Decentralization as a Strategy to Scale Fit-for-Purpose Land Administration: An Indian Perspective on Institutional Challenges | Land Portal

Resource information

Date of publication: 
February 2021
Resource Language: 
ISBN / Resource ID: 
10.3390/land10020199
License of the resource: 
Copyright details: 
© 2021 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article.

Many countries grapple with the intractable problem of formalizing tenure security. The concept of ‘fit-for-purpose land administration’ (FFPLA) offers a way forward by advocating a shift towards a more flexible, pragmatic and inclusive approach for land rights recording. Inherently, the process and outcome of implementing FFPLA will have significant socio-political ramifications but these have not received much attention in the literature; additionally, few papers have considered this in the context of decentralization, an endorsed strategy for implementing FFPLA. This paper contributes to this gap by critically analyzing three land formalization initiatives in India which have employed flexible recording approaches and where decentralization is used to scale implementation. The cases show how quickly decentralization can kickstart implementation at scale via collaborations with local governing bodies and partnerships with non-state actors. An institutionalist approach highlights ensuing political contests between new and traditional land actors that inhibit political authority, and the challenges of coordinating a network of public and private actors without clear formal collaborative governance structures to ensure democratic outcomes. In doing so, we contribute to governance knowledge around FFPLA implementation so that it is ‘fit-for-people’ and better able to support policies and processes to secure land rights at scale.

Authors and Publishers

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s): 

Ho, Serene
Choudhury, Pranab R.
Haran, Nivedita
Leshinsky, Rebecca

Publisher(s): 

Data provider

Geographical focus