Studies have shown that a key factor linked with rural poverty is land. Arable land has been analyzed as the most valued form of property, for its economic, political and symbolic significance. It is wealth creating and livelihood sustaining asset. It has also been termed as a metaphor for power, wealth and status. Sustainable Development Goal number one and two – Zero hunger; Achieve food security and improved nutrition along with goal eight- Achieve Gender Equality direly focuses on inheritance rights to land for women. Studies have shown that in regions where agriculture dominates livelihoods, land is also important for women for reducing the risk of poverty and enhancing food security. Women who own land or control assets are better positioned to improve their lives and cope in the face of crisis. By owing land and homes, women directly gain from the benefits of using land, earning income and also have a secure place to live. Research has shown that individuals who own land generate much higher rural nonfarm earnings from self-employment than people without land. Women can also use the land as collateral for credit during crisis or for investing in other income generating work. A large percentage of households, estimated to be between 20 to 35% in India are de-facto, female headed. For widows and elderly, in particular, ownership of land also creates possibilities for drawing support from relatives. Land titles also serve as collaterals in accessing the benefits of development programs and accessing other productive resources for farmers. In regions with high male migration and where women are the principal farmers, such support is critical for their households. From the three ways that a woman can own land: through inheritance; government land redistribution and from market- inheritance occupies the utmost importance, as about 60-70% of India’s agriculture land is privately owned by family. Despite this significance of women’s land ownership through inheritance rights to land, fact remains that land ownership for women in India has remained a grey area in terms of data. The closest data available is the one which reflects a land holding: figures from the latest Agricultural Census of 2015-2016 indicate that women operated land holdings in India account for 13.87% of all holdings, comprising about 11.57% of the total operated area. Entitlements to land are determined by diverse socio- political systems that have evolved over time and sometimes exist concurrently. Inheritance patterns in land vary within and between countries and further by region, religion, caste, community, ethnicity. The social norms and institutions that constrain women from claiming and controlling land vary region by region. They disadvantage women more in certain region than others. Variations persist, in relation to inheritance of agricultural land in the tenurial enactments of different states. These variations have been traced back to the colonial heritage when inheritance and marriage laws were perceived as personal laws of communities. Laws enacted later accommodated customary, religious and pluralistic traditions. Inheritance rights to land, particularly agricultural land, have been most difficult to enact. In India, it took almost half a century to amend (2005) the Hindu Succession Act (HSA) of 1956. This amendment overriding the varied tenurial laws of different states, enable daughters, including those who are married, to become coparceners in joint family property.
Organizers
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Even after seventy years of becoming a republic, land remains the most important economic, social, and cultural resource for the vast majority of Indians. Variously regarded as a "bottleneck" in the process of economic development, land provides a measure of security, often not experienced with other economic resources like labour and capital. Unsurprisingly then, on ground conflict over land is the most pervasive and intractable of all conflicts in India, and legal disputes over land are the most important factor responsible for clogging cases in courts, both in terms of number and pendency of such cases. Such legal and extra legal conflict over land not only threatens India's economic development, but also its social and political stability. Conflicting laws cause legal disputes. Yet, the number and extent of land laws in India is anyone's guess, because there is no existing publicly available comprehensive database of land laws in India. For the first time ever, the Land Rights Initiative team at the Centre for Policy Research has created a database of over 1000 colonial and post colonial central and state laws for a geographically representative sample of eight states, namely, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Punjab, and Telangana. From land reforms to land acquisition, forest laws to laws applicable to Scheduled Areas, from laws promoting and regulating urban development to laws dealing with evacuee, enemy, ancestral and religious property, this vast legal apparatus governs the lives of ordinary citizens and their interactions with each other and the state. This panel will present findings from an ongoing study at CPR Land Rights Initiative that tries to map the maze of existing legal regulation on land, with a view to streamlining existing laws, and thereby shedding light on how to prevent and resolve the conflicts they necessitate.
Organizers
Commons have been under siege for centuries. Well documented in the Enclosure movement in England in the 15th century, the methods of primitive accumulation have only evolved in devouring commons. The scholarship on primitive accumulation has progressed to argue that primitive accumulation is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process. On the other hand, the literature on commons too has made significant inroads to argue that commons are not merely a rural phenomenon, but also deeply urban. Commons are much beyond resources “held-in common”. They are also associated with a strong sense of community, because essentially, it is about “being-in-common”. Holding resources collectively, commons are equally about innovative and culturally embedded processes. The commons operate as the most crucial hinge of their social and cultural habitus. Which is why, the usurp of the common is more than always an economic loss. It is also a cultural and a social loss. Extensive studies on land acquisition have exhibited the same. But understanding commons as also urban tells us a story more complicated than the rural being made into urban. The story of urban commons also point to us the ways in which such collective methods of belongingness, have existed despite the force of capital. And despite the pressures they face, they have been able to show us new collective methods, a different negotiation with nature and even innovative methods of confronting the state. This panel is therefore an attempt to inquire into the question of urban commons from different entry points- land governance, tourism, environment and real estate without necessarily romanticising it. We hope to collectively open up the different ways in which urban commons negotiate with the city and interrogate what place they occupy and in what form, in our urban futures.
Organizers
Agriculture in India is largely performed by women but ironically the state does not recognize women as farmers; neither does it recognize their independent and collective rights to own land. As a result, women farmers, including agricultural labourers, face multiple levels of discrimination and violations of their human rights. According to Census 2011, more than 40 per cent of all female workers are agricultural labourers, and constitute close to 65 per cent of all agricultural workers. As a result of not being recognized as farmers and land-owners, women also are denied access to institutional credit, agricultural machinery and implements, as well as social and economic security. Integral to the recognition of women as farmers in India is the legal recognition of their right to land. Panelists will discuss various issues related to the rights of women farmers in India. In addition, they will also present the demands of women farmers, including the passage of a law on women farmers based on The Women Farmers’ Entitlement Bill 2011.
Organizers
Secured land rights are key to conservation, productivity increase and sustainable development. Documented, updated and transparent land records syncing textual and spatial land records with on-ground tenure reflecting prevailing law/custom, is key to secured land rights and critical for sustainable development (SDG indicators 1.4.2 and 5a1). However, in India, about 1.5 billion parcels either remain un-updated or un-surveyed, with a minimum of 10% needing updating every year, due to transactional and inheritance changes. While most of existing 264 million land records remain old and un-updated as per DILRMP, recognition of forest rights as per FRA, 2005, surveying of un-surveyed land under customary tenure regimes in NE India as well as constituting post-survey land grants (viz. homestead, usufruct rights, ceiling surplus and agricultural land etc.) etc. add up to the task. The need of such massive mapping and regular updating task is very difficult to achieve through conventional survey with the existing capacity of land departments in terms of ground force, skills and resources. Technology can come to rescue with fast emerging of diverse options promising to make mapping more inclusive, less costly, more efficient and easy to handle. Mapping options are now more evolved, universal, less costly and more accurate with expanding GIS infrastructure and technologies (viz. GNSS, DGPS, RTK, more remote sensing satellites and bands like L1, L2 and L5) as well as spaces opening up around availability and high resolution of satellite imageries and Increased access to (and lower cost) of drones. There is a strong need in India, of building a community-sourced and led inclusive mapping ecosystem. This can be a flexible digital platform (web and mobile interfaces) integrated with appropriate social-institutional-legal systems to effectively and efficiently map diverse land tenure situations. Community-led land tenure mapping as an inclusive digitalized platform is the compelling need for ensuring land tenure security in form of new and updated land records created through transparent, democratic and inclusive processes, by a cadre of skilled rural youth locally accessible, through a demand-based revenue model. This session jointly organized by NRMC-CLG and Centurion University, Odisha will deliberate on the experience and scope of engaging rural youth trained in digital mapping tools, as licensed surveyors to address massive land and forest rights mapping requirements in rural and tribal India. The idea emanates from the scope in Odisha and Bihar’s Special Survey and Settlement Rules, which allows the provision of not only use of digital tools in land survey also the option of licensed surveyors. Subsequent to NRMC-CLG’s (with technology partner Geolysis) mapping initiatives in Odisha and Manipur, with Centurion University we have now launched a training module to train Diploma Engineers and 12th pass youth as licensed surveyors in response to recent initiative by Department of land Records in GOO. This session will deliberate on such initiatives in India and outside and explore if and how such a decentralised and selfsustained initiative can be mainstreamed through skill missions in India to update and sync land records towards the goal of conclusive titling. The discussions would particularly focus how hundreds of thousands of rural youth can be skilled in digital mapping tools through Skill Missions to help addressing mapping needs in 6 lakhs villages in India, in partnership with land revenue departments and host of technology and service providers weaved in a partnership-ecosystem.
Organizers
The importance of land tenure security, food security and gender rights to development are well known facts of governance and policy. This session aims to go beyond these notions, and look at them in an interrelated manner. How would increased tenure security reflect on household food security, and how would women’s rights to land reduce food insecurity. At a time when much work has been put in by the international community to shape a common understanding of development through the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDGs), the use of the development indicators and targets under the SDGs is a useful and potentially harmonised tool to assess development and interlinkages. This session will address the land tenure-food security-women’s rights nexus through the lens of the SDGs by presenting data from various sources on specific identified indicators. The VGGT is an initiative that precedes the SDGs and personifies the nexus between the three elements which is the focus of this workshop. Drafted as a legal instrument aimed at securing the first ever consensus on administrative, political and legal issues on tenure security in the context of national food security, some members in this panel will explore the implications of VGGT in the context of food sovereignty. The administrative impediments and challenges, the structural and institutional cultures that lead to data collection and evidence-based policy making will provide an overarching theme when addressing sustainable development goals. The role of the central agency Niti Aayog in India on reporting to SDG will be discussed. Examples from other countries such as the UK, on their Office of National Statistics and reporting on SDG will provide another context to assess possibilities for good practice to be emulated. And finally, methodologies in research for data collection for SDG will be discussed, including the challenges, limitations and opportunities available in the short, medium and the long term. This will encompass discussion including interdisciplinarity, multilateral instruments and multistakeholder focus. The panel will be composed of a mixture of academics, practitioners, administrators and researchers. Led by the University of Hertfordshire under their UK-India project on tenure security and food security (2017- 2020), this event is in conjunction with other partners.
The following themes will be the subject of presentation and discussion at this panel - SDG indicators on land, food and gender - UK and India; Inheritance, gender and land in TN/Salem; Data for SDG indicators; Role of Indian institutions in SDG fulfilment; Women’s land rights and sustainable development; Food Security, Food Sovereignty, VGGT and customary law; VGGT and forest rights; Reports of interlinked Initiatives and policies at the local, state and national levels; FPO scheme in TN – pooling of resources
Organizers
India is a hugely diverse society and it faces enormous challenges in promoting a socially, economically and environmentally just development. Land governance in particular is a complex issue aggravated by a combination of systematic legal and institutional failures: the institutions that govern land, market and societies have fundamental weaknesses and are not able to appropriately address the land and property issues of poor rural women and men, Tribal, and Dalits. The failure of land reform processes are bound to escalate violence and unrest in the country. The intricacies and overlapping nature of laws and policies don’t necessarily and automatically ensure access, control and ownership of the people and communities over land and natural resources they depend on for their livelihoods. Likewise, there is no incentive for policy implementers to identify and specifically target support to landless, homestead less, tenants, single women1 , Tribal (Indigenous), Dalits (lowest in the caste hierarchy and face severe discrimination at all levels) and other such communities who face deprivation and inequality. The session will focus on analysis of the existing policies relating to land governance from dependent communities’ perspective with People Centered Land Governance as the focus. The key areas to cover under each policy discussion are provisions, opportunities, limitations and recommendations
Organizers
TISS and Azim Premzi University have been coordinating a research presentation session at ILDC focused on on diverse aspects of forest rights and goverance. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act (Forest Rights Act or FRA for short) that was passed in 2006 was the result of a protracted struggle by the marginal and tribal communities of our country to assert their rights over the forest land over which they were traditionally dependent. This Act is crucial to the lives of millions of adivasis and other forest dwellers in different parts of our country as it provides for the restitution of deprived forest rights, including both individual rights to cultivated land in forest land and community rights over community forest resources (CFR). Several studies have pointed out that the Forest Rights Act has the potential to restore rights of forest dwellers over at least 40 million hectares or 100 million acres of forest land in 170,000 villages i.e. one fourth of the villages across the country. Importantly, at least 150 million people, including 90 million tribal people are estimated to be benefited from recognition of forest rights under FRA (RRI et.al., 2015). Similarly, FRA has the potential to democratise forest governance by recognising rights of local communities to protect and conserve forests; ensuring livelihood security; securing gender justice and meeting sustainable development goals of eliminating poverty and achieving ecological sustainability. Also, FRA provides the opportunity to address Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) in 106 districts across 10 states in India (CFR-LA Report, 2016). Over the past few years, thousands of villages have been granted CFR rights across many states, prominent among them being Maharashtra, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, along with a few instances in Karnataka, Kerala and Gujarat. FRA has the potential to democratise forest governance by recognising rights of local communities to protect and conserve forests; ensuring livelihood security; securing gender justice and meeting sustainable development goals of eliminating poverty and achieving ecological sustainability. Also, FRA provides the opportunity to address Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) in 106 districts across 10 states in India (CFR-LA Report, 2016). While the Forest Rights Act came into force on 1st January 2008, the scale of its implementation speeded up only in the post-2009 period. Over the last one decade, the implementation of the FRA has not been effective as only 17 percent of the total potential forest area has been recognised under forest rights with wide variation in implementation in all the major potential states.
Upon reviewing the experience of the FRA process over the last ten years, it was felt that a greater engagement with and involvement of the research community in the country is needed. Firstly, we believe that a number of researchers (including students) are already engaged in studying various dimensions of the forest rights and governance process as it is unfolding in various parts of the country, but are not part of the FRA research network process. We are therefore not benefitting from their analysis. Secondly, there is a need for even greater engagement of scholars from different disciplines and in diverse locations with this process, which has the potential to radically transform forest rights and governance and thereby dramatically improve the lives of millions of rural households. Questions that need scholarly attention include identifying ways in which forest rights and governance questions have been addressed, how NTFPs are managed and benefiting local people, poverty reduction, gender empowerment, and democratic governance can be enhanced or strengthened under different socio-economic and political contexts. The ILDC 2019 is planning a special session on impact of forest rights and goverance from the livelihood, governance and sustainability point of view. Given your work and interest in the field of forest rights and governance, we request you to submit an abstract on the above themes on or before 31st January and the full paper by 28th February. We are planning to bring out a publication of the selected submissions that will be presented in the session and also peer reviewed subsequently as a separate volume or in a special issue of an important Journal.
Organizers
A growing body of literature on rural livelihoods and climate discourse have established with evidence the contribution of village commons to household and community level economic gains and the range of ecosystem services. India’s more than 150 million acres of village pastures, forests, water bodies and wastelands provides an ideal platform to uniquely address issues of social, environmental and climate justice. It has the potential to directly benefit more than 500 million small and marginal land and livestock holders by creating an additional income worth 50 billion USD annually for rural households from food, fuel and firewood, livestock rearing, wage income, and so on.
Commons space is replete with examples of wrong policies, lack of appropriate legal, institutional and policy frameworks that have either led to their steady decline or fast degradation. Even after 70 years of planned development, Commons continues to be a less traversed area as regards policy dialogue and change. Neither the policy makers nor the village communities are adequately aware and sensitised on the transformational effects of commons. Therefore, the effort is to regroup key and critical players to facilitate multi-actor debates and follow up actions to advance the cause of Commons. The proposed session aims to brainstorm and devise actionable strategies and policies around; a) decentralising ownership of village commons, b) design and develop innovative tech solutions including access to correct data, c) designing scalable models with state governments and programmes, d) devise ways to integrate commons with public investments to double farm income, and e) integrated land use and ecorestoration of commons. The session will also discuss; what would incentivise governments to prioritise Commons, what could be a realistic policy change framework, how relevant capacities can be built, what institutional reforms and innovations needed, how can a commons collective formed and operate, and so on. The session would look towards achieving three specific outcomes for improved governance of Commons; a) policy solutions designed at the state and national level, b) policy change road map designed, and c) wider commitments achieved on building a commons constituency. Session Plan A panel of experts will discuss policy engagement strategies required at national, cross-state and intra-state, and develop a roadmap required to enable crucial policy shifts to achieve the ‘Promise of Commons’. The recently developed policy brief ‘Planning for Integrated use of Village Commons: Key Findings and Policy Implications’ by Council for Social Development would form the background to the discussion. Session will be chaired by Dr.T.Haque and other panellists could be J.K.Mohapatra, Dr Vijayanand and one or two experts suggested by Dr.Haque
The session will also have representation from state departments like Land Resources/Revenue from selected states like Jharkhand, Maharastra, Rajasthan
• State and National Livelihoods Missions and other state rural development programmes will also be invited to share models that concerns Commons protection and development
• Efforts are also on to rope in MoRD to reflect on NREGA and Commons integration – models and policies
• The movement/transition of best practices to policy frameworks have been a vital issue in natural resource management.
The session with experts from different spaces including grassroots would be delving on system driven approaches The session and panellists are expected to through some light on designing a set of specific, achievable and grounded recommendations and policy engagement strategies that could be taken to newly formed governments in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Odisha, Telengana, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand by mid 2019. Post ILDC, a group of players would work together to sustain the impact of a collective process at multiple levels and forums in the form of multi-layered campaigns.
Organizers
The North East panel, would be a Discussion around Contexts, Issues and Challenges around Customary Tenure Regimes and Community Land Governance practices in NE India. The focus will be on discussing what are the issues and challenges emerging under this regimes in the contemporary development context. These regimes were evolved in response to local contexts and were able to ensure sustainable land use contributing to culture and livelihoods effectively. However, there are many challenges emerging in response to development pathways around investment as well as conservation that are being now brought in. Particularly the deliberations will be around how development projects are interacting with these tenure contexts, how women land rights are situated and also how these tenure regimes are influencing individuals’ access to formal credit, development related entitlements etc. The idea is also to discuss possible way forwards and if and how potential innovations can be brought in to address the present challenges.
Organizers
Despite wide recognition of the link between poverty and landlessness in India, the country has the largest number of landless persons (over 500 million) in the world. Fifty-six per cent (101.4 million) of rural households do not have a permanent homestead while 30 per cent (53.7 million) households consist of landless labourer, who face the worst deprivation. In fact, research has shown that landlessness is the best predictor of poverty in India – a better predictor than illiteracy or the membership in a schedule caste or scheduled tribe. Although the situation varies by state, the general state of land records in India is inadequate. The vast majority of rural households – and virtually all-poor households — have problems with their land records or documentation causing a variety of negative impacts. Textual records are often of low quality and limited coverage and spatial records are often outdated. Un-updated land records are a significant cause of land tenure insecurity – certainly for the poor, but also much more broadly. Inadequate land records also facilitate corruption, contribute to the high and costly incidence of land disputes, reduce the government’s ability to conduct effective planning and raise revenue, and generally limit the capacity for good land governance. Land conflicts constitute 66% of civil court cases in India and along with billions lost in stalled investments, probably cause the biggest GDP drains in the economy with very high social and ecological cost. Small and marginal farmers, who account for more than half of the total land holdings, and may not hold formal land titles, are unable to access institutionalized credit. Incorrect land records also affect the availability of other inputs for farming. Security of land tenure is incumbent upon clear, transparent and updated land records, documenting the personal and parcel information clearly along with tenurial information as per prevailing legal (formal or customary) regime. DILRMP has been pushing progress towards this through its goal of conclusive titling, by helping states progressing substantially in the areas of computerization of land records (CLR) closely followed by computerization of registration process and digitization of cadastral maps. However, the component of ‘survey and resurvey’ has not progressed as desired, faced with challenges of cost norms, clearances from appropriate authorities for aerial survey, technology choices, setting of ground control points as well as very limited community participation, in spite of some states (viz. Bihar and Odisha) bringing in special legislations. DILRMP has been able to complete only 2% villages in terms of resurvey, while 86% records computerized and 46% old cadastral maps digitized as on November, 2017. Fast changes in technology landscape in the contemporary world, at the same time, is making mapping more inclusive, less costly, more efficient and easy to handle. IT use is growing in emerging economies and cheaper smartphones/tablets have become now more ubiquitous. Mapping options are more evolved, universal, less costly and more accurate with expanding GIS infrastructure and technologies as well as with spaces opening up around availability and high resolution of satellite imageries and Increased access to (and lower cost) of drones. In India, already there have been experiments and pilots around use of such technologies to secure land rights of forest and slum dwellers and also update and consolidate land records. The process of digitalizing textual records in various Indian states has pointed to several best practice principles, making the process transparent and results broadly accessible. The state of Andhra Pradesh for example is now using the blockchain technology to make land records tamper-proof. Another important best practice is the use of community led, multi-sourced inventory processes to correct the mistakes in the manual records before they are computerized.
There is an urgent need to learn from such experiences within India in modernizing land information systems to develop viable and replicable models for improving and maintaining both textual and spatial records. This session, drawing from such experiences of state and non-state actors at different locations and legal-social contexts will showcase diverse technology innovations towards improving and updating land records. It also seeks to stimulate discussions around the potential, limitations and challenges of such options through different stakeholder-lenses with an objective of exploring fit-for-purpose solutions.
Organizers
A large majority of the urban poor in India continues to suffer from inadequate living conditions arising largely from insecure housing and the lack of security of tenure. While there is some available data and discussion around the issue of landlessness and land rights in rural areas, the issue of land rights of the urban poor and their resulting marginalization is not accorded the same importance; neither has it been considered a priority. The crisis, however, is becoming more urgent with the rise in forced evictions and homelessness, including under the guise of “city beautification”, urban renewal, disaster management, infrastructure, “smart city projects,” and the systematic relocation of low-income groups to city peripheries. Though the government’s Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana speaks of providing “Housing for All by 2022,” Housing and Land Rights Network documented the demolition of over 53,700 homes by state authorities in 2017, affecting more than 260,000 people, the majority in urban areas. Residents of low-income settlements continue to be labelled as “encroachers” and “illegal” and are seldom considered “eligible” for resettlement. Those who meet the state’s “eligibility criteria” are relocated to remote areas, without secure housing and land rights. This is leading to a rise in homelessness and impoverishment with adverse impacts on the health, livelihoods, and education of affected persons, especially women, children, and older persons. Market-driven public-private partnerships are being increasingly relied upon by the state to address housing issues in urban areas. However, these interventions promote a further reduction in the land area occupied by the urban poor, while benefitting wealthier classes and private developers.
A greater focus on urban land issues and recognition of land rights of the urban poor is needed in order to address poverty and the housing and land crisis; to help improve the realization of human rights; and to meet India’s international obligations, including implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and recommendations from its third Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council. At this panel being organized by Housing and Land Rights Network, independent experts, academics, legal scholars, and affected persons will discuss critical questions and dimensions of urban land. Speakers will also assess the urgent need for a human rights-based approach to ensure the recognition of land rights, provision of legal security of tenure, and protection from forced evictions and displacement of the urban poor across India.
Organizers
Adoption of advanced technology to establish a robust system to monitor the rights recognition process. This session will provide an overview on usage cloud based data collection tool to monitor rights recognition process and post recognition process.
Organizers
South Asia is known as the land of smallholder farmers. The definition of smallholder farmers itself underline the characteristics of their possession of small land holdings. The fact that this 'possession' and 'holdings' connotes different policy and practice interpretations of land tenure in different socio-cultural and legal landscapes, engagements with small farmers is never complete without understanding and addressing their tenure security. However, in policy and practice, there has been limited attention and actions on this key structural dimension of small farming. SAFBIN, while engaging with small farmers and planning policy dialogue series, sees a compelling need in organising the second event of the series around land tenure reform. ILDC2019, provides an excellent convergence platform to jointly organize this event in partnership with Caritas India, ICRISAT and Centre for Agricultural Policy. This Policy Dialogue seeks to reiterate the land tenure dimensions of small farming in the context of South Asian Policy Landscape and engage with policy makers, researchers, practitioners and donors on the need, challenges and options to mainstream smallholder agenda.
The major areas of discussion would be:
Why securing tenure is critical for Smallholder Farmers in South Asia?
Land policy reforms in South Asia and how they integrate Smallholder concerns
Whether tenure matters in the pre-election declaration of farm-schemes (viz. PM-Kishan, KALIA etc.) in India?
Can their impact be more targeted and improved with tenure- integration?
Potential areas of improvements in existing / new policies to mainstream the smallholder agenda
Pathways for integrating SHF concerns: Low hanging fruits and long-term engagements
Organizers
Collecting, processing and disseminating data about territory and people used to be largely in the hands of government, through entities like the census, cadaster and land administration offices. This is no longer the case for both technological and political reasons. Technologies now allow a multiplicity of agencies from public, private and civil society sector, as well as individual citizens, to collect and process data and make it publicly available. This may be done locally via mapping apps on mobile phones, from the sky via drones and in sight of the people being mapped, or unnoticed by those, who are being mapped, from space via a fleet of commercial satellites. The data may be stored on a server in the U.S. or Germany, where different legal frameworks apply with respect to data protection. At the same time we see many initiatives collect data about land, land rights and uses, and people for storage on local servers, where it becomes implicated and used in the context of the local land governance scene of a region or village. Sharing of data across jurisdictional boundaries and between public and private sectors, decisions on which data to publish online and in which form, as well as its processing by a variety of local and global actors further complicates the scene. The increasingly fast processing and integration of such data, and artificial intelligence playing a larger role now, result in maps and visualizations of “informal” or “illegal” settlements, land use pattern and change maps, or real-time identification of newly constructed buildings. The makers of such information and the users are globally diverse and also widely dispersed. Therefore, the categorization of governance actors into public, private and civil sectors has become arguably even blurrier than in the past. As data travels and converges in multiple, often unpredictable directions, the governance of land and people is taking on new and complex dimensions. Data and data processing technology are not politically neutral “windows into truth.” They have been and still are political instruments that shift – intentionally or not - established power relations. What kinds of implications do these travels and translations of land data between local and global scales and across jurisdictional boundaries have for land governance in India; and how should policy makers and society react? One way to approach these broad, long-term questions is by zooming in on one of the current main tensions in data governance worldwide, namely that between the need for making data publicly available and the need to protect people by protecting their personal data. Openness of data is needed and desired to improve transparency of land governance processes, can empower disadvantaged groups in so far as it provides a means to make legible and legitimate their rights to land and livelihood, and as evidence base in planning and policy making. At the same time, the risks of too much openness and transparency have become apparent. The focus rests on ways to protect personal sensitive information, e.g. through legislation like India’s new The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 or the European Union’s GDPR. But here we should not forget that it may be precisely the processing and integration of various data sources that make the resulting information personally and/or politically sensitive. In this panel we wish to discuss the divergent needs between openness and protection of land data in India with land and data experts coming with rich local and global experienses based on the following questions:
1. In how far do we agree or not that data technology providers are “neutral platforms” in the land governance scene?
2. Where should land data be stored; and what are the implications for protecting and/or sharing such data?
3. What kind of data, when and how should it be made publicly available online; and who should be involved in these decisions?
4. How can we avoid forgetting the people and their relationship to land behind our hopes for and worries about the data?
5. How can we learn, what land data is being collected and processed, how its derivates are used and for whose/what purposes?
6. Because of the pervasiveness of digital data technologies and increasing amounts of data, the issues outlined above challenge just about every policy domain. But how do these challenges play out specifically in the domain of land governance given that property and land rights are social constructs; and the various relationships between people and land have been governed by social and statutory institutions in comparatively bounded jurisdictional territories? What then do we need to specifically focus on in future with respect to the openness/protection tension in the domain of land governance?
Organizers
Women in India, largely, lack secure access, control and ownership over land and natural resources. Women’s role, especially tribal and pastoral women’s role in accessing, managing and getting benefits from Common Property Resources is reducing. They are the reservoir of traditional knowledge for sustaining the resources, however, they remain invisible in any of the mainstream discourses. Women are not present in any of the policy and decision making structures. The social and cultural norms, high rate of illiteracy and restricted social mobility further adds to the complexities. Most of the landless Dalit and tribal women, female headed households depends on state government's land allocation programmes and land leasing for access to and control over land. Forest Rights Act, though having progressive provisions, have not been successful to ensure the land titles, rights and entitlements to women. One of the major reasons is that the enforcing bodies including CSOs are not gender sensitive and it is in their interest if and when women abide to stereotypical gender roles and norms. Thus, the session will discuss the overarching status of women and land rights in India, followed by other panellists focusing on discussing the aspects of commons land, forest land, salt pan workers, fisheries and farmers from women’s perspective. The discussion thread would be role of women in abovementioned areas, issues they face and good practices in the respective areas of intervention of the panellists.
Organizers
Approximately 35 million pastoralists, spread across 200 communities, manage a livestock population of over 50 million animals. As with tribals and other forest dwellers, pastoralists’ access to land and forests has been affected primarily because of the process of consolidation of state forests with the creation of reserve forests, wildlife sanctuaries and other categories of forests. Notification of state forests has led to pastoralists losing traditional access to and control over grazing lands as in the case of the Banni grassland in Kutch (notified as protected forest), and the Bara Bangahal area in Himachal’s Kangra District (demarcated as a Wildlife Sanctuary). These issues have been raised in multiple fora as part of the effort to secure rights of access and use by forest- dwelling and forest-dependent communities. Pastoralist mobility adds a layer of tenurial complexity that has resulted in comparatively few clams being filed by pastoralist communities under the Forest Rights Act. This mobility results in pastoralist communities using resource rich habitats, such as the extensive alpine pastures of the Himalayas, the arid and semi-arid expanses of Rajasthan and Gujarat, and the grasslands of the Deccan Plateau for part of the year, and village commons in densely settled agricultural communities for a different part of the year. In the former, pastoralist need for access to grazing resources is contested primarily by the forest department, which sees pastoralism as a threat to biodiversity, wildlife, and other ecosystem services. In the latter instance, it is agricultural communities competing for village commons that pose the greatest challenge to pastoralist access to grazing areas.Tenure insecurity characterizes pastoralist rights over both situations. Although the FRA makes provisions for recognizing pastoralist rights, there have been relatively few attempts on part of pastoral communities to use the FRA towards securing more assured access to forage. CFR claims over the Banni grassland have been made by the Maldhari community in Kutch, Gujara. These have been approved by both the SDC and the SDLC. Titles are yet to be issued by the state government. In Himachal Pradesh, claims have recently been filed by the Gaddi community, staking claim to traditional grazing rights in what has been declared the Bara Bangahal Wildlife Sanctuary. These claims have yet to be processed. These two are isolated examples within pastoral communities, although there is growing interest amongst organizations working on pastoral issues to more pro-actively engage with the FRA as a means of securing herder rights to grazing resources. We propose to host a panel at the IDLC in the expectation of both sharing the current status and understanding on pastoralism and the FRA as well as in articulating how we might move forward towards a greater broadbasing of these efforts. Specific objective include:
Present background on pastoral communities and their rights over land and forest resources
Key provisions in FRA addressing rights of pastoral communities
Status of implementation of FRA provisions relating to pastoral communities and key implementation issues
Initiatives taken by pastoral communities and support organizations for claiming CFR rights; examples of Banni and Bara Bangal in HP.
Way forward and strategies for addressing rights of pastoral communities
Organizers
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Forests and agriculture are the economic lifelines of over 700 million people living in rural India. This includes about 89 million tribal population who constitute the poorest and most marginalized sections of the country, 117 million small holder farmers cultivating less than 2 ha of land, and 80 to 100 million women involved in agriculture (MoEF, 2010; MoAFW, 2011). Recently published Global Warming of 1.5oCIPCC special report indicates that consequences of the 1oC warming are already being felt through increased extreme weather events, rising sea levels, among others. These changes in climate variability and intensity of extreme events has increased vulnerability of 700 million people in India who are dependent on land and forests for their sustenance. Developing sustainable pathways that can enable avoiding climate change impacts, and limit global warming to 1.5oC to 2oC is critical. Landscape restoration supports enhancement of national carbon sinks and is an essential climate change strategy. Recognising the consequences of changing climate variability, the Government of India has committed to various international commitments and set domestic targets to restore degraded and deforested lands: the NDC target to reduce 2.5 to 3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030 through increase in forest and tree cover; the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 1 (No poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), and SDG 15 (Life on Land); the Green India Mission, inter alia. Achieving these targets requires supporting a landscape approach and careful attention to the underpinning enabling conditions, as sustainability of interventions is contingent on it. Globally, there is growing evidence that community forest lands with secure tenure are often linked to low deforestation rates, significant increase in forest cover, and sustainable production of timber and other forest products (Helen, et al., 2016). India has at least 34 million hectares of forest land where community forest rights can be recognised to benefit at least 200 million Scheduled Tribe and other traditional forest dwelling population(CRF-LA, 2016). While the pathway for achieving the forest related NDC and the SDGs in India is developed, considerations around social safeguards related to secure tenure and resource rights emerge centre stage. More so, given Government of India through its legislations like the Forest Rights Act 2006 (FRA), Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas)Act, 1996 (PESA) has recognised tenurial rights over forestlands that communities were historically dependent upon. With enactment of these legislations, the forest dependent population has emerged as a major stakeholder in maintaining and managing the forestland. Given this additional emphasis and recognition of ownership rights within the law, the modalities for forest management and restoration need to be rethought of, with communities emerging as a crucial stakeholder along with the state institutions. India has a rich history of landscape restoration interventions that have been implemented as part of various forest and wildlife management, watershed development and rural development programs. These projects have been implemented by multiple actors including government, civil society, private sector, communities and other institutions and have had varying impact on environment, communities and economy. Despite this long history, restoration in India is characterized by small scale, site-level successes that have not been scaled up. With forest dependent population emerging as a major stakeholder, this could be one pathway for achieving restoration at scale. This session would discuss the emerging experience from the local level on opportunities and constraints faced post rights recognition for resource management. What are the financial mechanisms, knowledge and capacity building measures that could be key for developing a network of community led restoration and management in India at scale. What are the potential pathway for strengthening the institutional mechanism for community led restoration?
Organizers
Most states in India have poor land and property records for urban and periurban areas. Owing to the revenuedriven land records administration under colonial rule, non-agricultural areas were often not recorded in detail. While some areas (e.g. Bombay State) did have provision for city surveys and property cards, revenue administration in several other states did not recognize urban areas as an important component. Some other states did cover urban areas, but with the same format and level of information as rural areas. Postindependence, the coverage of urban land records has remained incomplete, even as high levels of transactions, high rate of urban spatial expansion and overlapping and expanding jurisdictional boundaries of multiple urban authorities have compounded the problem. The failure to ensure better urban property records and administration has been considered by many as the prime reason for India’s low ranking in global Ease of Doing Business indices as well as the growth and expansion of the ‘black’ (underground) economy in real estate. Land values in urban areas continue to rise, making affordable housing an increasingly difficult proposition. At the same time, a large part of urban India resides in slums or informal settlements, with limited property rights or security of tenure. This precarious tenure status of these settlements is reflected in the absence of basic infrastructure and lack of long term investment in housing. Recent efforts in some states and union territories are yielding important lessons for improving property administration in urban areas. The Government of Maharashtra recently carried out city surveys in gaothan areas of Pune and Navi Mumbai, using unmanned aerial vehicles for surveying. It now plans to conduct city surveys in all gaothan areas across the state, and thus document individual property rights in these inhabited areas, before they become urbanized. Recognizing the significance of tenure security, the Odisha Land Right to Slum Dwellers Act 2017 aims to provide land rights to slum dwellers in urban areas across the state. In 2018, reportedly more than 2000 land titles were distributed after carrying out surveys and due process, with a total target of providing land rights to 200,000 households. The Indian Institute for Human Settlements is coordinating a session on ‘Creating Urban Property Records, for Improved Security of Tenure’ at the 3rd India Land Development Conference (ILDC 2019). It will focus on what have been the recent initiatives for an improved coverage of land and property records in urban areas, and their interlinkages with planning and development processes, including their impact on security of tenure for informal settlements. It would also cover various legal, administrative and technological challenges faced in the recording and management of urban land, across the continuum of tenure status, and some of the possible ways to address these challenges.
Organizers
The session on Transforming Slums to Liveable Habitat: Odisha Model poor will take place on 12-14 March 2019 at 3rd India and Development Conference 2019. The session is co-organized by the Government of Odisha and Tata Trusts Odisha is one of the major states of India, urbanizing at a fast rate. As per the 2011 census, while the total growth rate of population for the state over the past decade was 13.97%, it was 26.8% for the urban areas. Much of this high urban growth rate is due to the migration of poor people from rural to urban areas in search of better livelihood opportunities, and this also contributes to the growth of informal settlements or ‘slums’. This increasing slum population poses high demands on the urban local bodies to provide land for housing and basic services. Lack of legal land tenure has a detrimental impact on their overall quality of life. Without a certificate of residence, they are barred from getting loans for starting businesses, accessing basic services or finding a formal job. In August 2017, Government of Odisha enacted landmark legislation the “Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers, Act 2017” to enable identifying, securing and transforming of land rights to slum dwellers in all municipalities and Notified Area Councils (NACs). In all stages of the project execution, advanced technology was used to bring in ease of doing this accurately, create transparency in the process, remove discrepancies, reduce the dependency on human interventions and bring in speed in execution. While mapping was done through Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones), data collection was done through GIS and digital based applications, and the project was managed through digital networking. This is perhaps the first time that UAVs and other technologies are being used to create high-resolution maps of slums and a household database at such a large scale in India. The project, aiming to benefit a million individuals, promises to cover electricity, healthcare, education, sanitation, anganwadis, skill development needs of these areas But more importantly, provide “self-respect and freedom from the perpetual fear of eviction. Objective: The objective of the session is to discuss anecdotes of the land rights policy in the state, application of innovative technology, processes and partnerships in the project execution and best practices followed in Transforming Slums to Liveable Habitat
Organizers
Session Concept Notes
Our partners
Embedded itself in the spirit of ‘partnership’, this 3rd in series Annual event, furthered conversations and showcase experiences, learning, challenges and good practices around ‘partnerships’ in addressing problems in land sector in general and in enhancing inclusion and impact in particular. Assembly of land actors and stakeholders from states and international organizations provided an opportune niche to interact, deliberate, debate and trigger building of partnership ecosystems around and across land-disciplines critical to sustain land-engagements for delivering development outcomes.
Technology and Innovations
Land Information and Data
Partnership for Land Tenure Security
Inclusive Land Tenure Secuity
Impacts of Land Tenure Security Interventions