A rural landlord going to the nearby lower court in festive mood is a common spectacle in the novels by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. The locale and time are set in Bengal either in the late 19th century or early 20th century. These gentlemen go to the court to appear in the hearings on old land-related cases. They have been doing this year after year, some taking the mantle from their forefathers. The cases usually do not see a verdict. The landlords also know there is no possibility to have any in the near future. The cases keep dragging, to the pleasure of the litigants. In Bengali parlance these persons are called 'Mamlabaj' or those hooked to the thrill of going ahead with legal cases.
The times, thoughts and lifestyles have greatly changed in the period spanning over a century. Bengalis in today's Bangladesh cringe with fear at the mention of getting entangled in long-drawn-out legal battles over land ownership.
Unless one is compelled, few would file a court case involving land-related disputes thanks to the complications involved. But whether people want them or not, they are sucked into various types of land-related civil suits, especially involving landed properties. Owing to various forms of irregularities and rampant corruptions in the country's land service sector, ordeals of the general people begin at the land offices. The rich and poor are equally held hostage to the bribery syndicates at the land offices. It is them who rule the roost there. However, owing to their social vulnerabilities, it is the low- and middle-income people who normally get caught in the bribery cycles.
That the land offices have long been turned into money-minting centres is an open secret. As a recent study conducted by Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) reveals, the country's offices dealing with land services are plagued with unbridled corruptions and irregularities. Bribery tops these evil practices. Successive governments have repeatedly been harping on reforms in the way the land offices are being run. Of late, complete digitisation of these offices has been emphasised. But none of these steps have got off the ground finally. Instead, land offices across the country have been experiencing graft at their different tiers in increasing numbers.
As the TIB study has pointed out, among others, briberies are rampant at two wings in particular at these offices -- land registration and mutation. Proceeding with all kinds of civil suits related to land disputes requires briberies of varying sums.
"The activities of the land administration and its services are quite broad. Every person who owns land somehow becomes victim of the land administration," said TIB Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman while releasing the study findings at a press conference in the capital on August 23. The study has been titled Land Management and Services in Bangladesh: Governance Challenges and Way Forward. The study was carried out between October, 2014 and July, 2015.
"Although the government has taken an initiative to digitise the land administration sector, there has been no visible progress yet. There is no proper enforcement of land-related laws, and institutional weaknesses still remain," the TIB Executive Director said.
In a small country with over 160 million people, the rural agricultural tracts are owned by scores of land-owning people including small farmers. Thanks to the land ownership enjoyed by more people than is permissible pragmatically, disputes over croplands become unavoidable. In the cases of serious feuds, administrative interventions have to be sought. Thus, the village-based land-owning people one day find themselves caught in the web spun by land racketeers. The problem becomes knottier due to the splitting of larger plots into small pieces. The shrinking of land-sizes resulting from the carving-up and continued increase in the number of their owners aggravates the situation. All this veritably forces people to turn to the land administration. Disputes over agricultural lands have been integral to Bengalee life for centuries. Apart from agri-plots, landed properties used for residential and commercial purposes, both in villages and urban areas, also give rise to disputes and litigations.
People have to pay bribes for every single service in the land administration, according to the TIB study report. "There are unofficial bribery rates in different land services and civil suits related to land disputes ranging from Taka 100 to Taka 20,00,000," the report alleges. Land owners are made to pay bribes of Tk 100-Tk 10,000 while paying Land Development Tax (LDT), Tk 1,000-Tk 50,000 for land registration, Tk 200-Tk 1,000 for collecting records and maps, as well as for collecting certified copies of records and maps.
The study has detected mind-boggling amounts in bribes that change hands in the task of leasing out rural markets. Given this grim picture, the anti-graft watchdog has rightly recommended establishing a single department under the Ministry of Land giving it the task of administrative operations and management.
As the anti-graft body has suggested, a long-term strategic plan for digitisation of the land administration ought to be put in place. There is no denying that without an integrated digitisation covering the entire land management, registration and land surveys, the process of decay cannot be stemmed in this vital administrative body.
Those with massive socio-political clouts hardly face the common hazards that are currently ingrained in the administrative mechanism of the land offices. The victims mostly include the poorer sections of society. The TIB study comes up with the information that 60 per cent of the litigations waiting to be resolved are involved with land disputes. The longer the delays in resolving the land-related complications, the greater are the scopes for financially sucking the helpless people, who are seen shuttling in the land office corridors.
The TIB study report puts an emphatic focus on the digitisation of the land offices. The age-old system of keeping files manually has long proved to be cumbersome. Moreover, the system is vulnerable to tampering with texts and information, as well as distortions. Digitisation has done away with many drawbacks once generally encountered in the paper files. As the government has been stressing computer automation of all public services, the land offices cannot be left in a sorry state, least of all in the care of a section of unscrupulous staff. Only urgent digitisation can streamline the land administration.
shihabskr@ymail.com
Digitisation of land offices—a pledge govt yet to redeem
Shihab Sarkar | Published: August 28, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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