Tribals in Gujarat finally get land rights, using GPS technology

[Barun Mitra]

Tribals in Gujarat finally get land rights, using GPS technology
by Swaminathan S A Aiyar

The Economic Times, 23 July 2013

<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/swaminathan-s-a-aiyar/articlelist/6274210.cms>

Last week I visited tribal areas in Gujarat to see how technology and
an activist NGO could empower once-powerless tribals to get their full
land rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006.

The Act provided for land titles to be given to tribal plots in
cultivation in December 2005. Earlier, government takeover of forests
had converted forest dwellers into encroachers on land they had
occupied for centuries. Their villages and farms were always at risk
of demolition by forest departments. The Act was supposed to end this
inequity. Many state governments soon claimed, falsely, that they had
implemented the Act, empowering lakhs.In fact implementation was
terrible. No proper maps or land records existed in most areas.
Semi-literate villagers were supposed to fill long forms and file
claims. Forest Departments contemptuously vetoed most claims.

Under the Act, gram sabhas certified which plots were cultivated by
individual families in 2005, and forwarded the documents to the state
government. But 128,000 of the 182,000 claims filed in Gujarat were
fully or partly rejected. Even in the accepted cases, only part of the
claimed area was approved. ARCH (Action Research in Community Health
and Development) and other NGOs appealed to the High Court. The Court
pulled up the state government and decreed a review of claims,
allowing many sorts of evidence (including panchnamas, case records,
official receipts and satellite images from Google Earth as well as
the National Remote Sensing Agency) to establish ownership.

This opened the path for redress. Yet the traditional survey method of
triangulation to establish the boundaries and area of each farm plot
was onerous. Then ARCH came up with the idea of using GPS (global
positioning system) hand-held devices costing Rs 12,000 apiece.
Holding a GPS device, a tribal simply walked around the perimeter of
his plot and pressed some buttons. The device automatically sketched a
map of his farm, with the right latitude and longitude and exact area.

This enabled every family to produce a map of its holding, and get it
verified by the gram sabha. All individual maps were then superimposed
on a satellite image of the village dating from 2005 (the deadline
under the Act). This produced a detailed map showing the exact size
and ownership of every plot. Land disputes arose if two villagers
walked over the same area, and disputes were settled by the gram sabha
before certification. Any encroachment on forest land after 2005
showed up clearly after superimposing today's maps on the 2005
satellite image. This assuaged the Forest Department's fears.

Thus a simple technology promoted by activist NGO provided a quick,
elegant solution. The overall village map was then uploaded onto the
internet, empowering any villager to go to an internet cafe in a
nearby town and print out a copy. This ended tribal dependence for
land documentation on government departments or NGOs. Tribals are
willing to pay Rs 60 to ARCH for this service, roughly enough to cover
all costs. So, the project can be expanded without limit with no
subsidy or donations.

The new approach yielded far better outcomes. When tribals re-filed
claims using these maps and additional evidence like panchnamas and
receipts, government acceptance of claims went up to 61 out of 63 in
one village, and 96 out of 112 in another. ARCH hopes to average 90%
success. Early project villages are training their neighbours in using
GPS, speeding up tribal capacity. The project has so far covered 150
tribal villages, just one-tenth of the total. It may take 18 months to
cover all villages.

The Gujarat tribals say formal ownership makes a huge difference. They
are no longer treated as encroachers, and so are entitled to all
government schemes for agriculture, including land leveling and well
digging on their lands under MNREGA. Earlier, the forest department
banned the entry of tractors into forest land. But after getting
ownership recognition , tribals say they use tractors on 90% of plots,
because these are faster and cheaper than bullock ploughing. They want
to modernize fast.

There is an urgent need to spread this approach to all forested
states. The Liberty Instituteand ARCH are trying to do so (see
www.fra.righttoproperty.org) by contacting NGOs everywhere. Some
Marxist and "romantic pastoralist" NGOs oppose the very notion of
individual plots, or of modernizing tribals. But less ideological NGOs
are co-operating . A massive country-wide effort is needed to empower
of millions of tribals, making them masters of their own plots and
community land.

The same GPS technology could be used to help update land records
across India. This may require prior work on dispute settlement, since
disputes are furious and widespread. Still, the methodology has much
potential.

[ekene obianwa]

Hi,

This info is good for the work I am talking of. Technological development in solving disputes and enhancing development in Nigeria and Africa.

Thanks and more of this.

Sincerely,

Obianwa Ekenedilichukwu.

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