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Sibabrata Choudhury

The World Bank

Land and Poverty Conference

March 24, 2014

Improving Land Governance

through Community Participation

in Odisha, India

Landesa’s Work• Founded in 1967 by Roy

Prosterman

• Landesa works to secure land rights for the world’s poorest people

• Partner with developing country governments to design and implement laws, policies, and programmes concerning land that provide opportunity, further economic growth, and promote social justice

• Worked in more than 50 countries and helped 400 million people obtain secure land rights

• Offices in the U.S., China and India

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Land Governance Issues in Odisha

• Households have title without possession and possession without title

• In Odisha, ceiling surplus and government wasteland have been distributed since mid-1970s

– Land allotted but title not issued

– Allotted land cultivated by previous owner

– Land quality: not suitable for cultivation

• Less than 50% are cultivating land that has been allotted

• No state or district wide data available on extent of possession of land

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Interventions by Government

• Regulation to prevent transfer of land to non-tribals

• Land restoring campaign (Mo Jami Mo Diha) in 2007

• Enumeration of landless in 2004-05:

– 2004-05: 249,000 homesteadless and 445,000 landless households identified in the state

– Vasundhara scheme launched in 2005-06 to provide homestead land up to 4 cents (now 10) to homesteadless families – 275,000 families allotted homestead land between 2005-06 and 2010-11

– 2011: Circular for re-enumeration, 236,000 families enlisted as homesteadless

Assessment of Land Allocation Programme

• Implementation challenges (assessment study done by Landesa in 88 villages across 10 districts during 2009-10)

– Patta without identification, demarcation and possession

– Allotted land far from habitation

– About 40% of households did not have secure rights over homestead land

– People did not receive patta to current house sites, unwilling to relocate, allotted house sites are not identified or demarcated

– Capacity gaps at different levels

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• Additional capacity to help government officials to accurately identify landlessness households

• Village youth (Community Resource Person or CRP) identify families not tracked by government system

• CRPs identify landless families including single women who were “invisible”

Community Resource Persons to Address Land Rights

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CRP Model for Land Rights and Livelihoods Improvement

• Village youth (Community Resource Person) to help steer land allocation

– Identify homesteadless and landless households including women-headed households and single women

– Facilitate settlement process including field verification, camp court and patta distribution

Accurate identification of landless

Productive use of local youth for village development

Participatory land allocation and settlement

CRP Model Addressed Program Shortcomings

Shortcomings in earlier practice

• Lack of staff capacity to carry out the program – proper identification of landless remained an issue

• Rural villagers had very little contact with government offices

How does CRP model address the shortcomings?

• Land allocation becomes locally driven, participatory and transparent

• Complete enumeration in a village to identify all landless including single women

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Community Involvement in Identification of Landless

• Enumeration of landless including single women

– Transparency in identification

– Increased ownership of programme

– Reduced level of discretion

– Multiple levels of cross verification

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Sustainability and Accountability

• Creation of a sustainable

village resource

– Village youth trained to

support programme delivery

through accurate and reliable

information

– Demand generation for rights

and entitlements

– Critical link between

community and government

– Effective programme delivery

and improved outreach

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Community Ownership and Improved Governance

• Revenue officer selects CRP in consultation with community members

• Proactive engagement by community

– Community members validate list of landless household

– Community members involved in and participate in land allocation processes

• Land records accessible to community

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Secure Land Rights Enable Communities

• Community driven

exercise

– Community ownership in

the process

– Confidence in

Government to deliver

– Transparency in process

– Outreach to difficult to

reach areas

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Thanks for your attention