Land titles project useful, welcome

It is easy to exaggerate the importance of SVAMITVA and its meaning strained out of a soup of words -- Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improved Technology in Villages Areas. Getting the right acronym with the right sense would have called for hard labour. The Modi government is known for its fondness for such acronyms, which is a sign of triteness and infantile fancy, but the project, without exaggeration, is useful for the management of property and land rights. Land records are notoriously messy, and large numbers of people, especially in villages, do not have the right land titles, though their families may have owned the property for generations. Most holdings are small and that aggravates the problem. Even when there are records, many cannot make use of them because of inefficiency or corruption in revenue departments.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently launched the project, which involves property mapping and digitisation of records by deploying drones to demarcate residential areas, farmland and other natural and infrastructural features like wooded areas and roads. The owners will receive virtual property cards as proof of ownership. The project is set to be completed by 2024 and the aim is to map and record all relevant details of the country’s 662,000 villages by then. Pilot projects have been started in 100,000 villages in six BJP-ruled states. Landowners in some villages have already been given the property records and they are able to access their virtual titles now. Legally enforceable property rights are essential for development in various areas like agriculture and industry because land is an important factor of production.

While the project is good, there is a need for caution also. The government has projected it as an exercise that will make the sale of land easy. This may be true, and many landowners will benefit, but saleability is the least of the benefits. The exercise should not lead to alienation of land, especially farmland, on a large scale. One obstacle in the way of purchase of land on a big scale by corporates and others is the lack of clear titles for the property. A clear title is primarily for the empowerment of the owner, for his own use, and for the security of the land. There are many challenges also. The use of technology is not enough. Land records may have to be studied, tallied with technological inputs, and sometimes corrected. There will also be disputes. The project can only be implemented with the help and cooperation of state governments. The question of why the pilot project is held only in BJP-ruled states is therefore relevant.