How IT can Improve our Lives

We read in newspapers about fraudulent sale of a property to more than one person or sale of a property which is already mortgaged. Unscrupulous owners get certified copy of sale deed of their property from the office of sub-registrar after faking loss of original document. With this one property is sold to two buyers or mortgaged with two banks. Such an activity is possible because there is no mechanism in place to enable people to find details of ownership of properties from the government record quickly and reliably.
There is no system for maintenance of record of right in respect of urban properties in most of our cities and Delhi is no exception to the same. After a property is converted from lease hold to free hold, DDA stops recording change of ownership. Developers like DLF who developed colonies like Hauz Khas, Greater Kailash etc. were not mandated to keep record of change of ownership of properties developed by them. MCD does keep record of owners but it is for payment of property tax only. It is not the record of right. Thus all past sale transactions of a property are recorded in the sale deed. Also the prospective buyers and mortgaging banks have to spend lots of money in getting records of sub-registrar checked by revenue advocates before actual transaction gets conducted. Even after that, incidents of double sale do take place. These can be avoided if particulars of all properties, names of latest owners as per sale deed and the fact whether property is mortgaged or disputed, are put on Internet with simple search mechanism. The banks and Financial Institutions could also have access to such database on real time basis to record and update details of mortgage, etc.
This can be achieved by drawing lessons from the International award winning computerized land record system of Karnataka called ‘Bhoomi’, and the Computerized system for registration of sale deed of Delhi called ‘e-Dastavej’. These are not only the well known examples of use of Information Technology (IT) in Government but also ones to show way on how to achieve this task. Those who had to wait for days to get a patta from Tehsildar’s office or the original sale deed from the office of sub-registrar would vouch for the comfort IT has brought to the common man.
Computerization of records of agricultural land and registration of sale deed/ lease deed etc. are two projects out of dozen odd mission mode projects identified for implementation in all states in a time bound manner under National e-Governance Plan. In many states IT has enabled people to get copies of ‘patta’ (land record) of agricultural land across the counter or through a touch screen kiosk. In many states including Delhi, the entire record of agricultural land can be seen on the Internet by selecting village and khasra number. Use of computers has led to drastic reduction of turnaround time of registration of sale deed, lease deed and other such documents. It used to take few weeks or months to get back the original record after registration of such records. Now they are returned in an hour. Photographs of buyers and sellers are taken using digital camera and the documents are scanned and archived for quick retrieval. Quick search on property number or buyer or seller is possible today on this database. The entire data on registration is being made available on its website by South-West district in Delhi. Very soon it is expected to be made available for entire Delhi., which will enable people to check authenticity of sale deeds etc. online before they buy a property.

This way the first step towards creation of database on urban properties and their buyers has already been taken. This needs to be further augmented by adding to it all such transactions which have taken place in past. Going back in past upto 1950 or so will suffice. Simultaneously conversion of all records of properties developed by DDA and other properties developed during last 50 years or so into electronic database will be required. Both of them when merged, cleaned and further refined will provide the platform to start this service, which will go a long way in solving the problem of lack of record of right for urban properties in Delhi till a law is made to enable city government to determine records of right and issue ‘patta’ to owners after conducting settlement. Search from this database could be made a paid service to sustain the project in the long run.
Even in the exercise of preparation of records of rights IT can play a major role. Base digital map of Delhi city has already been prepared on which toponomic data (House Number and colony name etc) needs to be recorded and settlement done. Some cities in our country have already started this exercise. Preparation of records of right for urban properties, like the way it is done for agricultural land, will eliminate lots of property litigation and will also ensure that the properties can be used as collateral for raising capital from market. Lack of this facility has led to properties worth lakhs of crores being blocked; a phenomenon explained beautifully by Hernando de Soto in his book, "Mystery of Capital"

Strengthening ITIs

“The world is counting on India for its exceptional talent pool to lead the next wave of innovation and global technology companies are banking on their access to this knowledge work force”. These are the words of the CEO of one of the most respected technology companies. Similar glowing tributes are being paid to technology graduates by many others. Those graduating from our engineering colleges are being accepted by employers across the globe. However, when it comes to their poor cousins, graduating from polytechnics and ITIs, the scene is quite different. They face a big wall in achieving their dreams to go abroad. Those coming out from ITIs have been able to go only to middle-east countries and have not been able to touch the shores of developed nations. And the great wall faced by our ITI students is the certification required from an internationally recognized certifying authority as that is the pre-requisite in developed countries. It is not that the developed countries don’t need technicians. While our students coming out from ITIs are not able to go to such countries, those from many developing countries, including Bangladesh, are filling the vacuum.

Why do we have this difference between those coming out of engineering colleges and those from the ITIs? While the engineering colleges have been fast to change their curriculum, the same has not happened in case of ITIs. The National Council of Vocation Studies (NCVT) and State Council of Vocational Studies (SCVTs) have not been able to keep pace with the changed requirements. This has led to a scenario where large percentage of products being churned out by 5114 ITIs having capacity of 750000, have to be specifically trained by industries employing them. Thus what is being taught in ITIs has to be relevant to what is required by the industry.

One of the important steps taken recently has been the creation of Centres of Excellences amongst ITIs where they have been given some autonomy and private sector is participating closely in the management. However, their number is only 500 today out of 5114 ITIs. How do we increase the employability of the ITI students in India as well as abroad? The answer lies in constant upgradation of course content as per requirements of the industry which are generally well reflected in the course content of internationally recognized certifying authorities. Other measures are to open more service oriented trades as the share of service sector is increasing rapidly in our economy. Here we have been rather slow as would be evident from the list of such trades available in developed countries and ours. Closing down trades which are not in demand, retraining the trainers, having tie up with reputed certifying authorities to enable the poor students to take such tests at low cost, associate local industry in the Institute Management Committees of ITIs, etc. are some other steps in this regard. These steps will not only open gates for ITI students to foreign jobs but will also do away with the need of long term training programmes which are being conducted today by industry before they put the new recruits on the shop floor. It is heartening to note that some of the States have started working on this model.