BHOOMI 

E GOVERNANCE CASE STUDY (BSCCSIT/BCA/MASTERS)

Introduction 

Bhoomi is a project jointly funded by the Government of India and the Government of Karnataka to digitize the paper land records and create a software mechanism to control changes to the land registry in Karnataka. The project was designed to eliminate the long-standing problem of inefficiency and corruption in the maintenance of land records at dispersed and poorly supervised and audited block-level offices known as "taluka" offices in South India and "tehsildar" offices in North India. The project development and implementation was done by National Informatics Centre. Many experiments with computerization have failed due to corruption and other factors. 

Implementation of Land record computerization has been difficult in India. Bhoomi succeeded because there was a champion who worked a 15-hour day for over 12 months, devoting 80% of his time to the project. Minimizing resistance from staff by harnessing political support was an important contributory factor. Extensive training coupled with a participatory style also helped to diminish resistance." 

In Karnataka State, the land records were earlier maintained through a manual system, involving 9,000 village accountants, each serving a cluster of 3–4 villages. Nearly 2,500 bank branches in Karnataka loan approximately Rs. 40 billion to farmers as working capital every year. The concept of Computerized Land Records Management Process was first introduced in Karnataka through the BHOOMI initiative in 2001 to bring in overall transparency, effectiveness and ease in the management and maintenance of the Land Records through automation of various processes. 

The major objectives to be fulfilled by the Bhoomi project were: 

▪ Facilitating easy maintenance and prompt updating of land records 

▪ Making land records tamper-proof 

▪ Allowing farmers easy access to their records 

▪ Collating the information to construct a data base regarding land revenue, cropping pattern, land use, etc 

▪ Utilising the data for planning and for formulating development programmes. 

Through this initiative, Revenue Department in Karnataka has computerized 200 lakh records of land ownership of 67 lakh farmers in the state.

In 2010, concept of electronic integration of BHOOMI and KAVERI (registration Software) was conceptualized and piloted in five taluks namely, Bangarpet, KGF, Malur, Kolar and Tumkur. Overwhelming success in pilot resulted in rolling out of BHOOMI-KAVERI integration all across Karnataka covering 244 out of 247 Sub Registers Offices spanning over 200 taluks except three taluks due to reasons such as non availability of connectivity, infrastructure etc. 

Land acquisition is another important activity which results in updations to RORs at various stages of acquisition process. BHOOMI was electronically integrated with BHOOSWADEENA software in 2011. Project is running successfully in all 52 sub division offices of revenue department and 27 Special Land Acquisition Offices across Karnataka. 

Electronic integration of BHOOMI with Banks was started in 2012. Approximately 1400 branches of 29 banks across Karnataka are using the facility to raise request for creating or removing charge and also enhancing the liability on agricultural lands belonging to farmers who are availing farm credit. 

Land Record 

In Karnataka, there are 17 million land record documents covering 20 million farmers. Karnataka has 27 districts with 177 taluks covering around 800 hoblis and 29,000 villages. This land record document has valuable information, which includes ownership tendency, cultivation, irrigation, tree, liabilities, crop, and soil details including the details of Government lands. 

We need land records for the following reasons: 

● Office Land Records is required to be produced for obtaining crop loans from any recognized financial institution as a proof of ownership and existing liabilities. 

● Traditionally, people are satisfied with their ownership on land by having the Lnad Record issued by the Revenue Department. 

● Most of the legal disputes are settled based on the time seque3nce of the Land Records issued for a survey number. 

● The government has a duty any responsibility to protect the ownership of land based on its information maintained in 'Land Records Registers'. 

Drawback of manual system over computarized system 

The manual system also had the following drawbacks: 

● The issue of Land Records depends on the availability, mood and interest of the V.A/Pattwari. 

● Large-scale corruption 

● The manually writing Land Records may not be legible. 

● Land Records Registers are not maintained properly. 

● It takes a long time for reproducing Land Records for the succeeding year after incorporating the current year crop details, liabilities, changes in ownership or cult5ivators which happen through mutations. 

● Very difficult to prepare cross tabulated registers or reports. 

Now, in the computerized system, the farmer can collect his land records within a couple of minutes at the Land Records Kiosk, without any difficult or delay. 

BHOOMI-land records management software 

BHOOMI, the software for land records management, has been fully designed and developed in-house by National Information's Centre, Bangalore, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India, using state-of-the-art technology, One year effort has gone in bring out the first version of software modules. The following features and incorporate: 

● Bhoomi is an online system to carry out mutation on the live data, ● It has built-in workflow automatic, which moves transactions from one officer to another one the system, as shown in Figure C9.1. 

● The process of mutation of the BHOOMI is fully synchronized. 

● It also facilitates scanning of the field mutation order passed by revenue authorities and notice served on the public and storing into database so that it can be refereed easily in future for various purposes. 

● It has also been integrated with Fingerprint (Biometrics) technology to ensure better authentication instead of traditional password system. This enforces the concept of non-reputation. 

● The software is in local language (Kannada) for easy use by officials. ● Various analysis report can be generated in text format and also viewed in graphical style. ● Approval of the transactions is on first-in-first-out basis. 

● Transactions will be pushed into next approval authority if it had not been approved by the concerned personnel after specified period.

Modules of BHOOMI 

It has two modules for public interface: 

● One module is used by revenue officials of Land Records Centre so issue the land records documents on demand from the public and accept the request application for mutation from the public. 

● The other module runs on a Touch Screen Kiosk, set up at taluka/block office. This module is easily operable by even the personal farmer having little knowledge of computer as this is developed using "Keep it Simple" (KIS) concept. 

Implementation process of BHOOMI 

The implementations process of computerization of land records starts with digitizing the legacy data. This is a laborious process as three are around 1 lakh documents in each taluka/block, whose data is to be fed correctly and properly into the computer. The District Administration has assigned this work to private data entry agencies. The Village Accountants go to the premises of data entry agency and ensures that data is fed correctly from the good old land record books. This is an iterative process. The checklist of documents will be printed by the data entry agency and submitted to the Village Revenue Official. The village Account verifies the printed checklist with that of original record and corrects the checklist accordingly. The correction of wrongly entered data will be carried out by the data entry agency. Once the data is corrected, the agency will take the final print of land record documents. Again the Village Revenue Official. verifies the printed data the correctness. The process repeats till all the data entry errors are eliminated. The data entry agency hands over the digitized data in CD form to the Revenue authority. The Revenue official cross-verify the final printed land records documents with the manual documents on random basis. 

Figure: Implementation process of BHOOMI 

Conclusion 

In this case study, the Bhoomi project has been surveyed in detail with all aspects of introduction, objective, design and implementation of the software. . BHOOMI is a great success. On the lines similar to Bhoomi, many other States such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh have also successfully implemented Land Records MIS.