From Digitisation of Land Records to Enhanced Citizen Access
Disputed titles, missing documents, fraudulent transactions, and the inaccessibility of government land data have fuelled some of the country's most protracted legal disputes. Against this backdrop, the Government of India's sustained push to digitise land records represents one of the most ambitious administrative reform programmes in the country's recent history. Beginning with the National Land Records Modernisation Programme (NLRMP) in 2008, and continuing through its successor the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP), the state has invested significantly in scanning and digitising record of rights, computerising registration processes, linking land records with spatial maps and creating integrated citizen-facing portals that promise real-time access to land data. The government has also invested in creating first-time records for rural and urban areas through the SVAMITVA and NAKSHA scheme, while keeping digitization first principles in mind. However the act of digitising records has not automatically translated into meaningful citizen access. For a smallholder farmer in rural Odisha, a woman seeking to establish her inheritance rights over ancestral land, or an urban resident trying to verify the title of a property they are about to purchase, navigating state land portals remains a technically demanding, linguistically inaccessible, and often deeply confusing experience.
This is a consequence of how land administration has historically functioned in India. Land records in most Indian states remain bifurcated across multiple departments — revenue records maintained by the revenue administration, registration records held by the registration department, and property taxation data managed by urban and rural local bodies, land use planning data with town and country planning departments— with imperfect and often unreconciled linkages between them. At the same time the human infrastructure of land administration has not been transformed at the same pace as the digital infrastructure resulting in intermediaries — some formal, many informal — continuing to occupy the space between citizens and their records.
Another important question: has digitization actually reduced the scope for land disputes and conflicts? — remains largely unanswered. Digitisation of legacy records is after all is only the first step. Linking data bases to create a more accurate, up to date and comprehensive record is still a work in progress. There is also a debate on whether a flawed legacy record when digitised is fertile ground for more dispute. Has citizen access to a better record improved over time? Has the process of transacting in land and property become a less unpleasant experience? How varied is the position across states? These are questions that await answers through appropriate research that involves surveys and primary data analysis.
The difficulties in moving from digitised records to citizen benefit are not merely technical. They reflect a deeper need for focusing on deeper structural priorities like sustained investment in institutional capacity, dispute management, and a genuine orientation toward the citizen as the end user of the system.
The track invites sessions that cover:
Where in India has digitisation of land records genuinely improved citizen access, and what conditions made that possible?
What does it take to move from technically complete digitisation to legally reliable, user-accessible land information systems?
How do marginalised groups — women, small farmers, informal settlement residents, tribal communities with forest land rights — experience digital land systems, and what reforms would make those systems work for them?
To what extent are revenue court proceedings digital, transparent, and accessible to ordinary citizens?
What is the experience with grievance redressal and dispute resolution mechanisms? How can these be made more accessible and effective in a digitised land administration environment?
What role are intermediaries — formal and informal — performing in relation to land governance? In a reformed system, how do states eliminate extractive intermediation while preserving legitimate facilitation?
How does the digitisation of land records connect to the broader agenda of land governance reform: tenure security, land value capture, equitable access to urban and rural land?