Access to land is inequitable

Land inequality remains a problem in Bangladesh and is exacerbated by elite land grabs and the inadequate capacity to execute legislation on land ownership ceilings.  The land situation in Bangladesh is marked by three major characteristics: (i) very high population density and an adverse land-man ratio, (ii) land reforms at different times, and (iii) quite a high percentage of total population are marginal and small farmers and landless labourers, as well as urban landless.   
It is feared that Bangladesh will face two enormous challenges in the coming decades: food security and climate change.  However, while these challenges are enormous, it is further aggravated by the challenges of providing housing for a large and growing young population and creating jobs for them, which by all calculations, will have to primarily come from industry, services and other off-farm activities.  These challenges are constrained by the availability of limited quantity of land, and so there are policy, institutional, and regulatory challenges that will have to be overcome to help optimum use of land given the above four-pronged challenge that the country will face. So at the heart of it are land governance and the policies, regulations and institutions linked to it.    
LAND GOVERNANCE: Land governance refers to institutional and legal systems and procedures on ownership, use and transaction of land. Before getting into the regulatory issues, there needs to be a better understanding on the roles and responsibilities of the public institutions governing the land sector. This will pave the way to unbundling of the issues relating to the functioning of the land market and the regulatory and institutional impediments there.
 For land markets to operate efficiently there needs to be a legal and institutional framework that clearly defines the rules for allocation of property rights and, by allowing cost-effective enforcement, encourages and facilitates land-related investment.  Besides, there should also be reliable and complete information on land and property right, which should be made easily available to interested parties. Access to land information would then allow for low-cost verification of land-ownership status, which in turn would form the basis for low-cost land transfers to more productive use or users and may facilitate the use of property as collateral in financial markets.
While Bangladesh has long had the legal and institutional framework with rules for allocation of property rights, it is the cumbersome processes (which makes access to information difficult), and inadequate transparency in the enforcement and application of processes that are causing the different land-related problems.  In fact, a majority of the civil and criminal cases in different courts has its roots in land rights.  Land governance is caught up with social, economic, and political power in Bangladesh. Moreover, land rights are insecure in large measure because of a not so efficient but expensive, and corruption-prone system of land titling and registration.  Access to land is inequitable. In rural areas 89 per cent of landowners own less than one hectare and thirty-nine per cent have less than 0.2 hectares. The number of landless households is growing. Such high numbers of marginal holdings make the poor people owning those lands susceptible to land grabs by the influential; they are also not able to adequately participate in the land market because of non-transparency involved in different regulatory processes.  Since the poor lack other assets, access to land is more important to them and better land governance could help them.
Weak governance of the land sector and a failure to perform these functions effectively will, therefore, negatively affect development by reducing investment levels, property transfers, financial sector activity, and the scope for meaningful decentralisation.  
LAND-RELATED LAWS AND REGULATIONS:  Some of the key land-related legislation include: Transfer of Property Act of 1882; Registration Act 1908; Non-Agricultural Tenancy Act of 1947; State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950; Acquisition of Waste Land Act of 1950; Bangladesh Land Holding Limitation Order of 1972; Land Reforms Ordinance of 1984; Land Reform Board Act of 1989.
The State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950 established a 33-acre land ceiling on private landowners, and the Land Reforms Ordinance of 1984 placed a 21-acre ceiling on acquisition or holding of agricultural land and invalidated benami transactions, in which a person purchases land in the name of another so as to evade the land ceiling. Neither of the land ceiling laws has been widely implemented.

The government also adopted a National Land Use Policy in 2001, which sets forth guidelines for improved land-use and zoning regulations. Issued by the Ministry of Land, this document recommends: (1) stopping the high conversion rate of agricultural land to non-agricultural purposes; (2) utilising agro-ecological zones to determine maximum land-use efficiency; (3) adopting measures to discourage the conversion of agricultural land for urban or development purposes; and (4) improving the environmental sustainability of land-use practices. In a 2004 Actionable Policy Brief, the government acknowledged difficulties in implementing the National Land Use Policy, which it attributed to the dispersion of land administration authority among many different ministries (GOB MOA 2006).  
As evident from the land use policy it was more looking at preserving the characteristics of agricultural land.  Given the competing demand for industry, urbanisation, and infrastructure these need to be factored in policy design and also properly synchronised with other policies on industry, economic zones, urban sector growth, road and rail transport plans.
LAND MARKETS AND INVESTMENTS: Better land governance should lead to a more efficient land market that will allow even a poor person to effectively participate in it and not get cheated.  Both rural and urban land is scarce in Bangladesh, and land prices are rising.  Land grabbing of both rural and urban land by domestic actors is a problem in Bangladesh. Wealthy and influential people won public lands with false documents and obtained court decrees to confirm their ownership, often with the  help of officials in land-administration and management departments. Among other examples, hundreds of housing companies in urban areas have started to demarcate their project area using pillars and signboard before receiving titles. They use local musclemen with guns and occupy local administrations, including the police. Most of the time, land owners feel obliged to sell their productive resources to the companies at a price lower than market value.  Sometimes, civil servants may be acting favourably to these companies and receive some plot of land in exchange. According to the Land Minister's statement of 04.02.2010 in Parliament, a total of 1.3 million acre of public land has been grabbed. The Land grabbing culture has been increasing because of non-transparent administration.
Land in Bangladesh is owned either by private individuals and entities or the state.   Individuals acquire ownership-rights to land through purchase, inheritance, or gift. Titling and registration of land ownership is set out in the Transfer of Property Act 1882 and Registration Act of 1908. Procedures are expensive and complex.   Under formal law, land sales, leases of a year or more, and land received through inheritance must be registered. Land registration requires eight procedures and an average of 244 days to complete. The total cost of the transaction averages 7.2 per cent of the value of the property. The registration process is cumbersome and expensive which impede formal-sector land transactions. As government approvals are necessary at various levels, those seeking such approvals are subject to demands for bribes.  Of course, government also has legal process for acquiring land for public use.  Article 42 of Bangladesh's Constitution provides that land can be acquired, nationalised, or requisitioned upon authority of law and with compensation. The Acquisition and Requisition of Immovable Property Ordinance, 1982, permits government land-acquisitions as needed for any public purpose.  Here the compensation is linked to the price in the market.  
INADEQUATE LAND GOVERNANCE A CONSTRAINT FOR HIGHER LEVELS OF INVESTMENTS: Inadequate land governance leads to insecure title to land, which prevents people from taking full advantage of the productive uses of the land. Where people have proper title to their land, however, they can use the property as collateral for a loan or transfer land parcels in which they have invested.  And titles can serve as a valuable insurance and savings tool for families, providing protection during difficult times and in retirement.
Indeed, with the protection of secured title guaranteed by a reliable land registration system, land can be used to create wealth for the broader benefit of society and contribute to the eradication of poverty. In many economies land and buildings could account for between half and three-quarters of the wealth and so having a reliable system for registering and transferring property titles matters.  Because of the lack of transparency and also having multiple agencies responsible for administering different aspect of land property rights creates difficulty in registering properties in Bangladesh; and so Bangladesh continues to perform poorly in this index of Doing Business (see Table I).
Bangladesh has overall ranking of 173 in the Doing Business indicators for 2015, and that for Registering Properties its rank is 184.   As evident from the Table 1, Bangladesh does poorly even comparing to other South Asian countries with similar legislative and regulatory process. So Bangladesh has scope for improvement in this front.   Since efficient administration of property rights are important for higher investments, economies worldwide have been making it easier for entrepreneurs to register and transfer property - such as by computerising land registries, introducing time limits for procedures and setting low fixed fees. Many have cut the time required substantially enabling buyers to use or mortgage their property promptly.
The Registering of Property index of Doing Business only look at one part of land governance - the Registration process.  In case of Bangladesh, that falls under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Law and Justice (MOLJ).  However, a very important part is land title and record of rights and the cadastral survey for periodic update on the ownership, maps, and use of land, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Land (MOL).  To understand the full extent of regulatory and institutional challenges it will be important to understand the working and jurisdiction of each of these institutions.
Dr. G. M. Khurshid Alam is Operations Director of the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh (PRI).
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