NCAER has launched two editions of supply side NCAER Land Records Services Index in 2020 and 2021. While expanding and improving quality of land records reflects the efforts on the supply side of these services, how are they perceived and used by the users? To address this question, it was felt that a demand side component be added to the index. This could assess to what extent households are actually aware of, use and value digitised land records. Another dimension of rights of property strengthened by improvement in the land records and related services of the government is the perception of the citizens of the security of their rights in property. Do the improvements in land records and services lead to perceptions of greater security of property rights, leading to positive impact on investments in property that enhance its value and productivity? An opportunity to examine these two related aspects has been presented by the integration of the ‘demand side survey’ of N-LRSI with the survey of perceptions of security of property rights in India as part of Prindex India Survey. Learning from the global experience and more specifically experience of Prindex surveys in India, it is now proposed to carry out an integrated sample survey of households addressing both the demand side perspectives on land records and perceptions of security of land and housing property rights. The combination of LRSI and Prindex will open up opportunities for rigorous study of the inter linkages between formal tenure and subjective perception of its security. It will also allow assessing the differences in awareness about formal tenure status and related rights, allocation of assets within the household, rights to them and their productive use, participation in off-household productive activities and linkages across housing and land markets. This may be particularly relevant for rural and peri-urban markets where the separation between housing and land markets is greater than in urban markets. To meet the objectives of the proposed study, a primary survey will be conducted spanning 25 Indian States/UTs, covering 15,800 households.
The Government of India’s Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT, originally known as the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, or DIPP) set a goal in early 2018 of making India a US$ 5 trillion economy by 2025. It was proposed to prepare strategic plans for the districts centred around their local strengths and economic activities with the objective of achieving an increase of at least 2-3 per cent in their annual growth rates. The DPIIT commissioned NCAER to carry out these exercise for Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts (Maharashtra) and Solan (Himachal Pradesh). Phase I included the identification of potential growth areas in the districts, making an initial set of recommendations for these potential areas, and preparing the District Strategic Plans, popularly known as District Development Plans. The goal of this during Phase II was to implement the proposed recommendations by mentoring and hand-holding the administration and other stakeholders in the district, along with capacity building and promotion of skilling initiatives. This study entailed several rounds of consultations with stakeholders, including the district administration, government departments, industry associations, entrepreneurs, NGOs, and ultimate beneficiaries like farmers and fishermen. The valuable feedback and inputs from all these stakeholders enabled the NCAER study team to effectively identify the thrust areas in Phase I and to prepare a comprehensive implementation plan in Phase II.
This study sponsored by Ministry of Tourism focussed on the following objectives:
- Quantify the sector-wise (or industry-wise) direct and indirect impact of tourism activities on overall economy, as a whole and especially on household income, which may be further disaggregated into different types of households like formal and informal.
- Quantify the sector-wise and overall loss in income of the economy and of the household sector and also the loss in jobs, due to the impact of Coronavirus pandemic on the tourism sector.
- Estimate the impact of gradual opening up of domestic tourism activities and of the sectors related to tourism.
- Estimate the likely impact of opening of international tourism, in the phased manner.
- Propose policy measures appropriate to provide relief to the tourism sector, in general, and households involved in tourism related activities, in particular, based on feedback received from various stakeholders.
In order to improve the financial base of the Local Bodies including Panchayati Raj Institutions, Central and State Finance Commissions have been providing many recommendations towards augmentation of the Own Source of Revenues of the panchayats to complement the grants provided to them by the Central and State Governments. Despite this, it is observed that the own source of revenue levels of the Rural Local Bodies in many States are very limited and they largely depend on the devolution of funds from the Central and the State Governments and the awards of the Central Finance Commission. It has also been observed that the management practices towards monetization of the Common Property Resources have often found to be lacking in the Rural Local Bodies resulting in their underutilisation. In light of the above, a primary data-based comprehensive study to assess the constraints and performance of Rural Local Bodies in generating own revenue is conducted. The study is proposed in selected 23 states namely Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal to have an objective assessment of the status of own sources of revenue of the Rural Local Bodies and management of Common Property Resources in the States. Also the study would map the best practices and provide guidelines for improving the same which could be adapted by other States.
Land policy in India has suffered from several deficits. Relative to its size, India suffers from a paucity of economic research, policy analysis, and systematic data on land, leading to well-meaning but poorly designed and implemented government programs. Land policy is defined constitutionally as the prerogative of India’s States and the focus of data and analytical efforts relating to land must also focus on the States. To help address these deficits, and with the generous support of the Omidyar Network, NCAER launched the NCAER Land Policy Initiative (NLPI) in April 2019 to build on our prior analytical work on land, our 60 plus years of experience with data collection, and our long-standing relationship of trust with governments. The objectives of the NLPI are to (1) raise official and citizen awareness of the distortions in India’s land markets and their cost to the economy; (2) produce and curate evidence and land data and to suggest solutions and state rankings that can nudge States through competitive federalism to improve their land administration, records and services; (3) where requested, pilot such solutions with States and evaluate them; and (4) help build a larger research community of analysts and experts on land issues in India. The Land Policy Initiative has been set up with two broad objectives, the creation of: (a) NCAER’s Land Records and Services Index (N-LRSI), and (b) NCAER’s Land Data Portal. While N-LRSI will create an index to capture the extent of digitization of land records and the quality of land records in Indian States and Union Territories, the Land Data Portal will be a data warehouse for all publicly available land data in India, along with N-LRSI data.
NCAER India Land Portal
