The Svamitva Scheme Can Revitalize Our Rural Economy

Context: Svamitva scheme can redefine India’s rural entrepreneurship ecosystem and revive rural economy.

Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas (Svamitva) scheme

• Launched on 24 April 2020 with the Ministry of Panchayati Raj as nodal ministry.
• Aims to survey village areas and provide a property card to house owners as their Record of Rights (RoR). The goal is to cover all Indian villages by March 2025.
• Deploys modern technology and survey methods:
  • Professional survey-grade drones to be used to photograph the area, and a digital elevation model or a 3D map of the area to be created.
  • Geo-tagging of the images is done using reference points provided by the Continuous Operating Reference System (CORS) network.

Need for modernisation of land records management

• Rural population lacks proper land ownership documents: Many are living under constant fear of losing possession of their land and property and also restricts their loan eligibility.
• Informal property ownership: Village maps are more than 50-year-old village maps, and the informal property ownership results in disputes clogging the legal system - accounts for nearly 70% of pending cases.
• Constraining local governance institutions: In absence of updated property and asset register, gram panchayats are unable to assess and collect taxes and invest in civic infrastructure.
  • Fast-expanding cities are unable to properly assimilate their adjoining villages as town municipality rules do not apply to rural settlements.

Wider potential of the Svamitva scheme

• Will spur loans and industrial sector: As land and real estate accounts for 80% of all assets held by rural households, and more than half of India’s MSME enterprises are located in rural areas.
• Catalysing innovation across multiple industries:
  • Data Collaboration: Data produced by Survey of India and other organisations using public funds to be treated as a public good and thus will be available for use by businesses, citizens, NGOs, academia and research organisations.
  • Geographic Information Systems (GIS) industry to get a boost: Interesting applications could develop in agriculture, banking and finance, automated mobility, town planning, water resources and disaster management, apart from several internet-of-things applications.
  • Spur drone ecosystem: As the scheme uses private drone operators and other ancillary services.

Way forward: Challenges need to be addressed -

• Amendments to provide legal basis for property cards:
  • Land revenue laws of states or their Panchayati Raj Acts needs to be amended.
  • Gram panchayats would need to be supported so as to institutionalise the collection of property tax based on property card data.
• Address exclusion error:g. Before the finalisation of maps and issuance of property cards, maps with property boundaries are made available to villagers for verification.
• Implementation responsibility on states: States would need to establish a responsive and easily accessible grievance redressal system for citizens.
  • Property transactions in rural areas need to be properly recorded and linked to the database of property cards to ensure that the maps stay current.