Information Age Government: Success Stories of Online Land Records & Revenue Governance from India

This document details the justification for and outcome of efforts to foster and support e-governance in India, which has focussed on systematising manual land use records. The author begins by providing background, indicating that manual land use systems are diverse, but are generally based on keeping track of a particular identification number for each plot of land. This process has changed in various ways in light of the increasing availability of computers in India. The author explains that "E-governance entails that the citizens will be provided with a single place to retrieve information about government's plans, programmes, projects, policies and legislation." The remainder of the document examines the successes and challenges associated with initiatives to streamline land use records as part of a larger effort to support e-governance.

Specifically, the document focusses on the Computerisation of Land Records (CLR) Scheme, which was designed to:

• facilitate maintenance and updating of changes in land databases, such as changes associated with irrigation, natural calamities, consolidation, transfer of ownership, and the like.
• make land records tamper-proof, which may reduce litigation and social conflict.
• provide support for implementation of development programmes for which data about distribution of land holdings is vital.
• facilitate detailed planning for infrastructure and environmental development.
• facilitate preparation of an annual set of records through mechanised processes, thereby producing accurate documents for recording details such as collection of land revenue, cropping patterns, etc.
• foster queries about land data.
• provide a database for the agricultural census.

The author then describes success stories gleaned from programmes that have used CLR. These projects focus on initiatives like Citizen Information Centres, which aim to make administration "accountable and citizen-friendly, ensuring transparency and right to information and motivating the civil services." They include Karnataka: Bhooomi (Land), Himachal Pradesh: Lokmitra (People's Friend), and Haryana: Rewari District. These programmes were not without their challenges, however; lessons learned are reviewed. The author concludes by noting that "Participation of the people in the developmental and democratic processes requires that the access to new technologies should be taken to grassroots. Merely putting computers in a government office won't help".

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