Complexity in administration and limited accessibility of land records have been a longstanding issue in developing countries. In Pakistan, except for the province of Punjab (the treatment province) where land-record has been computerized in 2017, the land record is administered through traditional land registers and cadastral maps in paper formats requiring a -root level. As an important step towards e-governance, the Punjab provincial government in 2017 established a Land Record Management Information System (PLRMIS) that simplified the procedure of land registration and transfer through digitization of the land-records. This research attempts to adopt a quasiexperimental approach to link the introduction of PLRMIS with land-related dispute resolution in Punjab and to scientifically evaluate the social impacts of this project. This paper outlines the importance of the area, research design and proposed Difference-in-Difference method of the Acknowledgement: This research is being conducted under the joint research project titled
Land in the Punjab province of Pakistan is known for its fertility, agricultural diversity and its
contribution to the rural economy of the country. However, ownership and administration issues
associated with land have been causing significant constraints for both government and the general
public in realizing its real value. These issues include inequalities in land distribution, tenure
insecurity and difficulties associated with registration and transfer system of land
In the past, land reforms were largely carried out for the purpose of securing property rights
(Conning & Deb, 2007). These reforms include land entitling
Digitization of records is an important catalyst to the land reforms. Recently, there have been successful attempts to transform the governance mechanism through e-governance where information technology is used to enhance access to, and delivery of, government services to benefit citizens, businesses and government from local level to national and international levels (Arfeen & Khan, 2012). The introduction of PLRMIS in the Punjab province of Pakistan is one such example of transforming governance mechanisms that is intended to enhance productivity and reduce conflicts arising from conventional record administration. Initially the program was implemented in eighteen1 districts of the province (henceforth collectively called Treatment Group 1), while in the 2nd phase expanded to the entire province2 (henceforth called Treatment Group 2). Following are the key evaluation questions related to the impact of PLRMIS program: i) To what extent the introduction of PLRMIS has affected land-related disputes in the
Punjab Province? ii) Are there differences in changes overtime in the land-related key variables observed between Treatment Group 1 and Treatment Group 2 in the Province? iii)What challenges are still remaining in the governance, functioning and public participation and how stakeholders view these challenges?
In this paper, the researchers adopt a quasi-experimental approach to finding the true impact of the digitization of the land record in the Punjab Province, Pakistan. The following section describes a brief history of the land administration in Punjab, context, and objectives of the program while section 3 discusses methods, experimental design, data and empirical specification of the study. Section 4 briefly discuss the preliminary results of the PLRMIS data while the last section outlines the future plan.
The history of land administration and revenue generation in the Indian Sub-continent can be traced
back in the 13th and 14th centuries when the first Indian Sultan, Ala Uddin Khilji started the
registration and administering the land record
Considering the importance of improving land administration, the functioning of land market, and linking it to the broader areas of governance and administration, the Punjab provincial government in collaboration with the World Bank (WB), introduced the Land Record Management Information System (PLRMIS) through establishing the Punjab Land Record Authority in 2017. The aim of this system was to facilitate public-access to land and bring transparency into the land records. Initially the program was implemented in eighteen districts in Punjab in late 2013 and later expanded the program to the entire province in late 2016. Figure 1 shows the distribution of districts that exposed to treatment in two phases.
The PLRMIS is expected to influence the stakeholders through institutional, social and behavioral mechanisms. Intuitional mechanism involves the transformation of methods that are followed and written in the standard operating procedures for a task. In the context of PLRMIS, various intuitional changes have occurred during and after the implementation of PLRMIS. These include, the webbased software development-a crucial output of the project-, establishment of the Arazi Record Centers (ARCs) and the business processing and re-engineering of the land record management system. Information technology development such as software development enhances the institutional performance of an individual as well as organization (Horton, D., & Mackay, R., 2003). Under the PLRMIS, a well-standardized monitoring dashboard that enables top-level management to track each activity at all levels. Additionally, the dashboard works a guide for staff following standard operating procedures of all four levels of management record system. The establishment -a basic land record document- that expedite the process of land related transactions. ARCs further achieve four objectives including client satisfaction, saving of time, reducing cost of a transaction and improvement in land tenure security. Finally, the legal and policy framework of PLRMIS enhances the institutional capability to work smoothly according to the defined outputs of the project. One of the key objectives of the program is to enhance public services delivery. Unlike the conventional system, under the PLRMIS, women have access to land records easily and can perform land transactions with convenience. were taken to create a positive attitude among the key stakeholders-employees of the land department-. These measures gained support for the project by decreasing the fears about job security and explaining to the participants about new roles under the new system. Initially, Land refusing to work. After extensive negotiations, the program included incentives for employees and capacity building such as construction of new field offices furnished with IT facilities, transportation allowance and allocation of 2% of land revenues to Revenue Officers.
Social awareness is an essential part for any project because the general public responds lately especially people who live in rural areas. Under the new program, a number of public awareness campaigns were launched that encouraged the general public to actively benefit from the digitized record management systems. Major awareness measures included conducting of 36 workshops with 5,663 internal key stakeholders namely Officers of the District Administration (District Collectors, Additional District Collectors, Assistant Commissioners) and Revenue functionaries (Tehsildars, Girdawars/Kanungos, Patwaris) between December 2011 and February 2014. Moreover, 250 representatives of the Punjab Bar Association and Field Revenue Staff were consulted about effective implementation of the program.
The main objectives of PLRMIS are given below:
To reduce number of procedure (steps) to complete a property registration (Efficient Land Registration).
To reduce the total (transaction) cost incurred on property registration (Cost Reduction).
To increase the level of tenure security of land-right holders. 2.2.
ut of the total 25, 709 revenue states (Rural and Semi-Urban) covering 90% of the land in Punjab. The system has Minutes.
Establishment of the 151 state-of-the-art Land Record Centers integrated with 45 Sub-registrar offices across Punjab. This has increased collateral value of land due to improved authentication.
Online availability of land record 24/7 at the website and efficient procedure of land registration.
Creation of 4000 direct and 10,000 indirect jobs in the province. 2.3.
The PLRMIS Project was designed by the Project Management Unit using the experiences of the pilot projects in districts of Kasur, Lahore, Rahim-Yar Khan and Gujrat and also utilizing the experience from other countries. Currently, the PLRMIS system is fully operational in all districts of Punjab since 2017. It allows the right holder to search, obtain and register the land he owns using simple procedure e.g the right holder has to go to the service center. The staff will search their record by his name, father/husband name, or khewat number using his/her computerized national identity card. The service center staff then asks for the thumb impression through a bio-metric device and a photo. The right holder then gets copy of their record within 10-15 minutes after paying the specified fee.
3.1.
economy.
The Punjab province occupies a total area of 205,345 km2, and is the most populated province of
In view of the implementation of the PLRMIS across all districts of the Punjab province and adopt a quasi-experimental approach that involves Difference-in-Difference (DiD) design coupled with qualitative interviews from the field to evaluate the effect of the land record digitization on the land related disputes. For the quantitative analysis, the researcher finds comparable control groups (regions) that have not been affected by the program precisely due to the administrative division of the districts and provinces in Pakistan yet have similar socio-economic characteristics across the border with the treatment province (see figure-2). Given the phase-in implementation of the PLRMIS program in Punjab, we find two types of treatment groups. Firstly, the districts within Punjab Province, that were initially exposed to the program are the treatment group 1 while the remaining districts are considered as control group for the first phase of the program. The second phase of the program expands to the entire province that include all 36 districts of Punjab, called the treatment group 2. For this later treatment group 2, the control regions belong to the districts of the provinces that border alongside the Punjab province. More specifically, there are three provinces that share border with the treatment (Punjab) province. These are the Province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and the Sindh province. The bordering districts of these provinces have same geographic, natural, and social characteristics as districts in the bordering region in the Punjab province. We attempt to select districts and associated revenue estates within all districts identified through red line in figure-2, and to differentiate the treatment and control regions in terms of the outcome variables. Our data comes from two main sources; primary source that involves collection of data through field survey and secondary sources that include records from government offices including published record of courts proceedings. Data on the outcome variable (e.g. number of land-related disputes) is being collected from the police stations records located within the jurisdiction of each revenue estate. In Pakistan, the distribution of police stations follows similar pattern of division of revenue estates, however the number of police stations depends on the crime rate and population within each subunit of a district (See table 1). This research utilizes data on the number of police stations collected through systematic surveys from each police station as an outcome variable. Parallelly, the researchers have obtained data on the number of disputes and related information from the courts official records that allow for preliminary tests on the validity of our research design.
Data on the land record computerization is obtained from the PLRA website as well as designated centres (ARCs) in the province of Punjab. The researchers are working on carefully designing a systematic survey to obtain information about estate-specific incidence of conflicts and their historical records from government records (through police stations) and from concerned parties in the conflict. This survey will enable the researcher to clearly identify the origin of a conflict and if the availability of digital information on the land related record helped them (concerned party) resolve the issue without going through prolonged court cases.
Punjab [Treatment] Sindh [Control] Khyber Pakhtunkhwa [ Control] No. of Divisions
No. of Districts
8 5 34 705 566 Balochistan [Control] 6 34 117 Source: Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), 2018 3.3.
The pre-program land legislations that came from the Land Revenue Act (1967) and the Registration Act (1908), did not sufficiently entitle the landowners with the ownership right certified by State. The ownership rights and other related documents associated with land records were merely status of rights had led to many disputes among landowners and concerned parties and the government due to the contestable nature of the land record and insufficient documentation. A number of studies have pointed to the dispersed and duplicative nature of land record in Pakistan causing uncertainties in the land administration and impeding economic development besides threatenin reasons of increasing disputes in rural areas is the ambiguity in land records that is often exploited by the relatively upper class of the society rendering the poor land owners deprived of their loopholes in the land records are resolved, then, it will reduce the probability of conflict that originates primarily from such an ambiguity. Figure 2 shows the results chain of the program that identifies the functional relationship of the program components with the dispute resolutions in the treatment province. 3.3.1. The Model Individual-level panel data is a powerful tool for estimating policy effects. Initially, in the simplest case we expect to collect data on two time periods and a binary Treatment indicator, Treatment1it, which is unity if unit i is exposed to PLRMIS program at time t. The following is the main specification for estimating all our outcome variables.
Where effects).
represents the outcome variable in unit i in district j of Punjab at year t
0 Otherwise =1 if the surveyed responding unit i belongs to district j of Punjab province (treatment group 1) & t PLRMIS 1st Phase)
= Vector of characteristics at the responding unit level (refer to the variable list section 2.2.1 above)
The unknown intercept for each responding unit (n entity-specific fixed
The unknown intercept for each district in the Punjab province (n districtspecific fixed effects).
Time trend. t is time as binary variable (dummy), so we have t-1 time periods.
Uijt = Error term to be clustered at individual responding unit level.
Phase 2: 0 Otherwise Where
represents the outcome variable in unit i in district j (observed in Punjab, KP, Sindh, Balochistan provinces) at year t
=1 if the surveyed responding unit i belongs to district j of Punjab province (treatment group 2) & t PLRMIS 2nd Phase) Our empirical strategy rests on the following key assumptions.
a) Strict Exogeneity: Our fixed effect DID design aims to difference out unmeasured
confounders using techniques that eliminate biases from group- or time-invariant factors. For
this, we assume that the timing of treatment exposures in the DID design is statistically
independent of the potential outcome distributions, conditional on the group- and time-fixed
effects. There is no such intervention as PLRMIS or any other system in the control districts.
Although, recently, governments of these provinces are trying to introduce such a system, the
existing land related record is still operated manually
b) The Common Trend: The outcome variables in the treatment region (treatment group 1 and
treatment group 2) follows a similar nature and mechanism as in the control districts in
Punjab2, Sindh, Balochistan and KP. Before the introduction of the PLRMIS system, the
difference in terms of land-related disputes after controlling for province and district fixed
effects is expected to be insignificant. Existing research also points to the commonality on key
aspects in our design. Despite variation between urban and rural areas, land disputes,
registration of land, transaction cost, land use & development, land tenure and land market
values follow a similar pattern Punjab, Sindh, KPK and Balochistan. A number of studies such
as CPIN (2020), Khalid and Begum (2013),
Preliminary data by the PLRA (Figure-4) also shows a sizable drop in the land related disputes however, these aggregate data of Punjab and district Lahore do not provide causal evidence of the program impact. Analysis of data on the individual police stations and associated revenue estates in treatment and control districts can only provide a basis for causal inference with regard to the program impact.
The challenge for valid impact evaluation studies in land related reforms is to find the counterfactual of the treated group. The best idealized method is to assign randomized treatment to households but in most cases, it is costly and hard to implement a program through randomized control trails (RCTs) (Conning and Deb, 2007). The next best alternate to RCTs is the quasi-experimental approach that utilize the program introduction in an area as a treatment region while finding a close counterfactual region that carries similar characteristics except the program introduction
The PLRMIS system is likely to be expanded across Pakistan. Although, the PLRMIS success on key outcome such as reducing procedural time and cost etc is known, however, it is not known as to whether the program has contributed into lessening the land-related conflicts. In this proposed project, considering the PLRMIS as a quasi-natural experiment, the researcher plans to carry out a rigorous impact evaluation of the program to come-up with evidence-based policy recommendation for the government to bring governance reforms.
The proposed quasi-experimental approach to this one-year research project is expected to be completed in several stages. In the first stage of the project we have reviewed existing literature on land related policy interventions and impact evaluation methodologies with a special reference to social dispute resolution. Our research team is currently engaged in extensively reviewing the literature and preparing for the development of a strong research design in the following months. We plan to develop an effective survey design before going to field for actual data collection. The data collection process may take up to four months that will be followed by the data cleaning and processing. Data analysis, testing and examining the results are to be done in the middle of the year 2020.
Adams, M., & Howell, J. (2001). Redistributive Land Refroms in Southern Africa. Natural Resource Perspective, 64(January). Current Situation and
Building
Bhutto, A. W., & Bazmi, A. A. (2007, November). Sustainable agriculture and eradication of rural poverty in
Pakistan. In Natural Resources Forum (Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 253-262). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Conning, J., & Deb, P. (2007). Impact evaluation for land property rights reforms. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2007/11/8990570/impact-evaluation-land-property-rightsreforms%5Cnhttp://wwwwds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2008/02/05/000333037_200802 05233115/Rendered/PDF/423820NWP0Doin10Box321452B0 CPIN Pakistan Land Disputes, Ver 2, Year 2017. Retrieved 30 May 2020, from
https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/588a0a134.pdf Deininger, K., & Feder, G. (2009). Land registration, governance, and development: Evidence and implications for policy. The World Bank Research Observer, 24(2), 233-266.
Dowall, David and Peter Ellis. 2007. Urban land and housing markets in the Punjab, Pakistan. Working Paper, University of California Berkeley Institute of Urban and Regional Development (IURD)Working Paper 2007/4. Berkeley: IURD.
Enemark, S. (2009). Land Administration Systems-managing rights, restrictions and responsibilities in land. Faruqee, R., & Carey, K. (1997). Land markets in South Asia: What have we learned?. World Bank. Gauster, S., & Isakson, S. R. (2007). Eliminating market distortions, perpetuating rural Inequality: An evaluation of Market-assisted land reform in Guatemala. Third World Quarterly, 28(8), 1519 1536. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590701637375
Housing, page 2), http://hrcpJacoby, H. G., & Mansuri, G. (2008). Land tenancy and non-contractible investment in rural Pakistan. The
Review of Economic Studies, 75(3), 763-788.
Khalid, I., & Begum, I. (2013). Hydro Politics in Pakistan: Perceptions and Misperceptions. South Asian
Studies (1026-678X), 28(1).
LandLinks. (2020). Retrieved 30 May 2020, from https://www.land-links.org/country
profile/pakistan/#1528992503488-6b2250be-7112 MOCC (2020). Retrieved 30 May 2020, from http://www.mocc.gov.pk/moclc/userfiles1/file/MOC/Publications%20on%20Env%20and%20CC/M iscellaneous/land%20use%20and%20care.pdf NDMA (2020). Retrieved 30 May 2020, from http://www.ndma.gov.pk/Publications/A%20Guide%20on%20Land%20and%20Property%20Rights% 20in%20Pakistan%202012.pdf Niazi, T. (2003). Land tenure, land use, and land degradation: A case for sustainable development in
Pakistan. The Journal of Environment & Development, 12(3), 275-294.
Punjab Land Record Authority. (2019). No Title. https://www.punjab-zameen.gov.pk/Laws
AndRules/LawsandRules Qazi, Usman Muhammad (2006). Computerization of Land Records in Pakistan: A comparative Analysis of two Projects from a Human Security Perspective. LEAD International, Islamabad, Pakistan. (Bizclir). Washington DC: USAID
Inayat Ullah Wafa Akhoubzi Inayat Ullah has done his PhD in Public Policy from KDI School of Public Policy, South Korea. He currently works as a faculty member and Principal Investigator at COMSATS University Islamabad, Attock Campus Pakistan where he is leading a Joint Research Project of the KDI School of Public Policy and COMSATS University Islamabad, Attock Campus.
Wafa Akhoubzi is a Master in Public Policy from KDI School of Public Policy, South Korea. She currently works as Marketing & Product Manager at the SWARMERS (Blue TIT, Amazon Sellers), in the Kingdom of Morocco.