Bangladesh has so far enacted 146 land-related laws dealing with 20 types of land issues. But they are surprisingly yet to ensure people's right to land. On the contrary, loopholes in those laws and the land management system are raising the number of land-related cases, creating avenues for corruption and denying the marginalised people access to land.
Reports say there are as many as 120 million people of the country who are now victims of land-related disputes. The amount of money that the opposing parties spend on account of legal and other related expenses to this effect, is double the country's development budget.
In fact, the government was set to digitise the land management system by this year to resolve complications in the land management system. It has also a plan to deliver all land-related services like survey, registration, mutation etc., from one single office in order to mitigate public sufferings. A roadmap for land management should be in place by now. Adequate allocation was made for this purpose in the national budgets of the past few years. But things did not make any encouraging headway so far.
Land is perhaps the most sought-after resource in Bangladesh. It is limited and expensive, making it necessary to be sustainable. Overpopulation, unplanned housing and industrialisation are creating a tremendous amount of pressures on the land, draining agricultural terrain of its fertility and productivity. Sustainable land management requires careful planning, and designing and implementation of a comprehensive policy outlining how the land can be best used without damaging it further.
Very recently, Finance Minister A M A Muhith said the country's land registration system is at the core of corruption. Bribes are exchanged openly in the land registration offices. Digitalising such offices is urgent because extensive use of information technology can curb corruption and help expedite the pace of development. He said the government had taken up the challenge to digitalise the land registration system, though the progress so far had not been remarkable.
In fact, there has not yet been any concrete planning as to how to digitalise the old manual system of registration though it is being told repeatedly that the government is going to overhaul the land registration offices soon. This is to be done through introducing digital archiving of the documents with a view to reducing fraud and litigation in connection with land ownership.
Analysts say the land record officials are, perhaps, the wealthiest people in Bangladesh. They are getting wealthier overnight on the strength of bribe-taking. Such officials are low-paid public servants but their wallets are always bulgy. Their palms are continuously greased by land owners and land grabbers. Some of the land record officials allegedly very clever. They know every inch of the land in their jurisdiction.
These officials who are responsible for creating and maintaining land records often prepare incorrect records intentionally so that genuine land owners are forced to pay bribes to them to get the records corrected. If bribes are not duly given by the genuine land owners for correcting the records, lands so incorrectly recorded are made transferred to land sharks who are ever eager to pay bribes to grab others' lands illegally.
The present system of land recording in the local land management and registration offices such as Tahsil Office and Sub-Registrar's Office follows the age-old system of writing down everything about land-who owns what, where, how much, and what is grown in which land in illegible and archaic manners. These land record and registration offices are filled with tattered and handwritten paper documents and registers, many of them going back to 100 years, and most of them are already damaged and brittle due to humidity or half-eaten by book lice, wood worms, termites, mice and cockroaches. However, computer composition has taken over hand writing system in the country's many sub-registry offices.
Due to substantial hike in land registration and court fees and higher fixation of land prices in accordance with its nature (household, farmland or canals), the number of registration cases has abnormally fallen throughout the country. Besides, the rural people have little money to buy landed property now. As a consequence, land and property prices have also fallen.
Although preparing computer-composed documents have started in most of the registration offices, hand-written deed writers still reign supreme in the court compound. They have started agitation throughout the country against the digitisation of the registration system. For every 0.1 million taka valuation of the property, they are now allegedly charging Tk 2000 in the name of donation to their union fund. The people are unable to get their land registered without paying such 'illegal' money.
Shoddy and hackneyed management of land recording is mainly responsible for fraud and manipulation in land ownership. This has given birth to land grabbers and their cohorts. More than 80 per cent of litigations in the courts of law in Bangladesh are over the disputes relating to land ownership, millions of conmen, middlemen, lawyers and other functionaries involved in matters of civil law and courts are thriving on the business of litigations.
In this age of information technology, it is quite possible to upload to an online database with relevant information of lands to digitise Bangladesh's landownership records, however labyrinthine the job might be. Rapid and flawless digitalisation of land recording, archiving and retrieving will reduce the number of litigations, improve planning for disaster relief and food security, and encourage foreign investment and rid the country of the mountains of litigations, especially at the village level.
Due to the age-old land management system, corruption has now become an institutional norm. The obsolete regulations rely mostly on land officers, revenue collectors and surveyors. Some of them produce doctored records, thus forcing the land owners to bribe them to keep proper records of their land. Other than this, a few sub-registrars, revenue officers and surveyors secretly tempt squatters to take over the land of the innocent owners.
There had been much of rhetoric on rules and regulations for land use for promoting people's well-being in the past. But nothing has so far been materialised on this count for a variety of known and unknown reasons. There had also been many talks on equitable distributing 'khas' (government owned) land among the poor, increasing land productivity, implementing settlement act, acquisitioning land in excess of ceiling, recovering land under absentee ownership, modernising land administration and improving land management methods and practices. But in reality nothing has happened as yet.
Country's land registration system needs otherwise to be made stronger and transparent. The maintenance infrastructure can effectively be improved by concentrating on land management, land administration, cadastre and fixed asset surveillance sectors. In fact, the quality of land management is regarded as a benchmark in all civilised societies.
szkhan@dhaka.net
Land registration system in disarray
Shahiduzzaman Khan | Published: April 03, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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