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Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the nexus of third-party consultancies, digital technologies, and state bureaucracy in India, this presentation looks at how land data is captured, and the material practices involved in rendering it ‘transparent’, ‘reliable’ and ‘accurate’.

Paper long abstract:

The Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP) is a state-sponsored policy intervention designed to reform land governance in India. Managed by the Ministry of Rural Development’s Department of Land Resources (DoLR), DILRMP is promoted as an instrument for creating “error-free, transparent, and tamper-proof land records” using advanced digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain (DoLR, 2024). Central to this initiative is the ‘accurate’ capture of land data— including boundaries, acreage, ownership, and possession—with the aim of reducing land disputes and monetising land.

Alongside bureaucrats and government functionaries, key actors involved in mapping land and capturing land data are third-party non-state actors— specifically small private tech start-ups and e-governance consultancies. These actors not only partake in the production of land data but also, in many cases, define what constitutes "good", "transparent", and "accurate" data. Drawing on preliminary fieldwork, policy reports, newspaper articles, and grey literature, this presentation explores the material practices that undergird the process of data collection and its subsequent transformation into "reliable" data, how and in what ways third-party consultancies capture land data, how these consultancies liaise with state bureaucracies, how they streamline digital and analogue data, and finally, how they render DILRMP implementable. Ultimately, this paper dwells on what goes into the production of “transparent” and “reliable” data, and how multiple actors negotiate the process of data production.