Ever since I read about Hernando De Soto’s work years ago, I’ve been saying that the a major remedy for third world economic problems would be online land registries. Now, BusinessWeek reoprts that its happenning in India! Photon Courier notes
Why is this a big deal? you may ask. Previously, the deeds were controlled by “powerful village accountants.” They typically charged large fees to the poor farmers who needed copies of their deeds–and a farmer might need such copies 2 or 3 times a year when asking for loans (to buy fertilizer, for instance). And sometimes accountants would collude with upper-caste landlords to steal the land by altering the deeds.
In the state of Karnataka, 20 million deeds have been digitized over the past 5 years, and 200 kiosks have been deployed across the state. It now costs the equivalent of 30 cents to get a copy of one’s records–the previous fees from the local accountants were in the range of $2.00 to $20.00.
I would have implemented India’s system differently, but YAY anyway.
Wish PhotonCourier had included a link to the original article. I want to know who funded the project.
Comment by diane — July 5, 2004 @ 3:31 pm
Do a search on the BusinessWeek.com site and you can find it. You just have to pay to access the archive. If you decide to pay for it, I’d love to know the same.
Comment by Alex Jacobson — July 5, 2004 @ 3:43 pm
Couldn’t find it at BW. I did find this:
http://www.revdept-01.kar.nic.in/Bhoomi/Faq.htm
Looks like the project was state-funded.
Comment by diane — July 5, 2004 @ 11:30 pm