After 110 years, Kerala got its first Land Manual in ebook format – ‘A prelude to Kerala Land Revenue Manual’. It has been written by IAS officer Dr. Sajith Babu, currently serving as the Civil Supplies Commissioner. It took him 12 years to prepare this manual.
It has been written in such a lucid manner that it can be easily understood by common people. Prior to this, the manual on land reforms of Kerala was written thrice by William Logan’s ‘Malabar Manual’ in 1887, former Divan V Nagam Aiya’s ‘Travancore State Manual’ in 1911 and C Achuthamenon’s ‘Kochi State Manual’ for particular regions respectively.
However, there has been a gap in understanding the land reforms and the technical jargon which were used in these land manuals. Land governance in itself has been a big problem in the state for the successive government due to the unavailability of a uniform land manual.
THE ISSUES
While speaking with Indian Masterminds, Dr. Sajith Babu said, “In a state like Kerala where there are 150 different laws especially on land reforms, it is very difficult to master in all of them. When it comes to a land being sold, personal land rates are very high especially in Kerala.
Not only this, but personal land cases lead to a lot of corruption. During the process of purchasing a land, a lot of people are cheated. Many people have suffered it due to lack of knowledge about land reforms which was uptill now pretty much complex.”
Talking about the previously written land manual, Dr. Babu said, “A lot of technical words in the manual were not clearly explained and the words which were used by the common people were also not that clear in people’s mind. There have been a lot of intricacies with different laws because no body had ever written what concretely should be done for different cases and situations people face while dealing in land related problems. This has also led to a lot of litigation and a number of civil cases in the state out of which many are still pending.”
CHANGES IN THE NEW MANUAL
The comprehensive e-book consists of 500 official terms which have been clearly explained avoiding all the technical jargons in 923-pages.
According to Dr. Babu, “This e-book will be a boon for common people purchasing land in Kerala and also for the revenue and local bodies.”
AWARDS GALORE
Dr. D Sajith Babu, a Trivandrum based 2012 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, has been involved in many IT based governance initiatives throughout his career. In 2020 he won the prestigious National e-Governance [Gold] award that is truly recognition of his abilities to conceptualize and implement appropriate e Governance solutions for the various governance issues, which impinge the life of common people.
In the same year he received the “Best e-Governed District award” of Government of Kerala and he was shortlisted for the prestigious “Prime Minister’s Award in Public Service Delivery and grievance redressal” while serving as District Collector in Kasaragod. In March,2021 he received the second “National Water Award” instituted jointly by ilets-Jalasakthi Abhiyan and Embassy of Israel.
