Abstract

Effective management of land resources is central to a nation’s social and economic prosperity. Updated and comprehensive land records play an important role in administering this scarce resource effectively. This policy brief looks at the legal and systemic characteristics of land records in India, including its revenue focus and deeds-based presumtive structure. It describes the basic formats of land records – textual records and spatial records – and the central government programmes initiatives to modernise these. It notes that the basic challenges of land records reform lie in access, comprehensiveness, facilitating real- time updation and designing replicable protocols. These details and challenges have specific state-level characteristics that need to be recognised and built upon. There is a clear sense that mere technology upgradation, without taking into account specificities of revenue processes in respective states, would not work.