Your Right To Know
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Land management system and Digital Bangladesh
Corruption has been recognised as Bangladesh's major problem
for a long time. This can be justified if one looks at Transparency
International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI). The land management system
is known to be highly corrupted. A World Bank survey reveals that most crimes and
corruption in Bangladesh take place in land-related services. There are almost
3.5 million land-related cases pending. A majority of them concern the landless
or rural people, who are deprived of the right to justice because of their
financial incapability. This is one of the reasons why the Millennium
Development Goals to eradicate poverty and hunger, inter alia, by 2015 seem far
from attainable.
Due to age-old land management system, corruption has
managed to achieve institutional acceptance. 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 innocent owners.
In this age of globalisation, we need to get rid of this
ominous cycle. The land administration system should be made stronger and
transparent. The maintenance infrastructure can be effectively improved by
concentrating on the land management, land administration, cadastre and fixed
asset surveillance sectors. The quality of land management is regarded as a
benchmark in civilised societies. The infrastructure functions on a correlation
of government and private funded projects. Proper processing of land ownership,
registration, relocation, mapping, tax payment, will or testament and other
legal documents will be possible only with modification of the central
infrastructure.
The goal of "Digital Bangladesh" can be achieved
through digitisation of land records. The Public Private Partnership (PPP)
proposed a scheme in which ten IT firms would solve this complicated problem
with zero investment by the government. Though the proposition was approved,
the project failed to see light due to some intervention. Now, it seems
impossible to finish the project in two years as promised by the ministry. This
can be attributed to the negligence of the inexperienced management. The Access
to Information project could not fulfill its roles. The time limit declared and
confirmed by the government on several occasions turned out to be a failure.
With the rising opportunities for IT, failure to accomplish
Digital Bangladesh will be a mistake comparable to the negligence we showed
while installing optical fiber. India and European countries can be our role
models in achieving this. The economy of Bangladesh will flourish and social
security can be confirmed. Corruption and human rights violation can be
prevented. And most of all, the Millennium Development Plan by 2015 can be
attained.
It is a great shame that the land
ownership records were not computerized but I hope this administration gets its
acts together to deliver this project as part of digital Bangladesh as it will
reduce disputes,illigal occupation & sales of land and increase tax revenue
since all buyers & sellers would have to show tax payment receipts to allow
them to record them in the Database.
: Manzoor Ashraf
Based
on empirical data and field studies, this volume is an important contribution
towards understanding the socio-economic realities and social dynamics of
contemporary Bangladesh in the framework of land reforms.
:
Dr.Sudeshna Bhattachariya
© thedailystar.net,
1991-2014. All Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment