Is digitalisation aiding land grab from Dalit and tribal farmers? | In Focus podcast
This podcast episode explores how the digitalization of land records in India may be inadvertently facilitating land grabs from Dalit and tribal communities. It highlights concerns that local elites and corrupt officials are exploiting the system to dispossess vulnerable farmers.
Why it matters
It raises critical questions about the social impact of digital governance initiatives on marginalized populations.
The Indian state has been digitalising land records across the country for many years now, and more aggressively since 2016 as part of the Digital India Initiative. There is growing evidence, however, that rather than empowering vulnerable communities, digital governance has often had the effect of dispossessing them of their rights – seen most clearly in the context of Aadhaar and KYC-related withholding of welfare benefits and MGNREGA wages - and it seems to be happening again with land records digitalisation. Ground reports from Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand by Sushmita, an independent journalist, indicate that digitalisation of land records has aided the dispossession of Dalit and Adivasi farmers by local elites operating in cahoots with corrupt officials.
The framing focuses on social justice and the negative impact of state policy on vulnerable groups, which is a common perspective in progressive journalism.
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