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Land Titling or Land Reforms: India’s Policy Dilemma

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Land and Livelihoods in Neoliberal India

Abstract

This chapter seeks to examine two contradictory developments on the political economy of land and development in India, one, a conscious policy decision to secure land title regime and the pressure on the Indian state to revisit land reforms regime. By analysing the changes in land policy under the neoliberal regime, it argues that a land titling regime, under which the state aims to provide secure land rights to the landowners, has eclipsed the concerns over redistributive land reforms. The launch of land records digitisation drive is the driving force behind the “reform by stealth” approach to land titling. On the other hand, land-based interventions for the poor and marginalised sections continue to be relevant on the grounds of their livelihood and sustainability.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Government of India. (1976). Report of the National Committee on Agriculture-Part XV, Agrarian Reforms, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation. New Delhi, p. 90.

  2. 2.

    Government of India. (2006). Report of the Working Group on Land Relations for Formulation of Eleventh Five Year Plan, New Delhi: Planning Commission, Yojana Bhawan, July 31, p. 10.

  3. 3.

    It means a cadastral map and khatian depicting the ownership rights, interests and title to land.

  4. 4.

    For details, see in detail the Chapter Sixth on land issues in the first Volume of Twelfth Five Year Plan, 2012–2017, Government of India, Planning Commission, New Delhi.

  5. 5.

    See, Hanstad, Haque and Nielsen (2008). The World Bank’s report on India’s land policies have similarly advocated for a liberalised land regime.

  6. 6.

    See also Author (2013, April). Janasatyagraha: Shamatise se Karybahi Ki Aur, Publisher, New Delhi.

  7. 7.

    Centre for Legislative Research and Advocacy (2011). Land Reforms in India: Unfinished Task-Policy Brief for Parliamentarians-Series No 14, 2011, November, 1–8. Similarly, the pathalgadi movement that erupts from time to time in some schedule areas like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha demanding the implementation of the PESA Act may be viewed as similar demands for securing community rights in land, forest and water.

  8. 8.

    See an interesting study with inter-state comparison of the implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, in Promise and Performance: Ten Years of the Forest Rights Act in India, 2016, CFRR–LA (2016).

  9. 9.

    On the question of land rights in the northeast, recently an important change has been made to the land laws in Arunachal, which paves the way for individualisation of land rights. See Mishra (2018) and Sharma and Borgohain (2019) for details.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Odisha State Disaster Management Authority, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

    Pradeep Nayak

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  1. Pradeep Nayak
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for the Study of Regional Development School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Deepak K. Mishra

  2. Odisha State Disaster Management Authority, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

    Pradeep Nayak

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Nayak, P. (2020). Land Titling or Land Reforms: India’s Policy Dilemma. In: Mishra, D., Nayak, P. (eds) Land and Livelihoods in Neoliberal India. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3511-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3511-6_2

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