BHUBANESWAR: As many as 300 poor landless women received joint titles to homestead land on March 5 at Gumma tehsil of Gajapati district through a pilot programme called ‘Use of mobile SMS tech-innovation in land titling’.
Since the process of land allocation is lengthy and cumbersome, the Gajapati district administration with support from Landesa, a global non-profit organisation assisting the State Government to provide land to landless poor, has piloted the mobile SMS technology to make the process faster.
“The process of land allocation is lengthy and requires a lot of time for cross verification of data and information. This model uses a software that helps generate multiple SMS to revenue officials alerting them for next step of action. Besides, it makes the process a lot easy, faster and transparent,” said Gumma Tehsildar Gadadhar Patra.
The SMS technology has made each officer accountable to perform the tasks as per schedule and minimise the delivery process. It also helps him/her track village-wise progress of work and generate reports by sending SMS to the system, Patra added.
Though the State Government mandates to provide land to the poor landless, implementing the programme on the ground involves a series of steps and cross verification. Landesa is supporting the State Government in land allocation programme by using the Community Resource Person (CRP) model and mobile SMS technology.
The CRP model uses trained local youth to carry out the non-technical steps such as household survey, preparing list of landless, coordinating with revenue officials for field verification and preparing case records and pattas.
A customised mobile SMS technology is used for quick and timely information sharing at each of these steps, for process tracking and progress monitoring by sending SMS from mobile phones.
Revenue Inspector of Serango Circle Jamuna Behera, who is looking after 40 villages, said the SMS technology comes handy in managing information and progress tracking. There is no more hassle in commuting in the hilly terrain time and again to cover the large area of operation.