From Agri-DPI to Bhu-Aadhaar: Budget 2024 paves way for land reforms

The Union Budget unveiled several key initiatives to foster the digitalisation of the economy. This includes digital public infrastructure across various sectors, including agriculture, and the rollout of Bhu-Aadhar for all lands.

In her seventh budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman yesterday announced that the Centre will partner with states to implement a Digital Public Infrastructure for agriculture in the next 3 years, for coverage of farmers and their lands. The DPI for agriculture is part of the Agriculture Ministry's much broader AgriStack initiative that aims to create farmer and farmland registries to facilitate farmers' access to cheaper credit, better farm inputs, localised advice, and markets. Multiple apps, such as DigitalCropSurvey UP, KrishiMapper, Digital General Crop Estimation Survey (DGCES), and Soil Health Card, have been released for data collection on farmers and farmlands.

“Digital public infrastructure for agriculture in the form of a land crop survey underscores a forward-looking approach, ensuring efficient resource management and innovation. These efforts not only aim to modernise farming practices but also strengthen the sector's resilience against future challenges,” says Amit Vatsyayan, Leader GPS-Agriculture, Livelihood, Social and Skills, EY India

Following a pilot digital crop survey (DCS), this year, the government plans to conduct another DCS for Kharif using the DPI across 400 districts, bringing details of over 6 crore farmers and their lands into the farmer and land registries. A DCS provides a centralised, verified registry of geofenced plots with geotagged photos, crop details, ownership data, and satellite imagery, used by various stakeholders like insurance companies and banks.

Laying the groundwork for next-generation reforms, the Minister also announced various rural and urban land-related actions including a Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN) or Bhu-Aadhaar for all lands, Digitisation of cadastral maps, Survey of map subdivisions as per current ownership and digitisation of land records with geographical information systems (GIS) mapping.

"Land-related reforms and actions, both in rural and urban areas, will cover land administration, planning and management, and urban planning, usage and building bylaws. These will be incentivized for completion within the next 3 years through appropriate fiscal support," Sitharaman said in her budget speech.

Of the many pending civil suits, according to a 2017 survey, over two-thirds pertain to land disputes with an average pendency of 20 years. These cause a loss of about 1.3% of the GDP due to projects stalled over land dispute litigation.

Under the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP), a Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN) or Bhu-Aadhar is a 14-digit single ‘source of truth’ identification number assigned to a land parcel, based on its latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, detailed surveys and its geo-referenced cadastral maps. Based on international standards such as Electronic Commerce Code Management Association (ECCMA) standards and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards, this Aadhaar card for land or property will provide Integrated Land Services to the citizens and all stakeholders.

The Department of Land Reforms along with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Department of Science and Technology and the National Remote Sensing Centre came up with the Unique Land Parcel Identification Number system. The past process of manual land registration with distinct methods used by different states made extracting farmers’ information difficult and cumbersome, with no standardisation across this data.

In March last year, at a national conference on Bhu-Aadhar, DoLR Secretary Ajay Tirkey shared that by March 2024 the Department planned to achieve 100% of land records under Bhu-Aadhaar. While 100% digitisation remains a far-fetched target, there are also concerns about the transliteration of these records and their updation.

Till December last year, the Bhu-Aadhaar had been adopted by 24 states and 5 union territories.

Additionally, the government has planned DPIs in credit, e-commerce, education, health, law and justice, logistics, MSME, services delivery, and urban governance.

"Turning to the services sector, I propose the development of DPI applications at a population scale for productivity gains, business opportunities, and innovation by the private sector," the FInance Minister said.

After the successful adoption of UPI for digital payments and Aadhaar for digital identification, the government has made concerted efforts to roll out DPIs for different sectors. This includes Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) for e-commerce, Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) for credit networks, ABHA health ID under Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), and Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APAAR) ID for students.

“This could help in the development of use cases for AI, as algorithms could be used by the proposed Digital Public Infrastructure,” says Rajnish Gupta, Partner, Tax and Economic Policy Group, EY India.