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Land Readjustment in India – How to plan with Informal Institutions and Weak Information Bases
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2017-09-11
Author(s)
Abstract (De)
Land readjustment is promoted as an ideal urban planning tool to capture land value. The idea to readjust land property ownerships to better accommodate changing demands originated in Germany (Lex Adicke) and has been adopted since then in various countries including the United Kingdom. Interestingly, the planning tools of land consolidation and readjustment faced great resistance of established land owners and were soon abandoned as planning techniques (Home 2002). More successful was their adoption in some British colonies. This conference paper shall discuss land readjustment planning in India, notably in the state of Gujarat.
Land readjustment has been used to transform agricultural land into urbanizable plots through the so-called Town Planning Schemes – Development Plan planning system (Ballaney 2009). The TPS-DP has attracted the interest of the World Bank and UN-Habitat which both identified it as a best case example for urban planning in the Global South. The conference in Holland represents an ideal opportunity to share its experience and to relate it to other countries.
The conference paper is structured as followed: A short discussion of this planning system is followed by a historic outline of its legal evolution. Applied since 1915, the underlying laws have been considerably modified changing the system from a slow and corruptive planning enterprise to a more stream-lined one. The paper aims at providing a concise overview of the historic development in order to point at the reasons for the changing performance. The main part consists of an in-depth analysis of the planning practice in the city of Ahmedabad, the largest city of the state. Data has been collected during doctoral field visits between 2010 and 2012 and help to provide an alternative reading of the commonly identified success of planning practices in Gujarat. The exploitation of discretionary powers enables that planning officials benefit financially through informal payments from developers and land owners. From such lens, readjustment is far from being democratic and equitable but benefit a nexus of well-connected people who benefit from regulatory limitations as well as weak knowledge bases of land management systems.
The conference paper contributes a practical example of planning practices in the Global South and underlines the importance to analyze actual implementation of land readjustments. Such insights point to the need of deep structural reforms that entail land management reforms, a revision of government payment scales, as well as the enforcement of anti-corruption laws.
Land readjustment has been used to transform agricultural land into urbanizable plots through the so-called Town Planning Schemes – Development Plan planning system (Ballaney 2009). The TPS-DP has attracted the interest of the World Bank and UN-Habitat which both identified it as a best case example for urban planning in the Global South. The conference in Holland represents an ideal opportunity to share its experience and to relate it to other countries.
The conference paper is structured as followed: A short discussion of this planning system is followed by a historic outline of its legal evolution. Applied since 1915, the underlying laws have been considerably modified changing the system from a slow and corruptive planning enterprise to a more stream-lined one. The paper aims at providing a concise overview of the historic development in order to point at the reasons for the changing performance. The main part consists of an in-depth analysis of the planning practice in the city of Ahmedabad, the largest city of the state. Data has been collected during doctoral field visits between 2010 and 2012 and help to provide an alternative reading of the commonly identified success of planning practices in Gujarat. The exploitation of discretionary powers enables that planning officials benefit financially through informal payments from developers and land owners. From such lens, readjustment is far from being democratic and equitable but benefit a nexus of well-connected people who benefit from regulatory limitations as well as weak knowledge bases of land management systems.
The conference paper contributes a practical example of planning practices in the Global South and underlines the importance to analyze actual implementation of land readjustments. Such insights point to the need of deep structural reforms that entail land management reforms, a revision of government payment scales, as well as the enforcement of anti-corruption laws.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Event Title
RC 21 Conference
Event Location
Leeds
Subject(s)
Eprints ID
254440