Haryana

• 24 Mar 2025

International Workshop on Land Governance

Why in News? 

The Ministry of Panchayati Raj, in collaboration with the Haryana Institute of Public Administration (HIPA), is hosting an “International Workshop on Land Governance” from 24 to 29 March 2025, at the HIPA Complex in Gurugram, Haryana. 

• It is organised with the help of the Ministry of External Affairs under its Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) program. 

 Key Points 

• Global Participation and Focus Areas: 
  • The workshop will bring together delegates from 22 countries across Africa, Latin America, and South-East Asia. 
  • Participants will explore innovative solutions to address land governance challenges worldwide. 
  • India’s pioneering SVAMITVA Scheme, which uses drone technology to map rural inhabited areas and provide legal property ownership documents, will be showcased. 
• Technical and Field Sessions: 
  • Sessions will cover drone-based land survey techniques, high-resolution mapping, and geospatial technologies for improved land administration. 
    • Participants will engage in hands-on demonstrations of drone survey methods, data processing, ground verification, and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) integration. 
    • The Survey of India will conduct live drone survey demonstrations in a village to offer practical exposure. 
  • Field visits and exhibitions will further provide real-world insights into modern land governance technologies. 
  • Ten drone vendors will set up stalls displaying innovations in drone-based land mapping and survey techniques. 
• Participation of Industry Leaders: 
  • Knowledge partners include Survey of India, State Land Revenue Departments, National Informatics Centre, Geo-Spatial World, Hexagon, Trimble, Aereo, Marvell Geospatial, Idea Forge Tech, and AWS. 
  • Classroom demonstrations will cover: 
    • Drone use cases in land governance. 
    • Ortho-rectified imaging and feature-extracted mapping. 
    • Ground verification technologies for high-resolution mapping and property card finalization. 
• Addressing the Global Land Governance Challenge: 
  • The 2017 World Bank report states that only 30% of the global population holds legally registered land titles. 
  • India’s SVAMITVA Scheme provides a model for global land governance, offering 5cm accuracy mapping at a 1:500 resolution. 
  • The workshop aims to help participating nations achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to land rights by learning from India's model. 

 SVAMITVA Scheme 

• About: 
  • SVAMITVA stands for Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas. 
  • It is a center sector scheme which was launched nationally on the occasion of National Panchayati Raj Day on 24th April 2021. 
• Aim:  
  • To provide an integrated property validation solution for rural India. 
• Features: 
  • The demarcation of rural inhabited areas would be done using Drone survey and CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations) Networks which provides mapping accuracy of 5 cm. 
  • This would provide the ‘record of rights’ to village household owners possessing houses in inhabited rural areas in villages. 
  • It will cover around 6.62 Lakh villages of the entire country during 2021-2025. 

 Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) Program 

• The ITEC program, initiated in 1964, spans 160 partner countries, providing short-term training across diverse disciplines. 
• Courses cover areas such as Engineering, Climate Change, Health, and Women Empowerment, contributing to holistic skill enhancement globally.