India Telecom

October 8, 2002
Bhoomi: When Digital Goes To Farmers

Convergence Plus Team

Who does not know that India's Silicon Valley is in Bangalore? However, another initiative from the Karnataka state government, whose capital is Bangalore (sometimes it is worth reminding the IT buffs that the metro has other distinctions also), is now getting into the international headlines for quite another reason. It is for sending the valley's IT flavors into the fields of over 6.7 million farmers across the state.

The leading chipmaker Intel had made a film of this evidence of information technology going to the farmer. The Karnataka government's "Bhoomi" scheme has turned into digital form the land records of the farmers from the traditional handwritten "Patta."

"This is the first time that such a process is being employed at an application level to ensure authentication of data management," says Rajeev Chawla, Revenue Secretary of the Karnataka government who is credited with the success of this unique program in e-governance. Intel's chief Craig Barrett wants to showcase the project to the world. For, here is evidence that use of IT is absolutely relevant to the common people in developing countries as it is to the hi-tech economies of the developed. Besides Intel, the World Bank, the UNDP and several others have been fascinated by the success of this project which in its sweep, size and impact, is undoubtedly far ahead of all such applications of IT to the benefit of the common man.

The contrast between the old system of handwritten land records and the digitized ones is not simply in terms of quality of the product or its convenience to the farmers. It is in terms of the far deeper forces this changeover is expected to promote in the rural cradle of the country where different time warps co-exist and entrenched interests resist change.

In the manual system, land records in Karnataka (as in the rest of India) were maintained by some nine thousand village accountants, each serving a cluster of three to our villages. These records were of two types: one, a register that indicated the current ownership of each parcel of land, its area and cropping pattern and, two, village maps that reflected the boundaries of each parcel. When a farmer wanted to have an authenticated copy of his land record or when wanted changes in the record on sale of land or on inheritance, he had to make an application to the village accountant, a request that was called "mutation."

When a village accountant receives such a request, he is supposed to notify all parties concerned and paste this notice in the village revenue office. The village officer had the run of the show and the landowner, specially, those who were from poorer or socially backward sections always had difficulty in getting the village accountant to go through the process and give him the papers. The actual changes were to be carried out by the Revenue Inspector after a 30-day period of waiting for objections. The landowner was at the mercy of the combination of these village officials who ruled the roost.

Rarely was this transaction done without some hefty consideration. The bribe in Karnataka ranged from Rs 100 to Rs 2,000 depending upon the importance of the final product to the applicant. Often, these officials could be persuaded to add on some ambiguous details that could deprive the landowner either part or whole of the land or nullify the transaction itself - it all depended upon the size of the consideration and how effectively the landowner would be served. For a bribe above Rs 10,000, the records could be manipulated to the advantage of the bribe giver. As the records with the village accountant were not open to public scrutiny, the officer had the landowner villager at his feet. Though there were superior officers at the taluka (sub division of a district) level for scrutiny of these records, the system of physical verification of the records was often weak as their number multiplied with each inheritance or sale. The village functionaries had also many other functions to perform and the primary one of keeping the records got low priority in their scheme of things.

History books tell us that the land records system in the country goes back to the Moghul era when they were re-organized and consolidated. The British Administration made land records the base of their edifice of administration realizing how these were crucial for the huge majority of people who lived in the rural areas. Even the proper maintenance of law and order rested on proper keeping of the land records. Higher-level district officers had to learn the land records and revenue system thoroughly in the very formative years of their tenure in the government.

Though there were sporadic efforts at both central and state level all through the last 50 years for reform, the system's core could not be touched in the absence of a proper information recording and processing system. IT provided that answer. In the absence of a total commitment to the project at the political level, success could not be achieved, though computerization of land records was attempted in the state way back in 1991. It was when the first pilot was initiated through a centrally sponsored scheme of Computerization of Land Records, fully funded by the government of India. By 1996, projects for computerization of land records were sanctioned for all districts in Karnataka. The project failed mainly because it had no provision to install computers at the taluka level where manual records were actually updated.

The present program tackles this deficiency by providing a computerized land record kiosk (Bhoomi centre) at every taluka level. Already, a kiosk each is operational in 140 of the 177 talukas in Karnataka. At these taluka offices, a farmer can obtain a copy of an RTC online by paying a fee of Rs 15. A second computer screen faces the clients to enable them to see the transaction being performed. Copies can be obtained for any land parcel in the taluka by providing the name of the owner or the plot number. A village accountant is available full-time at these kiosks, unlike the old system where an official could be on tour or make himself scarce in order to pressurize the landowner.

When a change of ownership takes place through sale or inheritance, farmers can file for a mutation of the land record at the Bhoomi center. Each request is assigned a number by the computer. The number can be used to check the status of the application on a touch-screen provided on a pilot basis in three of the computerized kiosks. The computer automatically generates notices, which are then handed over to the village accountants. Most village accountants are not stationed at taluka offices, but they visit the central taluka office every two to three days to pick up these papers.

The process of issuing notices by village accountants to interested parties remains the same. As before, the revenue inspector who is stationed in the field approves changes to the land record 30 days after the notices are served, provided there are no objections. It takes a few days for the approval to reach the Bhoomi kiosk, where it is scanned on the day of its arrival. An inward and outward register is maintained. The updated RTC is printed at the Bhoomi kiosk and handed over to the village accountant for record. The new owner receives a copy on demand. Bhoomi kiosks create scanned copies of the original mutation orders and notices to avoid unnecessary litigation due to claims that the notices were not served.

With the computerized system, administrators can quickly determine the number of approved and overdue mutation orders. Information collected from one urban taluka indicates that earlier 3,000 mutations were handled annually. Since computerization, there has been a 50 percent jump in the number of mutation requests. This change would seem to indicate a level of approval of the new system by the population, and willingness to update changes in land ownership that were previously left undocumented.

A significant innovation in this program is the introduction of a bio-logon metrics system from Compaq in the Bhoomi software that authenticates all users of the software -- based on their fingerprints. A log is maintained of all transactions in a session. This makes an officer accountable for his decisions and actions. The government also has plans to Web-enable the database to make available to the farmer a copy of the land record locally through an Internet kiosk -- although without signature such a copy will only have an informative value.

Implementation challenges

Rollout of the application to 177 far-flung locations has been a challenge due to the poor quality of manual records and the enormity of the data entry task. In the first phase, the project was implemented on a pilot basis in a controlled environment at four talukas. After gaining experience in data entry operations and implementation of the software, the scheme was extended to one pilot taluka in each one of the 27 districts. In the third phase, the project is being rolled out simultaneously to all the remaining 177 talukas. All this is being done in the local language for which special software was on hand.

Records in the field were not up-to-date due to poor work culture and lack of training among the revenue staff. Besides, farmers often do not report the transactions within the family, either because they are discouraged by the attitude of the revenue staff or due to internal family problems. The maintenance of land records is not uniform across districts.

The project's success was also because of the special efforts put in planning the change over from manual to digital recording. Elaborate and proper planning, plus the political commitment of the chief minister S.M. Krishna explains why the present plan succeeded while lack of these led to the failure of the earlier digitization program.

The planners focused on the fact that the revenue officials would not be interested in data entry. The work therefore was given to private data entry agencies that had to put in the 20,000 man-months of work in an offline mode at the taluka level. A comprehensive software that accommodated all variations in the manual records across districts was used. After the initial data entry, prints were validated against original record books by the village accountants.

Asked about the challenges of the changeover, revenue secretary Chawla said that many problems were encountered in offline data entry. The process was slow and error prone due to poor quality of work by data entry agencies. Technical guidance from officers of the district office of the National Informatics Center was not easily available as they were overloaded with other work. Data entry agencies were also unwilling to recruit more manpower as it required investment in training on a specialized data entry software, that would not be useful to them for other projects. Interruptions in power supply in taluka headquarters and delay in maintenance of computers at that level by the vendors complicated the problems.

To tackle this problem, the Karnataka government had the imagination to appoint a consultant in every district to act as a bridge between the data entry agency and the district administration. After the system is operational, the consultant trains the taluka staff and helps the district administration in the day to day work at the Bhoomi kiosk.

Operators have been provided for one year to handle online data entry at the Bhoomi kiosks. Village accountants will take over the work from these operators after a year. A comprehensive training module was designed jointly by the department and NIC to train the accountants. Training lasts seven days -- about 11 hours each day, followed by a paperless test on the last day.

The village accountants who would be in charge of the new kiosks were chosen very carefully. Young persons fresh out of college were recruited and trained at the headquarters. These officials had not experienced the power that a village accountant could exercise over rural farmers. The project leader (additional secretary of the department) personally participated in the training given to every batch of accountants to ensure that they felt complete ownership and a sense of importance in being assigned to this new initiative. Accountants were encouraged to talk to the project leader either at his home or at his office. Nearly 500 officials, including all deputy Tahsildars, were trained in the state headquarters, and more than 1,000 officials were trained by the Bhoomi consultants at the district level.

Challenge of getting staff on board

The project correctly anticipated the challenge the project would face from involved field officials that their job descriptions will change in a major way. To allay their fears, twelve state-level information seminars were organized for 1,200 senior and mid-level officers. Four division level workshops were organized to train 800 officials. The seminars emphasized that maintenance of land records was only one of their many functions and that computerization would remove the drudgery of maintaining these records manually. Revenue officials would continue to be responsible for field enquiry. Reducing corruption was not the key message at these gatherings. It was a tactical move that paid dividends in a situation where these officials could have either made or marred the project irretrievably, the organizers points out.

The political executive was not only completely involved in the computerization project but it also ensured that the people were aware of their involvement. The Chief Minister and Revenue Minister highlighted the importance of the project in many public fora. Chief Minister Krishna wrote regularly to all District Deputy Commissioners, exhorting them to get fully involved in computerization. He inaugurated a large number of land record kiosks. Meanwhile, the Revenue Minister was on the job reviewing the computerization process and also inaugurated a large number of kiosks. A committee of Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) visited the kiosks and Deputy Commissioners invited MLAs of their districts to witness the functioning of kiosks. This helped demonstrate there was a strong political will for computerization.

Selected field level personnel were invited to participate in the software development process for various Bhoomi modules through a formal state level Bhoomi committee. Meetings were held with participation from various levels in the Department to elicit suggestions for improvement; and decisions taken at these meetings were incorporated into the software design. Nearly 125 man-months were spent on software development. A further effort of 30 man-months will be needed to upgrade to the next version.

Field supervision is critical to rollout any new system. The project leader incharge preferred to appoint four independent consultants who could tour sites randomly in each division and report problems and progress of Bhoomi. Appointing consultants turned out to be problematic, as the central government project did not permit such a line item of expenditure. The expected cost was Rs.1.5 million.

Benefits and costs

The expenditure on data entry operations for about 2 million RTCs in 27 districts was Rs 80 million. The unit cost of providing hardware, construction of computer rooms and kiosks was of the order of Rs 0.64 million for each taluk. Thus, the total out-of-pocket expenditure on the project was Rs 185 million. This does not include the cost of software development done gratis by National Informatics Centre, a department of the central government.

The cost of processing an RTC has been roughly estimated at Rs 13, assuming a life of five years for the hardware and an activity level of 2 million RTCs issued from all the kiosks (10 percent of all holdings). This cost includes an assumed operational expenditure of Rs 2 for stationery, cartridges and electricity. The current user fee of Rs 15 seems sufficient to cover these costs. However, if the scheme is extended to 700 sub taluka offices, there would be an additional expenditure of Rs 0.25 million per kiosk on hardware (one PC -- Rs 45, 000, printer -- Rs 20, 000, UPS -- Rs 5, 000, generator -- Rs 30, 000) and site preparation, raising the unit cost of processing to Rs 15 per record.

The user charge for an RTC is Rs 15. By end November 2001, Rs 5 million had been collected through user fees for distribution of 330,000 RTCs through 140 kiosks operational for periods varying from three to 12 months. An additional 12,000 RTCs have been issued for official purposes.

Farmers can now get an RTC for any parcel of land and Chat extract (statement of total land holdings of an individual) in five to 30 minutes from an RTC information kiosk at the taluka headquarters. In principle, these records had already been available directly from the Village Accountant; but in practice it meant a lot of inconvenience, harassment and bribes. Village Accountants have travel duty and are generally not easily accessible. Now the land records are in public domain. Any record can be viewed through a touch screen at the kiosk. On an experimental basis, scanned maps of plots are being printed on the opposite side of the RTC printout in some of the talukas.

Farmers can apply for mutation and expedite the process by reviewing the status of their request online, presenting documentary evidence to supervisors in the event that their request is not processed within the stipulated time period.

Potential future benefits

There are plans to use the Bhoomi kiosk for disseminating other information, like lists of destitute and handicapped pensioners, families living below the poverty line, concessional foodgrain card holders, mandi rates and weather information. Such information is already available at one taluka on a pilot basis.

The system generates various types of reports on land ownership by size, type of soil, crops, owner's sex, etc., which would be useful for planning poverty alleviation programs, and supplying agricultural inputs. Banks and other lending institutions could be provided electronic access to the database for processing requests for crop loans, and conduct some advance planning on the quantum of lending required. Similarly, high court, district and taluka courts could access the database for resolving legal disputes surrounding land. The system could also lead to better administration of Land Reforms Act, such as enforcing a ceiling on land holdings, etc.

Key lessons learnt

Implementation of land record computerization has been difficult in India, as any government official with some experience of land revenue would tell you. Bhoomi succeeded because there was a champion who worked a 15-hour day for over 12 months, devoting 80 percent of his time to the project. Minimizing resistance from staff by harnessing political support was an important contributory factor. Extensive training coupled with a participatory style also helped to diminish resistance.

Project managers need to balance potential benefits against risk of implementation failure in deciding how much reform (re-engineering) to tackle at any one time. In Bhoomi, significant benefits are delivered in issuing RTCs, but much of the old mutation process remains unaltered. As there is no change in the role of Revenue Inspector in passing the mutation order, corruption in the mutation process may not necessarily reduce. Bhoomi has reduced the discretion of public officials by introducing provisions for recording a mutation request online. Farmers can now access the database and are empowered to follow up.

Reports on overdue mutations can point to errant behavior. Still, supervisors must examine the reports and take appropriate action. In remote areas, operators may turn away citizens by telling them that the system offering online service is down. Strict field supervision is needed (through empowered citizens committees and NGOs) to curb such behavior. Ultimately, the only recourse that a citizen has against such practices is to lodge a complaint. The process for lodging a complaint should be facilitated through the Web. The backend has to be geared up to handle complaints received electronically.

As an implementation strategy, manually written RTCs were declared illegal from the day on which the computerized system became operational in a taluka. The notification was issued on a taluka-by-taluka basis as and when the scheme became operational there. This forced the department and the farmers to completely rely on the new system. The strategy worked because the application design was robust and did not falter.

There was some concern in Karnataka about raising the user fee to Rs 15 from Rs 2 in the manual system. Often these fears about user fees are exaggerated, particularly if services have genuinely been improved. The response of the people at taluka level has been overwhelming. Queues can be seen at the kiosks in 140 taluka centers, and 330,000 people have paid the fee without grumbling.

Elected representatives, district officials and farmers are requesting that Bhoomi be extended to sub-taluka level. Presumably, the project is considered an unqualified success in their eyes, which in turn, raises the level of political commitment to this IT-based project.

However, on the government side, such expansion is being looked at for its impact on the fragile revenue position of the state. This expansion will increase costs without necessarily increasing the number of RTCs issued. The department finds that it would also find it difficult to monitor and support a geographically spread out operation. One view is that perhaps, an independent audit is required to measure improvements and collect feedback from all stakeholders -- something that is not done for most projects. In any case, the system should be allowed to stabilize and prove its sustainability over a two-year period before attempting its replication, say the officials. Many years ago, a DRDA computerization project called CRISP was replicated in 500 districts in a hurried manner. The expansion turned out to be a failure.

However, the state government has decided to take the plunge and provide the benefit of such easy access to land records at the sub-taluka level as well. (Please see interview with Chief Minister S.M. Krishna alongside). The state hopes that there would be private sponsorship for such a program of taking it further down to the grassroots.

The success of the project has already attracted international attention with the recognition it has received from the Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management and the Stockholm Challenge Award. However, Chief Minister Krishna is more happy over the impact it has had on the people. The farmers are now realizing that they are not fated to be at the mercy of insolent revenue officialdom. The computer is innovatively becoming part of their experience of governance. They are finding this experience rewarding. In the IT state, the computer in the countryside might be as familiar a part of the people's lives as the bullock cart.