Founder's Note

Why Build for Understanding Land?

I grew up in Odisha. Land always held a special place for our people here. In good times, it is worshipped as mother (several Odia festivals - Raja, Akhaya Tritiya etc). In bad times, land has been a saviour too - be it funding daughter's marriage or son's education or a medical emergency.

I have also seen the darker side of land ownership - how it has broken families generations after generations on land disputes. There is an Odia proverb:

A big part of that, in my experience, had to do with getting separate ownership of their share of inherited land. Land takes center stage in our lives. In good times, in bad times, in our progress and in our broken families too.

The Reality of Land Ownership Today

However it has been harder ever since I knew of it:

• Land documents are difficult to read. Forget understanding them.
• How many of us can answer - "Which all documents together prove clear ownership?"
• We pray that our land doesn't get stuck into litigation because it can take a generation.
• From paying taxes to fixing any error in documents, everything is super hard.
• Every land document is bad until it's proven good. Imagine the difficulty in selling.
• Multiply all of the above four times if you are living away from your land.

The biggest of all, we risk our next generation drifting away from it. It emotionally hurts that our children wouldn't care about our ancestral land just due to the sheer difficulty in handling them.

I am assuming these problems are similar all over the country. Honestly, it need not be this hard. Someone got to try to make it easy. With TLB, I am trying to make it easy for all of us to understand, manage and protect our land, to buy and to sell our land with the digital efficiency of the new age.

Starting with my home state Odisha, if I get it right, I shall do it all over the country.

Land ownership can be messy in India. It's a hard problem but a problem that has to be solved. I welcome your suggestion, collaboration and feedback in this attempt.