Land Reforms to Land Titling: Emerging Paradigms of Land Governance in India: Emerging Paradigms of Land Governance in India

In India, land policies have been undergoing a paradigm shift since the economic reforms of the early 1990s. Conclusive land titling or guaranteed title to land has emerged as an alternative policy option to the redistributive land reform agenda before economic liberalization, and marks a historic reorientation of land policy. Land Reforms to Land Titling: Emerging Paradigms of Land Governance in India studies this reorientation. 

Would the neoliberal policy of secure individual property rights in land address diverse land-related questions in India? Whose interests will a conclusive titling policy serve, given unequal land holdings? How are capitalist or market imperatives of efficiency and growth bypassing social concerns? This book addresses these and other important questions through an in-depth study of not only India’s land governance history but also the experiences of other developing countries. The book also talks about policy implications and will be an invaluable read for academics and policymakers alike.

Pradeep Nayak is a civil servant and has been in the Odisha Administrative Service since 1996. He is currently Joint Commissioner and Faculty Member at the Administrative Training Institute of the Government of Odisha at Bhubaneswar. At the beginning of his career, he served as the Land Acquisition Officer and Revenue Officer in Keonjhar district and worked in various departments such as the Bhubaneswar Development Authority, the Land Cell of the General Administration Department, the Administrative Reforms Cell, the Board of Revenue, the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority, etc. He has around 25 years of experience in research on public policy and governance and in general administration. He completed his masters and MPhil in political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, and did his PhD at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU. He is a former Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He has published many research papers and book chapters and two books The Politics of the Ayodhya Dispute (1992) and The State and Land Records Modernisation (2015).