Bhoomi project struggling to eliminate land disputes in Karnataka
Land disputes are common especially in rural India and forged land documents over the years have made the problem a grave one. Karnataka is one of the states where land disputes posed a challenge for the government over the decades. To change the scenario, use of technological expertise was sought to tackle the issue. Bhoomi was conceived as a part of it.
Bhoomi, launched in 2002, is a program that digitized Karnataka’s 20 million handwritten land records. It was hailed as a remarkable use of computer technology to deter bureaucratic interference and corruption in land record maintenance. However, 10 years down the line, land disputes are far from being over in Karnataka and there are issues related to the program which remain unsolved.
What is Bhoomi
It is a project of online delivery and management of land records in Karnataka. It provides transparency in land records management with better citizen services and cuts through bureaucratic interference. Property and land registration in India has always been a much debated topic. Bhoomi is a software mechanism which is designed to control changes in land registration in the state. The project was jointly funded by both the Union Government of India and Karnataka Government. The project was developed and implemented by National Informatics Centre (NIC) and launched in 2002.
The aim of the project was to eliminate the corruption and poor maintenance of land records at the block level offices. Bhoomi has digitized land ownership of 6.7 million farmers in the state. A farmer’s record of Rights Tenancy and Corps (RTC) is being produced as a computerised document under Bhoomi. The RTC is a type of social ID, which is required by a farmer to obtain bank loans and settle land disputes.
The main town in each taluka of Karnataka has an ‘e-kiosk’ with two computers, a printer and a modem. The software stores data of each villager in the taluka – landowner’s name, history of previous ownership, soil type and other details of the land. A farmer can get access to either RTC or mutatation record by flling up a form at the ‘e-kiosks’.
Flaws in Bhoomi
Although it was being hailed as a remarkable implementation of technology and a feather in the e-governance crown in India, Bhoomi has not been able to eliminate land disputes in the state. Earlier, the village accountants employed by the state government used to keep maintain the land records and any change that had occurred in ownership of lands. There were numerous accounts of allegations against the government officials being a part of corruption and exploitation of the rural poor, especially in case of ‘mutation’ or change of ownership of lands.
The main problem regarding the Bhoomi project is that fraudulent land records have gone online. The government is being criticised for hurrying through the project without tallying old records with current data, by which excess land could have been distributed among the landless and cheated landowners.
Farmers who were being cheated by rural rich landowners as well as by government officials have complained that old land grabs have been legitimized by Bhoomi and they do not have any chance of recovering the land.
The other, more basic problem with Bhoomi is that most of rural farmers are illiterates and cannot avail the services provided by the project. Many farmers lost their lands due to illegal land grab by wealthy families who took land documents as collateral for loans and later usurped the lands. Although the program has made way for transparency in land records in future, it has been prey to digitizing fraudulent records in many cases.
The government analysts and policy makers have conceded the fact that Information Technology cannot address fraud in primary data which is put online. The flaws inherent in implementing Bhoomi can be a lesson for the government machineries in case of implementing further e-governance projects in future.
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