ADVOCACY Urban Land Reforms

Creating the momentum for Governance Reforms

URBAN LAND REFORMS

One of the central reforms required urgently in Urban India is around land.
There are significant benefits that would accrue from Urban Land Reforms:

• Sources of revenue to the state and local governments
• Direct
• Property taxes
• Stamp duty on registration
• Building licences
• Company and individual taxes
• Indirect
• Sales and service taxes
• Employment generation in this sector
• Construction labour
• White collar
• Credit extension from banking institutions
• Land as a source for credit flows
• Improved efficiency in user charges
• Electricity
• Water supply and sanitation
• Better direction of economic subsidies to the urban poor
• Identification of BPL families
• Reduction in transaction costs to citizens
• Time
• Simplification of procedures
• Transparency
• Improved planning, administration and coordination
• Peri-urban areas getting swallowed by cities
• Gaping jurisdictional issues
• Poor urban planning due to weak land management

However, while the issue of rural land reforms has engaged many of the best minds in the country, very little work has been done on Urban Land Reforms in India. Listed below are some of the issues faced in urban areas:

• There are no clear records in urban areas, especially after state revenue departments handed over the responsibility to city governments. The British need for land revenues created a fairly strong land records system in rural areas; however, there was no such process in urban areas, nor is there much historical knowledge of urban land records management in India.
• We don’t have a system of land title, which guarantees ownership; the sale deed and tax-paid receipts are only documents of presumed title, and have been rejected by the Supreme Court as not counting for legally valid documents of ownership.
• Given the small size of land holdings in urban areas, the volume of information to manage is enormous, placing enormous strain on the maintenance and ongoing management of land records.

What is needed is a comprehensive approach to urban land management, what we are calling URBAN LAND REFORMS. This could include several aspects of a larger land reforms agenda that applies to rural areas, but will have exclusive items that are of specific relevance only to urban areas.