Category Archives: Economic Growth

An unlikely common strand of 2020 — land and property rights

Published on By Aparajita Bharti | Bindushree D

This piece was originally published in the Hindustan Times, on 24 December, 2020.

The year 2020 drew sharp focus to land and property rights issues in India. The year began with protests against the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which — if implemented — would have relied on citizens having their land records in place to prove citizenship. Many commentators lamented how landless migrant labour would meet these stringent requirements in a country where land records management is in an abysmal shape with limited digitisation.

With the onset of the pandemic, and India going into an unprecedented lockdown, the shocking sight of migrant labourers walking the highways for days exposed the lack of inclusive housing in our cities. They were forced to leave cities not only due to the lack of affordable housing, but also because informal rent agreements enabled abrupt evictions. While many developed countries enforced rent moratoriums and protections against evictions, in India, authorities could not create such a safety net. Informal tenancy in urban and semi-urban India and landlessness in rural India plunged the most vulnerable populations into further despair.

Migrant labourers were forced to leave cities not only due to the lack of affordable housing, but also because informal rent agreements enabled abrupt evictions.

Lockdowns across the world also forced businesses to consider diversification of their supply chains. This turned the attention of policymakers to the ease of doing business to make India an attractive destination for companies looking to invest in new locations. Again, land reforms became a central part of this conversation. While the central government explored the idea of creating land banks, some states focused on structural reforms. Karnataka amended laws to remove restrictions on buying and selling of agricultural land by non-agriculturalists.

Other developments that brought focus to property rights include the SVAMITVA (Survey of villages and mapping with improvised technology in village areas) scheme launched in April 2020. The scheme aims to survey non-agricultural inhabited land in rural India. The stated goals are connecting rural Indians with institutional credit through better property records, and empowering Panchayati Raj institutions through property tax collection.

In October 2020, in response to the migrant crisis, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs announced the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHCs) Scheme. The scheme aims to fill the affordable housing gap in cities by utilising government-funded vacant houses along with construction, operation and maintenance of new affordable housing projects by private players.

In an unrelated development, the Supreme Court passed a landmark judgement; it ruled that daughters have equal coparcenary rights in Hindu Undivided Family properties, even if the father died before the enactment of the 2005 Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act. Gender activists celebrated the judgment as this ambiguity had presented a big hurdle for women across India in accessing their property rights.

Though these developments seem disparate, it is worth noting that land and property rights dominated people’s lives and public narrative even in an extraordinary year such as 2020. The year highlighted the fault lines in our land governance and exacerbated the effect of existing inefficiencies in our system. As we look to kickstart recovery in 2021, one hopes that policymakers will retain focus on making land records services citizen-friendly, undertaking surveys of previously unsurveyed areas, improving land markets and continuing to invest in affordable housing in our urban centres.

Though these developments seem disparate, it is worth noting that land and property rights dominated people’s lives and public narrative even in an extraordinary year such as 2020.

Presently, there are interesting policy proposals under discussion to achieve these goals. Apart from ARHC and SVAMTIVA that may be scaled up, a Model Tenancy Act aimed at bridging the trust deficit between tenants and landlords is under consideration. The Centre and states are mulling subsidies in stamp duty rates to boost the real estate market and property registration. Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are making huge investments in new surveys and technology to improve land governance.

A continued focus on land and property rights is important — these cross-cutting issues not only impact the growth of India’s economy but play an important role in the lives of all Indians. Among other things, 2020 has also been a stark reminder that governments must prioritise securing land and property rights for all its citizens.

 

Aparajita Bharti is founding partner and Bindushree D is policy associate at The Quantum Hub, a public policy research and advocacy firm.

 

Property Rights: A Conversation Whose Time Is Now

Published on By Sneha Pillai

This article was originally published on LiveLaw on 24 July 2020, and can be viewed here.

As multitudes of migrant workers took to the streets to walk hundreds of kilometres away from India’s cities, even as the COVID-lockdown had compelled everyone else to stay in their homes, it inevitably brought to fore the scale of the housing crises[1]  [2] which plagues some of the major cities and towns in India. In response, the government announced a slew of measures including the affordable rental housing scheme[3], while a few state governments turned their attention to land reforms[4] [5], specifically in the agriculture sector.  With the pandemic-induced lockdown having emboldened the fault lines of socio-economic inequality in our country, the conversation about the need for secure property rights to address the vulnerabilities of slum dwellers, migrant labourers, marginalized women and young girls, tribal communities among others, became all the more urgent.

When we talk about property rights, we don’t just talk about the right to own a piece of land or live in a house. The conversation about property rights is instead a complex mesh of narratives weaved around socio-economic, geographic, legal and cultural lines, all of which play a critical role in determining who has the access to land and to what extent.

The benefits of secure property rights are, therefore, manifold. Owning a house or a piece of land not just offers physical security, but the proof of address further makes the owner visible in government records and makes them eligible to open a bank account, send their children to school, access financial credit and other welfare benefits. Over the years, several studies have also shown that a secure land tenure leads to better educational and health outcomes for the household. According to an RBI report, over 70% of an Indian household’s assets are held in land and housing[6], yet households struggle to leverage this asset and gain maximum economic benefit. An oft heard complaint is the lack of clear land titles in India, and there is a growing clamour for “conclusive” land titles. Yet it is important to understand that the basic foundations of the land administration need to be strong before “conclusive” land titles can be established. The myriad issues cut across socio-economic dynamics within communities, weak land administration and governance frameworks, and judicial bottlenecks among other factors. However, this is an important journey the country needs to undertake, and there is no better time to start than now.

Navigating the (lack of) data
What gets measured, gets done. Yet the first element that strikes anyone looking to better understand the state of land and property rights in India is the lack of reliable and consistent data. This becomes especially critical when we look at vulnerable groups, such as women and minority communities. There are very few national level surveys that captures gender-disaggregated information on land and property rights, which includes the Agriculture Census (which says that 14% of agricultural land holders are women, operating 12% of total agricultural land), and the National Family Health Survey (NHFS). However, while these surveys measure gender-disaggregated property ownership data, it has several gaps, such as it does not provide insights into ownership among older family members or percentage of female landowners to all landowners, etc. [7]

Women and land

Figure 1 – Chart showing data on women’s property ownershipGiven that land laws are a state subject, there is significant variation in the nature of rights guaranteed to women. In certain north-western states, the succession laws explicitly prefer male descendants over females, and grants restricted land rights to women, wherein they lose their claim to the property when she remarries.

In several states including Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, till date, the law has explicit provisions deterring women from inheriting agricultural land[8], and their names are not included in land records. Owing to this and other patriarchal biases in traditional practices, a large population of women have been excluded from owning agricultural land.

Landless labourers

Figure 2 – Map showing incidence of tenancyThe Agricultural Census of 2015 estimates that even though 73.2% of rural women workers are engaged in agriculture, they own only 12.8% of all land holdings[9]. According to the 2011 Socio-Economic and Caste Census, the incidence of landlessness is the highest among Dalits or scheduled caste, which suggests that around 45 per cent of SCs are both landless and derive a major part of income from manual casual labour. The 2011 Census also records that nearly 70% of Dalit farmers work as labourers on farms owned by other[10]. These landless agricultural labourers remain invisible in the government welfare records and are unable to gain from the benefits and concessions provided by the government to land-owning farmers. The situation for landless labourers is further worsened by the lack of recognition for tenant farmers as per the legal framework in most states, owing to which we have very poor visibility on the extent of agricultural tenancy in the country. The National Sample Survey Office estimates that at least 13% of all farmers lease in land[11], but the actual figures could be much higher due to informal tenancy arrangements (refer figure 2).

Scheduled Tribes and Forest Rights

Figure 3 – Property ownership among marginalized communitiesLand ownership is also poor among Adivasis, with reports stating that millions of Adivasis across India are still awaiting access to land rights which they are entitled to under the Forest Rights Act, 2006[12]. The monthly progress report for June 2020 made available by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs state that a total of 4.2 million claims filed, only 1.9 million individual forest rights titles and over 76,000 community titles have been distributed. As per the data made available by NSSO, the proportion of Adivasi households that did not own any land went up from 16 percent in 1987-88 to 24 percent in 2011-12[13].

Judicial and social burden of land conflicts
In the Indian courts, land disputes occupy the largest set of cases. One of our every four cases heard by the Supreme Court involves conflict over land, whereas nearly 2 out of every 3 civil case is related to land or property dispute. Land disputes are also often the most commonly cited motive for other forms of crimes, including murder. According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s 2017 report, in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (states with the most murder cases), of all recorded cases of murder, 7.2% and 33.5% of cases respectively were due to land and property related disputes.

The rampant incidences of land disputes have been contributed by conflicting laws and inadequate policies (a study by Centre for Policy Research has mapped over 1000 land laws in the country, some of which are conflicting[14]) as well as poor administrative practices, and other social factors.

Affordable housing in urban India
Panning the lens to urban India, the nature of problems when it comes to property rights varies significantly, with affordable housing being one of the key issues. According to the 2011 Census, nearly 35 million households (out of the 192 million surveyed households) reportedly live in temporary housing[15]. Rapid urbanization and the lack of supply in providing affordable housing has resulted in the expansion of slums in Indian cities, with nearly 33-47% of the urban population living in informal housing, which includes slums and other unauthorised settlements[16]. The expansion of slums not only affects urban planning, but it adds to the woes of the slum dwellers who live in fear of forced eviction and have poor access to basic services such as sanitation, water, electricity, secure and safe housing among others, with their vulnerability magnified during public health crises and other disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Furthermore, slum dwellers also experience poor social upward mobility, as a lack of proper identification and address leaves them out of the government welfare databases and restricts their ability to seek bank loans or credits. Even the government’s flagship affordable housing programme, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana requires the beneficiaries to have land ownership to be able to access benefits and upgrade their house. Slums are also automatically ruled out of this scheme, as it only recognizes owners of houses which are larger than 21sqm as the target beneficiaries. Secure property rights for slum dwellers are not just essential for better social indicators for the community at large, but it is also a valuable source of revenue for the administrative authorities. It is estimated that updated databases of slums and informal settlements can lead to increase in municipal property tax revenues as they have significant property transactions, which is otherwise lost revenue for the city and grounds for increased risk to its residents.

Land Rights for a Billion
The issues that deter the access to property rights are myriad and complex in any country, let alone in one as socio-culturally and politically diverse as India. However, even as the scale of the challenges may seem daunting, there’s also much to pin our hopes on in this conversation to secure land rights for a billion, and certain conversations around property rights in the country has emerged as the silver lining even under the dark cloud of the pandemic this year. For instance, the dialogue around land reforms was refuelled, the call for strengthening the affordable rental housing market reinforced, and the country also saw some innovative schemes such as the SVAMITVA scheme which aims to provide record of property ownership to inhabitants of abadi areas. The Indian government also announced its intention to role out a Model Tenancy Act, which is posited to reduce tenant-landlord conflicts in the leasing and renting of residential properties. Furthermore, in an encouraging development for women’s property rights, the Supreme Court also upheld the Hindu Succession Amendment Act, 2005, granting coparcenary rights to daughters.

Knowing who have been denied access to property rights and the consequences of such a denial is an important step towards achieving healthier socio-economic indicators. With land being a finite asset, better governance and administration of property rights is required to ensure secure property rights for all. However, to find solutions to the numerous challenges which have been crippling secure property rights in our country, there’s a need for a collaborative ecosystem of funders, researchers and policymakers among others to come together and drive interdisciplinary research and produce evidence-based solutions which is attuned to India’s socio-economic realities.

(Sneha Pillai is the Communications and Advocacy Lead at The Quantum Hub Consulting, a Delhi-based policy and communications consulting firm.)

[1] Jain, V., Chennuri, S., & Karamchandani, A. (2016). Informal Housing, Inadequate Property Rights. Mumbai: FSG. Retrieved from https://citiesalliance.org/sites/default/files/Informal%20Housing,%20Inadequate%20Property%20Rights.pdf

[2] 2011 Census data. Retrieved from https://censusindia.gov.in/2011census/hlo/Data_sheet/J&K/Figures_glance.pdf

[3] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/cabinet-approves-rental-housing-scheme-for-migrants-govt-to-spend-rs-600-crore/story-Waf7MhRD7Lq8t74oNmcC6J.html

[4] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/karnataka-assembly-passes-amendment-to-land-reforms-act-makes-it-easy-to-buy-farm-land/articleshow/78336440.cms

[5] https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/100920/telangana-cm-introduces-landmark-land-reforms-legislation-in-assembly.html

[6] Report of the Household Finance Committee, Reserve Bank of India, July 2017. Retrieved from: https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/PublicationReport/Pdfs/HFCRA28D0415E2144A009112DD314ECF5C07.PDF

[7] Agarwal, B., Anthwal, R. and Malvika, M. (2020). Which women own land in India?

Between divergent data sets, measures and laws. GDI Working Paper 2020-043.

Manchester: The University of Manchester

[8] https://www.indialegallive.com/cover-story-articles/il-feature-news/no-womens-land/

[9] Agricultural Census 2015. Retrieved from http://krishi.maharashtra.gov.in/Site/Upload/Pdf/Agriculture%20Census%202015-2016%20Final%20for%20website_part3_pages36-60.pdf

[10] 2011 Census data. Retrieved from https://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011census/B-series/B_7.html

[11] https://www.indiaspend.com/land-reforms-have-failed-formalising-tenancy-only-option-to-address-farm-distress-62357/

[12] https://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/forests/how-government-is-subverting-forest-rights-act-2187

[13] http://ras.org.in/scheduled_tribe_households

[14] https://www.cnbctv18.com/legal/hundreds-of-indian-land-laws-cause-confusion-conflict-researchers-2640041.htm

[15] 2011 Census data. Retrieved from https://censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/housing.aspx

[16] Jain, V., Chennuri, S., & Karamchandani, A. (2016). Informal Housing, Inadequate Property Rights. Mumbai: FSG. Retrieved from https://citiesalliance.org/sites/default/files/Informal%20Housing,%20Inadequate%20Property%20Rights.pdf

Securing property and land rights in India

Published on By Shreya Deb, Omidyar Network India

This article was originally published on India Development Review on 24 July 2020, and can be viewed here.

Land governance and property rights have been historically overlooked in India, and reforming them is critical to securing high growth.

 

Secure property rights are fundamental to the economic and social development of any country. However, in India, we are faced with a curious conundrum where more than 70 percent of a household’s assets are held in land and housing, yet there is insufficient data and research on people’s property rights. On one hand, the government aspires to provide 18-20 million affordable housing units in urban areas, while on the other, more than 10 million housing units are lying vacant, as per the 2011 Census. The judicial pendency of land disputes is also high, with several million cases pending in Indian courts. Approximately 25 percent of all cases decided by the Supreme Court involve land disputes, of which 30 percent concern disputes relating to land acquisition. 

All these factors, combined, result in insecure tenure for a large population, especially the poor and vulnerable, which in turn poses a complex set of challenges for effective governance. It also impacts the efficiency of our judicial system and our ability to attract investments. According to the ‘Ease of Doing Business Rankings’, India ranks 156th on the metric of ‘Ease of registration of property’—in contrast with its overall rank of 63 in the 2020 index. With the current rate of population growth and increasing competition for finite resources such as land, it is important to draw policy attention to these issues.

 

Land governance and property rights have been largely overlooked in India.

 

Despite the severity and complexity of this issue, land governance and property rights have been largely overlooked within policy research and development initiatives in India. The reasons for this are many, ranging from historical to political. Historically, the bulk of the colonial government’s revenues came from taxing agricultural produce. Over time, as this revenue declined, the focus on rural land administration reduced. As our cities grew in an unplanned manner, we did not invest in building strong land administration systems. On a political level, land and housing are very valuable assets, which, when regulated poorly, attract corruption and violence.

In addition, land and housing often have deep emotional relevance for people, and access to these are, in some cases, dictated by old beliefs and traditional customs. For instance, patriarchal norms often hinder women from owning properties, even though studies have shown that when women own properties, families show better indicators of health, nutrition, and education. Similarly, when marginalised groups own land, they have better food security and gain increased respect from the local communities. However, these require shaking up some deep-rooted social norms, which can be very challenging for both nonprofits and donors.

While India has undertaken reforms in many sectors of the economy, land and labour—the core factors of production—have not seen reforms. For decades, we have witnessed the effect of broken land administration in our daily lives. With reportedly as much as 66 percent of all civil cases pertaining to property disputes, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that every Indian family has faced a property dispute. The COVID-19 pandemic has borne testament to some of these issues as well, as we see the scale of the impact it has had on people living in informal settlements, where issues of poor sanitation and housing are fuelled by lack of tenure security. It is quite evident that a bulk of our current social and economic challenges are centred around the lack of secure access to land and housing rights.

 

Reforming the land rights regime is critical for India to secure high growth.

 

The fundamental building block to define and secure land rights for anyone, is the underlying property record. This record should accurately reflect all pertinent information, including ownership, the geo-coordinated location and boundaries of the property, any mortgage claims, tenant claims, and disputes. Improving the accuracy of land records, including maps, should be the topmost priority. It is the basic infrastructure required for secure access to land and housing rights, and would bring in more confidence in land-related transactions, reduce conflict, encourage more investments, and also improve the government’s ability to deliver welfare schemes.

India also needs reforms in other critical land governance areas. We have progressive laws, such as the Forest Rights Act, 2006, which need to be implemented on the ground to ensure that more than 100 million people belonging to Scheduled Tribes are able to secure the patta (or land title) to their land and gain access to all welfare benefits that have not been made available to them till date. Organisations, such as ARCH Vahini in Gujarat, that work towards helping communities secure land pattas have observed significant improvements in agriculture production and incomes. We need more nonprofits working in Adivasi communities to help families apply for pattas, which will have multifold benefits in reducing poverty in these areas.

 

Ooty landscape with houses on the side of a hill-land rights

In India, although more than 70 percent of a household’s assets are held in land and housing, there is insufficient data and research on people’s property rights. | Picture courtesy: Pixabay

Land leasing is the third area where we need policy reforms. Given the small landholdings in India, millions of farmers lease additional land to enhance their farm output. However, these contracts are largely informal, and farmers with informal leases do not get access to any government benefits such as agriculture credit, PM KISAN, crop insurance, fertiliser subsidy, or Minimum Support Price procurement. A few states, including Uttar Pradesh, have recently amended their land leasing laws to allow tenancy to be formalised, thereby securing the rights of tenant farmers. Implementing these changes on the ground will require concerted efforts from civil society and government officials, as it requires changing decades-old practices.

Attention to reform in hitherto poorly focused areas, such as land and labour, will be critical for India to resume a high-growth journey. As we grapple with an economic slowdown due to COVID-19, the recently launched NCAER Land Record Services Index (N-LRSI) offers a step towards changing this. The N-LRSI is the first piece of research that carries out an in-depth analysis of land records in India. The index assesses the current status of digitisation, identifies the existing gaps in each state, and can help under-performing states implement specific remedial actions. 

The report finds that in 28 states and union territories, digitisation stands at 86.3 percent. However, it also reveals considerable accessibility issues, such as changes in administrative units and mismatch of names/spellings, language and translation issues, and other user interface problems. We clearly have a long way to go, and the N-LRSI could become a bellwether of improved land governance in India.

 

Technology can be leveraged to secure property rights.

 

Technology, especially geospatial technology, can also significantly drive change on the ground. Drones are perhaps the most exciting new entrants in this spectrum, as they offer great potential for innovation. Recently, the Odisha state government used drones to map close to two lakh households across the state. The whole exercise was completed in a matter of a few months, which by traditional methods would have taken several years. Moreover, the drone imagery brought in transparency to the whole process and allowed the communities to engage with the maps to identify their own homes and community boundaries. This greatly helped in reducing information asymmetry and building trust. Nonprofits such as PRADAN have also employed geospatial tools to map land and help Adivasi families claim their patta.

“While there is no doubt that technology can be a force for good, it is also important to acknowledge its limitations in social impact and transformation.”

The Government of India also recognises the importance of using technology, as seen from the Prime Minister’s recent announcement of the Swamitva scheme, which aims to map rural inhabited lands using drones and issue property cards to those living in abadi areas (inhabited rural land) without a record of rights.

While there is no doubt that technology can be a force for good, it is also important to acknowledge its limitations in social impact and transformation. Technology is not a silver bullet, and needs to be complemented by non-tech solutions, if we want sustainable impact. Therefore, the focus needs to be on responsible technology, that is used in close engagement with a range of actors, from businesses, to governments, to civil society. 

 

Donors should pay more attention to the issue of property rights.

 

Land and property rights are often viewed as a very political issue, which may discourage donors from investing in research in this area. Cognisant of this research gap, we, at Omidyar Network India, have invested in supporting the Property Rights Research Consortium (PRRC) to create evidence-based solutions, without political biases. 

We also believe that there is an opportunity for donors working on WASH, agriculture, and gender issues to include secure land tenure as a key component in their programmes. For example, a programme working to improve farmer income enhancement would need to identify and support tenant farmers to make it truly inclusive, and could include a component to identify tenants and help them formalise the tenancy agreement and access government benefits. Similarly, gender programmes can also try to include women’s names in the property documents, since research shows that it reduces instances of domestic violence and increases women’s confidence and agency. WASH programmes in urban slum communities also require access to land for sanitation  infrastructure. Ahmedabad’s Slum Networking Programme, which started in the late 1990s, demonstrated that providing secure tenure to communities can transform the sanitation and health conditions in informal settlements by leveraging government resources as well as community funds.

Recently, Ashif Shaikh, founder of Jan Sahas, aptly described land as a horizontal, cross-cutting issue across interventions. Evidence shows that that developing programmes that address the land use challenges of target communities are able to significantly boost the overall impact of the programme on the lives of families for a sustained period. Therefore, it is time that we start taking concrete steps towards securing land and property rights in India. 

 

 

Shreya Deb leads Omidyar Network’s investments in property rights in India where her interests are in supporting scalable models that can help provide more secure land and housing rights to economically vulnerable people, including in urban slums.  Before joining Omidyar Network in 2011, Shreya spent four years at The Boston Consulting Group. Shreya has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a BTech in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

 

Satellite image of JLN Stadium

Is Delhi ready for development based on land pooling?

Published on By Ruby Moun

Originally published on Citizen Matters on 26 October, 2018.

On 11th October the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs notified a land pooling policy under the 2021 Master Plan for Delhi, to address the large scale housing gaps in Delhi. Through this policy, Delhi is set to get 17 lakh new affordable housing units, with a capacity to accommodate 76 lakh people.

This policy signals a change in the Delhi Development Authority’s (DDA) model of land acquisition and development to a ‘land pooling model’, where the private sector and land owners are both partners in the development. However, while the policy is a first step, the release of land (whether through land pooling or other means) cannot alone ensure adequate and timely delivery of affordable housing. Unless followed by proper implementation and associated safeguards, Delhi could meet the same fate as Gurgaon and Faridabad, which have a fair supply of housing, but are still severely lacking in public goods such as water supply, sanitation and road infrastructure, in the absence of which the very purpose is defeated.

The revised policy, which transfers many of DDA’s responsibilities to the private sector, thus brings up two major areas of concern: first, is the DDA ready for the implementation stage of the policy in terms of its resources and institutional capacity?

Second, will the DDA be successful in satisfying the private sector by ensuring secure returns on their investment, while simultaneously implementing a stable regulatory frame that enforces creation of public goods?

Why land pooling?

In 2013, a new Land Acquisition Act was passed, laying down procedures for granting compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement of people affected by land acquisition. This act has generally been perceived by officials as too onerous, with increased costs and delays due to litigation impacting the financial viability of urban development projects.

Land pooling, on the other hand, offers a mechanism where land-owners directly pool their land for a project, and get a share of developed land in return instead of monetary compensation. Lately, land pooling has became an acceptable mode among the landowners to aggregate land, and Amravati, the new capital of Andhra Pradesh is the most popular example of land-pooling being used for urban development.

Gujarat is one of the earliest states to use land pooling, starting with the Jamalpur scheme in Ahmedabad in 1925, and has evolved its land pooling process by continuously adapting to changed situations, achieving relative success. While several states have come up with land pooling policies, most have had weak institutional adaptations, thus affecting the implementation and return of benefits.

Punjab introduced land pooling in Greater Mohali area in 2012, but benefits to the landowners have been delayed. In Haryana, approvals required from multiple departments have stalled the final notification of the land pooling policy.

Timeline for Delhi policy

With its rising population, Delhi had begun acknowledging the need for a shift from the acquisition process to an alternative for land aggregation to meet its housing demands, and deliberations for public-private partnerships in the process of land development had begun in 2003. Since Delhi has a peculiar constitutional set up as the national capital with dual jurisdiction of Union and State governments, it took almost a decade for a formal policy to this effect to be approved in 2013. But this too was not followed up by regulations for implementation.

In 2017, the DDA came back with major amendments in the pooling policy, restricting its role to that of a facilitator and regulator, and transferring many of its responsibilities to the private sector, especially those related to development and redistribution of developed land parcels and housing units. These amendments have now been approved, replacing the 2013 policy and should be followed by implementation regulations.

Is DDA ready?

Before any development can be initiated, there are certain aspects which the DDA needs to work on, one of them being the timely revision of the Zonal Development Plans (ZDPs). Delhi has 15 zones under the Master Plan, and each has its own ZDP. It is the ZDP that would denote exact areas which are open to land pooling.

If a consortium of developers has 70 per cent of contiguous area in any sector, it can apply for a development license for that area. However, these sector boundaries are yet to be defined in the ZDPs, and this becomes an urgent prerequisite to be met by DDA to initiate the implementation of the policy.

The policy has also introduced concepts such as ‘external development charges’ and ‘tradable Floor Area Ratio (FAR)’ to the Delhi real estate market. External development charge is the amount that the builders would pay to DDA, for providing public services and infrastructure; while tradable FAR would be floor space that can be used by developers for building additional floors on certain other locations, or for trading them to other developers. Awareness about these concepts and their acceptance among the public and the stakeholders is crucial, since this would play a key role when these documents are used for transactions.

To ensure public awareness, transparency of information and confidence building among investors, DDA will need to strengthen its communication strategy significantly.

Ever since the first draft of the policy was introduced in 2009, many potential buyers have ended up putting token amounts in proposed projects, even when the area under the land pooling scheme had not yet been declared. In the absence of any real estate regulator and redressal mechanism then, the situation was not handled strategically by the DDA; the latter merely circulated a notice to not buy flats which claim to be on land developed through pooling, but could not take legal action in such cases.

Presently, the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) Act, 2016 has been enacted and would function parallelly to regulate real estate development and strengthen the buyer’s rights, but the integration of this law into the land pooling model remains to be seen.

Coordination of DDA with private sector

The private sector, understandably, has been keen to get the policy implemented and it is reported that in the ninety-five villages declared as part of the development area, land has already been aggregated by private entities. Under the new policy, there may be a sudden boost in the land development process, putting pressures on DDA and other service providers to keep pace with private development for integrated infrastructure provision.

However, with DDA’s limited capacity and lack of sufficient experience with private sector partnerships, it will have to scale up institutional capacity and resources.  The land pooling policy itself will need more elaboration on aspects such as the phasing and prioritisation of the projects.

Although Delhi has seen development through private entities and through co-operative housing societies, land pooling as a policy brings in new concepts such as providing a licence to prospective developers based on the applications made and other obligations such as checking the compliance of the submitted plans to building byelaws, implementing a proposed ‘single window system, and keeping a check on the final implementation.

The city will also need to have a mechanism to address any disputes between developers, landowners, buyers, and other stakeholders. All this will put immense strain on the limited capacity of the recently formed land pooling cell in DDA.

Ruby Moun is an Associate at Indian Institute for Human Settlements. She is trained as an architect-urban planner, and has worked on land administration, particularly related to land assembly and land records management in various states. Views expressed are personal.