regulation of land use through spatial planning at regional, city and local levels • enforcement of land use regulations • management and adjudication of land use conflicts ƒ • Land development: • processes and institutions related to building of new physical infrastructure and utilities • implementation of construction planning • public acquisition of land and expropriation • change of land use through granting of planning permissions, and building and land use permits • distribution of development costs

8. Land Administration Functions • Land Administration functions are interrelated • The interrelationships work through the actual conceptual, economic and physical uses of land and properties that influence land values • Land values are also influenced by the possible future use of land determined through zoning, land use planning regulations and approval processes • Land use planning and policies determine and regulate future land development • Land information should be organised to combine cadastral and topographic data to link the built environment (including legal and social land rights) with the natural environment (including topographical, environmental and natural resource issues) • Land information should be shared to support efficient land markets capable of facilitating trading • Land use control / regulation and land development should lead to effective land use management • The combination of efficient land markets and effective land use management should support sustainable socio – economic and environmental development • Land administration system (LAS) needs an institutional framework that imposes mandates and responsibilities on the various agencies and organisations. They should service the needs of individuals, businesses, and the community at large • LAS guarantees land ownership, security of tenure and credit facilitating efficient land transfers and land markets

9. Property Rights • “Civilized living in market economies is not simply due to greater prosperity but to the order that formalized property rights bring” (H. de Soto, The Missing Ingredient, The Economist, 1993) • International organizations (the UN, FAO, UN- Habitat , World Bank ) recognize the importance of appropriate land administration systems for generating economic development, social coherence and environmental sustainability • Land rights’ security - a basic element as land is increasingly seen as a key asset • Property is not only economic asset. Secured property rights provide a sense of identity and belonging that goes far beyond and underpins the values of democracy and human freedom • Historically, land rights evolved to give incentives for maintaining soil fertility, making land-related investments, and managing natural resources sustainably • The main rights are ownership and long term leasehold. These rights are typically managed through the cadastral (land surveying relating to the laws of land ownership and the definition of property boundaries) / land registration systems developed over centuries • Cadastral systems include the interaction between the identification of land parcels and the registration of land rights. They support valuation and taxation of land and property, and administration of present and possible future use of land • Cadastral Systems are generally organized in two different ways: the Deeds System and the Title System. The differences between the two concepts relate to the cultural development and judicial setting of the country

10. Property Rights • The key difference is whether only the transaction is recorded (the Deeds System) or the title itself is recorded and secured (the Title System). The Deeds System is basically a register of owners focusing on “who owns what” while the Title System is a register of properties presenting “what is owned by whom” • In India, both the Roman law (Deeds Systems) or Germanic or common-Anglo law (Title Systems) are followed • However, these legal or formal systems do not serve the millions of people whose tenures are predominantly social rather than legal • Rights such as freehold and registered leasehold, and the conventional cadastral and land registration systems, and the way they are presently structured, can not supply security of tenure to the vast majority of the low income groups and/or deal quickly enough with the scale of urban problems • Security of land tenure is a critical component. In most developing countries, ownership records are often non-existent or in state of disarray and budget for creating new registry, cadastre and tax databases may be lacking • Innovative approaches through geospatial technologies like GPS surveying, mobile GIS, web based GIS, photogrammetry, etc. together with a well-established land policy, play a unified role in securing land tenure

11. Continuum of Land Rights

12. Property Restrictions • Ownership and long term leasehold are the most important rights in land. The actual content of these rights vary between countries and jurisdictions • Rights to land also include the rights of use although restricted through public land use regulations and restrictions, sectoral land use provisions, and also various kind of private land use regulations such as easements, covenants, etc. • Many land-use rights come as restrictions that control the possible future use of land • Land-use planning and restrictions are becoming increasingly important as a means to ensure effective management of land-use, provide infrastructure and services, protect and improve the urban and rural environment, prevent pollution, and pursue sustainable development • Planning and regulation of land activities cross-cut tenures and the land rights they support. How these intersect is best explained by describing two conflicting points of view – the free market approach and the central planning approach

13. Property Restrictions • Property Restrictions have four aspects : • The free market versus the central planning approach : (i) The property rights activists, mostly influenced by private ownership viewpoints, argue that land owners should be obligated to no one and should have complete domain over their land. In this approach, the government authority to take land (eminent domain), or restrict its use (by planning systems), or even regulate how it is used (building controls) should be non-existent or highly limited (ii) Proponents argue that planning restrictions should only be imposed only after compensation for lost land development opportunities is paid (iii) The role of a democratic government includes planning and regulating land systematically for public good purposes. Regulated planning most of the time acquire private land with compensation and use it for public purposes (iv) Practically, however land owners could do only what was expressly allowed, everything else being forbidden (v) The tension between these two points assumes importance for economic security. The question however is how to balance owners’ rights with land use regulation and development for the best of the society (vi) The answer to this is found in a country’s land policy which should set a reasonable balance between the ability of land owners to manage their land and the ability of the government to provide services and regulate growth for sustainable development

14. Property Restrictions • Environmental concerns : (i) Environmental policies should promote environment friendly green economic growth (green transport, green building, green energy) (ii) Internationally adopted "polluter pays principle" and global / national climate covenants / agreement be followed. Enterprises be located at least possible pollution sites (iii) Strict enforcement of Environmental Laws addressing all types of pollution: air, soil, water, and noise • Informal development: (i) Informal development may occur in various forms such as squatting in vacant public or private land (ii) Land is occupied and used illegally for housing or any construction works without having formal permission from the planning or building authorities (iii) There is no simple solution to the problems of preventing and legalising informal development (iv) Possible solutions lie in pre-empting the growth of informal settlemnts (v) Make adequate housing stock, space for informal activities across the town (iv) Promote participatory planning at neighbourhood level

15. Property Restrictions • Integrated Land-Use Management (ILUM): (i) ILUM is based on land policies laid down in the overall land policy laws including the cadastral and land registration legislation and planning and building legislation (ii) These laws identify the institutional principles and procedures for the areas of land and property registration, land-use planning, and land development (iii) More specific land policies with defined objectives and institutional arrangements (approval and dispute redressal etc) are laid down in the sectoral land laws within areas such as agriculture, forestry, housing, natural resources, environmental protection, water supply, heritage, and so on (iv) Improved system of comprehensive planning control needs to be based on appropriate and updated land use data systems (e.g., continuously updated cadastral register, land book, property valuation register, building and dwelling register, etc.) (v) ILUM must balance sectoral interests in the overall development objectives for a given location with an eye to future land-use through planning permissions, building permits and sectoral land use permits according to the various land-use laws

16. Property Responsibilities • Property responsibilities relate to a more social, ethical commitment or attitude to environmental sustainability and good husbandry • Individuals and other actors are supposed to treat land and property in a way that conform to cultural traditions and ways of good ethical behaviour. This relates to what is accepted both legally and socially • This relates to cultural dimensions of Uncertainty avoidance (the preference of structured situations over unstructured or flexible ones) and Power distance ( the degree of inequality among people accepted by the population). GertHofstede, 2001 • Other regions in the world such as Australia creates separate commodities out of land, using the concept of “unbundling land rights”, and is then adapting the land administration systems to accommodate this trading of rights without any national approach (Williamson and Wallace, 2007)

17. Land Management Paradigm • Land management underpins distribution and management of land – the key asset of any society • For any economy, land management is a key activity of both government and the private sector. Land management, and especially the central land administration component, aim to deliver efficient land markets and effective management of the use of land in support of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. • A Land Management System forms the backbone for society and is essential for good governance because it delivers detailed information and reliable administration of land from the basic foundational level of individual land parcels to the national level of policy implementation • Many countries tend to separate land tenure rights from land use opportunities, thereby delinking planning and land use controls with land values and the operation of the land market. These problems are often compounded by poor administrative and management procedures that fail to deliver required services. • Investment in new technology will only go a small way towards solving a much deeper problem: the failure to treat land and its resources as a coherent whole

18. Spatially Enabled Government • Spatially enabled government is achieved when governments use placeas the key means of organising their activities and make location and spatial information available to citizens and businesses • Google Earth is a good example of providing user friendly information in a very accessible way. We may merge the spatial data from Google Earth with the built and natural environment data • Such a platform helps us in emergency response, taxation assessment, environmental monitoring and conservation, economic planning and assessment, social services planning, infrastructure planning, etc. • Spatial enablement offers opportunities for visualisation, scalability, and user functionalities. Such enablement can improve the communication between administrative systems and the citizenry / stakeholders • The institutional challenges with a range of stakeholder interests can be addressed by wisely sharing the platform for Integrated Land Information Management • Leveraging Geospatial Technology for Cadastral Surveys • GPS and satellite imageries for cadastral surveying for making high accuracy, cost effective and time efficient data inventory • The Mapping/Cadastral Agencies have a key role to play in this regard. The technical core of Spatially Enabling Government is the spatially enabled cadastre

19. Land Administration in India • In India, as in many developing countries, land continues to have enormous economic, social, and symbolic relevance • Land comes under the State list • Obtaining ‘Access’ to land and documenting ‘Ownership’ of land are essential livelihoods concern of large majority of the poor • Answers to these questions will determine to what extent India’s increasingly scarce natural resources are managed • Land policy and administration are critical determinants of the transaction costs associated with accessing and transferring land, both for business and residential use • Such policy facilitates use of land as collateral for credit and helps in the development of the financial sector

20. Land Administration in India • Land is major source of government revenue through stamp duties, and is a key element in implementing a wide range of government programs • Land policies besides promoting / sustaining country’s economic growth shall assist in the spatial distribution of economic activity • This importance of land alongwith its administration inherited from colonial days makes ‘Land’ a subject of animated debate • There is consensus that land administration, hitherto neglected since independence is in urgent need of improvement • Effective and efficient land administration is thus an national agenda in India’s governance architecture • The country is not bothered with ‘whether’, it is rather concerned as to ‘how’ do we achieve an effective and efficient land governance

21. Institutional Structure and Challenges • Land administering in India largely adopted from the British at Independence and modified only marginally • Colonial administration’s main objective was to generate tax revenues and was thus focussed on productive rural areas, leaving ‘marginal’ rural and urban areas outside the system • The distinction was difficult to justify in the first place, but has become even more archaic in three respects • First, any piece of rural land transacted through sale after 1882 entered the land registry system making the transaction records maintained by both the revenue department and the stamps and registration department. The overlap increases transaction costs and creates the potential for fraud resulting from inconsistent records. • Second, rural areas near the urban fringe become increasingly urbanized, with marked increases in land values warranting surveys. But survey departments’ responsibility to maintain accurate spatial records of land ownership often lapsed, passing de facto to municipal corporations that maintain spatial records for strictly tax purposes • Third, revenue lands once recorded as wastelands and therefore not subject to survey, have increasingly been brought under cultivation. Because they are home to the most marginalized populations, conferring land ownership to them is critical for poverty reduction as well as for environmental sustainability

22. Institutional Structure and Challenges • While merger of revenue department and the stamps and registration department is unlikely, clarifying the legal situation of land records and ensuring backoffice integration should be ensured • (Some) Municipalities maintaining land records for tax purposes could, in principle, be used as a basis for ownership records. This is an urgent needs to eliminate the ‘spatial data vacuum,’ and entrusting one single agency with sufficient capacity to maintain spatial records in rural and urban areas • Conferring land rights to people in waste land requires clarification of the interface between revenue and forest departments and a broadening of the types of tenure formally recognized to include, for example, forms of communal ownership. The recent passage of the Forest Rights Bill opens up a wide range of opportunities for implementation in this respect

23. Improving Textual Land Records • Many Indian States successfully accomplished computerized land registries and revenue records built on innovative IT solutions through extensive sub-contracting and public-private partnerships to deal with public sector weaknesses and to ensure broad coverage and quick roll-out • Computerization has significantly reduced the scope for petty corruption that traditionally characterized access to land records. It has also improved the quality of government service delivery, generating large surpluses from user fees • Computerization impacted villagers’ attitudes towards state bureaucracies positively • Undertaking surveys before mutation can provide registry officials access to the database of land records before registering a document thereby plugging all loopholes • Private sector surveying is not allowed in most states and heavily circumscribed even where it is permitted • There are many best practices on private sector surveying overseen through regulatory frameworks. Non starters should draw upon these examples • India’s tradition of self-help groups offers considerable but so far severely underutilized potential to employ ‘barefoot surveyors’ to provide a range of land administration services to the poor

24. The Action Plan • Land administration and policy in India are complex and vary considerably across states. • Uniting the two different and unconnected domain of registry and records or survey is unlikely to materialise to improve the performance of the system • Although land administration is highly technical, no amount of technical sophistication will neutralize the impact of adverse policies that discourage the use of these very systems • At the same time, land administration provides important tools with which to implement policies. In fact one reason why India has no shortage of bold land policy initiatives for the poor which look very attractive on paper but could not be implemented in practice, is the fact that its land administration system is weak in general and often non-existent or dysfunctional in the areas where the poorest live • To make a dent, we need to device an Action as follows: • First, expand computerization and integration and use of textual records to ensure full coverage • Second, establish a single institutional framework to accomplish the above mentioned job with reasonable time and resource requirements • Third, pilot run the Tools for fine tuning and validation • Fourth, allow private sector participation in surveying under a regulatory framework • Finally, complement restrictions on tribal alienation with flexible mechanisms providing them with property rights

25. Conclusion • Land management institutions can not be built without integrating activities, policies, and approaches • Technology opportunities provide additional motivation • Careful management of land related activities on the ground are crucial for delivery of sustainability • LAS, in principle, reflect the social relationship between people and land recognized by any particular jurisdiction or state. It is not just a GIS • LAS are not an end in itself but facilitate the implementation of the land policies within the context of a wider land management framework at State level • LAS are not just technical or administrative processes, but also political and reflect the people’s rights, besides having a huge bearing on land tenure, land markets, land taxation, land-use control, land development, and environmental management • Land administration systems therefore need high-level political support and recognition

26. Thank You