Jacinta Kerketta, a distinguished poet, writer, and journalist from the Oraon Adivasi community of Jharkhand, delivered a stirring keynote at the 8th India Land and Development Conference. With her voice deeply rooted in the struggles and stories of her people, Jacinta brought the ongoing displacement and erosion of Adivasi land rights into sharp focus, weaving poignant poetry with hard-hitting narratives.

Gautam Bhan, a leading urbanist and Associate Dean at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), delivered a compelling keynote at the 8th India Land and Development Conference (ILDC), challenging entrenched narratives around housing in urban India. His address, rooted in decades of research and practice of teams of researchers at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore, delved into the critical intersections of affordability, adequacy, and viability, forming the pillars of what he called "India's housing question."

Professor Anju Vali Tikoo, a distinguished academic with a career spanning over three decades, delivered a passionate and incisive keynote at the 8th India Land and Development Conference (ILDC). Her address, a clarion call for gender inclusivity in land governance, explored the intersection of law, policy, and lived realities for women in India. With her deep-rooted knowledge of legal frameworks and her personal experiences, Prof. Tikoo brought to light the systemic barriers that continue to marginalize women in matters of land ownership and decision making.

This blog post is part of the series What to Read. 

Have you heard about Loss and Damage (L&D)? I must admit very humbly that I did not fully grasp the ins and outs of the concept before I was asked to write this digest. If, like me, your interests lie primarily in land governance, you might very well be unfamiliar or only vaguely familiar with this notion.

It’s already been a few weeks since I took part in The World Urban Forum 12, a global conference on urbanization established by the United Nations, in Egypt between 4-8 November. It was a remarkable opportunity to bring together global experts, practitioners, and leaders to address major global challenges as cities worldwide face pressures, particularly from conflicts and natural disasters.

 

After five failed rainy seasons and the worst drought in 40 years, communities in Northern Kenya – mainly pastoralists – are negotiating with carbon project developers to save forests, wetlands and rangelands, and their livelihoods.

India Land and Development Conference, ILDC is back with its eighth episode at the picturesque FLAME University in Pune this week. It has been quite a journey for this collaborative convening. Despite its 8th edition, it has emerged as a globally recognized land convergence event, drawing attention from far and near. 

Just thinking of a conference on a topic like ‘Land’, in a country like India, is in itself a big challenge, forget organizing it year after year, for eight years - setting a stature that has grown every year!  

From the Land Portal team and board of directors

In 2022, countries reached a historic agreement to halt biodiversity loss by conserving at least 30% of land and water by 2030. This marked a critical step toward protecting the world's precious remaining species and ecosystems. But that's not all: The Global Biodiversity Framework, as it's known, also explicitly calls on countries to recognize and uphold Indigenous Peoples and local communities' rights in their conservation strategies.

India has made significant strides in empowering women over the past few decades, starting with self-help groups (SHGs) that became powerful vehicles for social inclusion. Government and NGO efforts later expanded to skilling and livelihood initiatives, helping women increase their income and build small businesses within their communities. Yet, despite this progress, the urgent need remains for a long-term, sustainable solution to women's empowerment.

Reliable tamper-proof records with a real time link between Registration, Survey and Revenue departments with common shared textual and spatial data that are geo-referenced and ground-truthed so that there is no need for repeated universal ground survey.

Such records are available to the respective land-holders/ owners with a simple system to update whenever a transfer takes place through sale, inheritance or any other transfer.

At the Rome launch of the Global Comparative Report on Security of Property Rights for Land and Housing in 2024 presented by Prindex initiative on October 22, alarming new data revealed that 1.1 billion people worldwide feel insecure about their property rights, reflecting an escalating global crisis in housing and land tenure. The findings, derived from Prindex data, present a worrying increase from 19% of the adult population in the surveyed 108 countries in 2020 to 23% in 2024—meaning almost one in four adults now fear losing their homes or land.