Omidyar India grants Rs 16 Cr to fund research on property rights

India might be number 77 in the Ease of Doing Business Index, but it is at 166 when it comes to ease of registering property according to the World Bank’s Doing Business Report of 2019. This is largely because of the intricacies around property registration in the country. Land, housing, and property rights involve substantial paperwork and complex administrative issues.

To resolve these issues, Omidyar Network India announced a grant of Rs 16 crore to form a multi-organisation research consortium to secure rights to assets like property and housing. This includes Rs 3.5 crore to back proposals from various places across the country. Omidyar Network works with entrepreneurs, non-profits and public institutions trying to solve India’s most difficult problems.

The grant will fund institutions like Brookings India, National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and National Institute of Public Finance Policy (NIPFP). These will then churn out evidence-based solutions to address challenges involved in providing secure access to land, housing and property rights.

Shamika Ravi, Director of Research at Brookings India, said,

"Well-defined and secure property rights are fundamental to the economic progress of a society. India's second-generation economic reforms will critically rest on our achievements in this regard.”

“As the consortium grows, we will be growing India’s research capacity to deal with challenging land issues,” added Shekhar Shah, Director-General of NCAER.

Omidyar Network has also funded research across several leading institutions working on asset and property rights issues. Some of them are the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS) specialising in India's land administration systems, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), which has conducted pioneering land administration research in Maharashtra, and Duke University, which used satellite imagery analysis to study informal settlements in Bengaluru. 

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