The effi ciency of Land Information Management System
will be assessed by its capacity to meet the needs of the
land managers and users in urban and rural areas
LAND forms important part of
development activity. Land revenue
is one of the sources of income for state
governments. It may come from land
holdings by private individuals, real estate
transactions or other natural resources
being tapped by various sections of
the society. Hence, creation of a Land Information Management System involves:
Collection and depiction of accurate
information on boundaries, land
holdings and ownership, with reference
to other spatial information.
Collection and depiction of
topographical and attribute
information regarding land
use and natural resources.
Updating and maintenance
of the information.
A LIMS is a computer system stored
with spatial data pertaining to land
parcels which can be easily retrieved,
received and sent, for depiction, query,
analysis and manipulation for arriving
at judicious decisions. The LIMS should
also generate reports and outputs of the
analysis which is easy to handle and
independently meaningful. Development
of a LIMS involves the following:
Data Collection.
Data representation
in a computer.
Design of application software
for analysis and create
Decision Support System.
It is important at this
stage to understand the
basic issues involved in
developing an effi cient LIMS.
These basic issues are:
Magnitude of the basic tasks in
a cadastral system – number of
parcels to measure and register.
Need to relate these parcel information
with other spatial information.
Magnitude and types of problems
involved in the land ownership.
Role of the cadastre and to
appreciate the requirement of it’s
completeness, comprehensiveness,
usefulness and effective use.
Use of existing land records in an
effi cient manner in the decision support
system in National and Global scenario
and achieve incremental improvement
in measurement and depiction
accuracy, in a specifi ed time frame.
Facilitate use of latest technology
in storage of available information
and incorporate updated information
in the system continuously.
Understand the availability of the
capacity to do the job and requirement
to build capacity to support the system.
Status of the system at present
Cadastre in India is a State Subject. The
respective state governments have their
own system of collection, depiction
and maintenance of land information.
Cadastral records form the input to
assess land revenue. Most of these
records have been developed by surveys
carried out more than 50 years before.
Positional information
and measurements
Measurements are not on a national
framework. Different techniques were
adopted by government agencies while
initially building these records. Though at
the time of these surveys, the techniques
were modern, in the present context, they
are outdated and burdened with errors.
Descriptive and numerical information
recorded in fi eld have been converted
into graphical records. These have been
prepared decades ago and not updated.
They have the following drawbacks:-
The field and graphical records
are in a mutilated condition.
They are not on uniform
or standardized scale.
The procedure adopted during data
collection did not ensure that the
inconsistencies are detected and
minimized to keep it within tolerance.
In many cases the records
are not even available.
Due to inconsistencies in records
and measurements, a lot of
litigations have cropped up.
They are not on a national framework.
Hence integration to smaller scales
for analysis on national basis is not
possible, within acceptable limits
of discrepancies and tolerance.
Attribute information
The land use information is not updated
from time to time. This leads to under
valuation of the holdings leading to loss
in revenue during transactions. In most
of the states, the land administration
is managed by using hard copy
revenue data either in the form of
maps or descriptive documents. The
information has following drawbacks:
They are outdated by decades
and hence the government is
undergoing loss due to incorrect
assessment of taxes.
The change in land use information
is not informed by the owners from
time to time, which is binding as
per the law, hence loss in revenue.
What needs to be done
It is essential that creation of Land
Information Management System is
done with the following approach:
State level and National
level connectivity.
Use of the LIMS.
Use of existing records till new
records are created addressing
all issues involved.
Use of modern technology keeping
in mind the terrain conditions.
Status of the system in individual states.
Transfer of technology and knowhow
to state governments and
industry in carrying out the work.
Building capacity in local
level and involving them in the
process of collection of data.
Collect once and use many
times for many purposes.
Need for national
connectivity
Cadastral records need to be
corrected for creation of a
scientifi cally designed Sustainable
LIMS. Correction cannot be done
in an ad-hoc manner because
public will have no faith in the
system. Hence it is necessary that
the records are created afresh, by
actual survey on the ground. During the
process, most modern methods of survey
should be adopted so that the errors in the
records due to inconsistent methodology
are removed. While doing so, if the national
connectivity can be achieved, it will be
easy for integration of the data and analysis
on a national scenario. There is also
requirement to streamline the procedures
in carrying out the fi led data collection
so that inconsistency can be removed
to the maximum extent. (Figure -1)
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