India’s land governance framework is a complex maze of laws that have long hindered the country’s economic and social development. The Economic Survey 2023-24 highlighted the challenges — unclear titles, insecurity of tenure, and limited access to economically viable land as barriers to multiple development goals. These goals include raising rural household incomes; employment generation through private and public investments, including in climate-friendly infrastructure projects; removal of gender-based handicaps in the ownership of land and property titles; improved securitisation of land for credit; regularisation of benami properties; and better targeting of farm input subsidies.
Budget 2024 had proposed to address these challenges through digitisation and technological solutions. Specifically digitising land records, establishing land registries, assigning unique identification numbers to land parcels, and integrating land records with digital platforms such as Agri Stack. While these may assist in modernising India’s land administration system, they fail to tackle the root causes of land-related problems. These problems are deeply entrenched in the legal and institutional framework. The uncertainty surrounding rights to land and its use, along with insecure property titles, and poor quality of land records in India have less to do with the administrative form they exist in — paper-based or digital. Instead, they originate in the mix of conflicting laws and regulations that have handicapped land ownership, transfers, and use for all stakeholders.
For instance, digitisation of urban land records and updating of property records, while important, may not guarantee improved land ownership or greater access to formal credit. Further, the de-recognition of property ownership as part of the original set of fundamental rights granted by the Indian Constitution has meant that legislation in this area along with the corresponding legal jurisprudence, administrative rule-making, and enforcement procedures that impact land have evolved without the benefit of a “natural constraint” that could impose some semblance of fairness and efficiency. The exclusion of many of these laws from judicial review through the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution means owners do not have judicial recourse against political and administrative whims.
As a result, the value of land holdings is inevitably subject to risk based on laws that impose multiple restrictions on the transfer of land; that discriminate between types and size of land holdings while employing subjective, identity-based discrimination across different land holders; laws that restrict land use, including leasing and the ability to convert land use across different sectors. Many states continue to prohibit leasing of agricultural land. Even in states where leasing is not entirely prohibited, land remains subject to the risk of full or partial expropriation without fair compensation under terms set by various tenancy, lease, use, and land conversion laws and complex administrative procedures. This has weakened land markets by pushing land transactions into the shadows, and segmented markets. This has made land consolidation costly, while increasing the reliance on the state for land acquisition. Fragmentation of land has, therefore, over time proven to be one of the most pressing challenges with severe implications for agricultural productivity and investment (90 percent of farm households own less than 2 hectares of land, leading to suboptimal economies of scale). Digitising land records alone will not solve this problem; instead, legal reforms are needed to facilitate land consolidation and enable more efficient land use.
This complexity extends to procedures as well and undermines both equity and efficiency in enforcement, while encouraging rent-seeking. Our current work on a systematic assessment and scoring of land laws in India reveals that land ceiling laws in just the one state of Gujarat list more than 40 different types of land quality and household characteristics, each subject to a different level of land ceiling. This is but one example of the complexity that has created limitless possibilities for rent seeking and administrative difficulties.
India’s land records system faces significant issues beyond just assigning unique identification numbers. Slow digitisation has delayed infrastructure projects, and land ownership data remains outdated in some respects. A comprehensive overhaul of the legal and administrative framework is needed to incentivise accurate reporting and improve land record management. Current proposals, like integrating land records with the Agri Stack platform, fail to address these deeper legal and institutional challenges. For instance, Point of Sale (PoS) devices for fertiliser subsidies are not integrated with land record data, leading to inefficient targeting. Effective reform requires updating tenancy laws and land use regulations for accurate reporting.
Land banks, intended to address land availability for renewable energy, infrastructure, and industrial projects, face legal hurdles. While land constraints hinder renewable energy projects, simply promoting land banks will not be effective without addressing underlying legal and regulatory issues.
In conclusion, while the proposed reforms for digitisation are a step towards addressing some administrative capacity challenges, they fail to address the underlying legal and institutional challenges that perpetuate India’s land-related problems. A piecemeal approach focused on technological solutions is insufficient to tackle the deep-rooted issues of land fragmentation, informal tenancy, gender inequality, and suboptimal land use. Further, even if technological solutions are being adopted, states must adopt a systematic approach to evaluate technology before its adoption. The 6-S framework offers a structured method for state-led evaluations, crucial for addressing variations in state capacities and resources to ensure successful interventions. To unlock the potential of India’s land resources and support inclusive and sustainable development, a comprehensive overhaul of the country’s land laws is necessary. This requires a multi-pronged approach that encompasses legal reforms to strengthen property rights, streamlining regulations, and facilitating efficient land markets, alongside complementary measures to promote land consolidation, improve land records, and enhance women’s land rights.
By prioritising fundamental legal reforms, India can create a more enabling environment for agricultural productivity, infrastructure development, renewable energy expansion, and social equity. The government must recognise that digitisation, while important, is not a substitute for the hard work of reforming India’s complex and often conflicting land laws. Only by addressing the root causes of the challenges facing land management can India truly harness the power of its land resources for the benefit of all its citizens.
Mehta is Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, at American University, Washington DC and scholar at the Center for Civil Society, Delhi. Krishnan is an independent researcher, Uday is Research Lead at xKDR Forum. Views are personal. This article is based on ongoing research by the writers on the quality of land laws and procedures across 20 Indian states
