Events

Masterclass on One Thousand Land Laws v.2.0: From Archive to Architecture

Date and Time

March 4, 2020

9:00 am to 10:30 am

Location

Seminar Hall 3, India International Centre

CPR Land Rights Initiative (LRI) is pleased to invite you to a Masterclass at the India Land and Development Conference, 2020 on: One Thousand Land Laws v.2.0: From Archive to Architecture

 

Dr. Namita WahiFellow, CPR & Director, LRI
Mr. Kaustuv DeBiswasVisiting Fellow, CPR LRI
Mr. Ankit BhatiaResearch Associate, CPR LRI
Ms. Aakansha JainResearch Associate, CPR LRI

Even after seventy years of becoming a republic, land remains the most important economic, social, and cultural resource for a majority of Indians. A tangled regulatory framework governs people’s rights to land in India. Yet, the number and extent of land laws in India is anyone’s guess, because there is no existing publicly available comprehensive database of land laws. In a hitherto unprecedented effort, LRI has created  a database of over one thousand colonial and post colonial, central and state laws for a geographically representative sample of eight states, namely, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Punjab, and Telangana. From land reforms to land acquisition, from forest laws to laws applicable to Scheduled Areas, from laws promoting and regulating urban development to laws dealing with evacuee, enemy, ancestral and religious property, this vast legal apparatus governs the lives of ordinary citizens and their interactions with each other and the state. LRI is now taking this trove of data to the next level by creating an interactive and exploratory information architecture that makes these laws accessible to all.

In this Masterclass, LRI team will present a prototype of the proposed Land Laws of India” website, describe the many challenges faced and overcome in the transformation of the archive into an information architecture, and explain why this is only the first step in navigating the labyrinth of land regulation in India.

The Masterclass will be followed by a Panel Discussion on: Accessing Justice: Deciphering Land Decisions through Data Analytics

Please RSVP for the Master Class and Panel Discussion here.