Tech Alone Can't Fix Kashmir's Land System

A digital land record system built for Haryana is being rolled out in Jammu & Kashmir. But the region's legal traditions, historical claims, and broken files pose a deeper challenge than bandwidth or software ever could.

- Mohammad Amin Mir

Somewhere in the dusty office of a patwari in South Kashmir, an old register sits half-open, pages curled and ink fading.

It contains family names, borders marked in red, and footnotes scribbled in Urdu.

For decades, it’s been the only proof of land ownership for entire villages. Now, that register is supposed to live on a computer screen.

The government wants to digitize land records in Jammu and Kashmir. The software is called WebHALRIS. It was originally built for Haryana, a state with flat terrain and a more settled record of who owns what.

But Kashmir is not Haryana. Land here is not just land. It's memory, inheritance, even dispute.

And putting that into a digital system without checking the facts first is like scanning a torn letter and calling it complete.

The push for digitization comes from the top. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has long advocated for a governance model that is sleek, digital, and fast.

In Kashmir, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha has echoed that vision. Offices have gone paperless. Services have gone online. Revenue records are next. On paper, this sounds like progress. In practice, it’s not that simple.

Take the Jamabandi, a key revenue document that records ownership, cultivation, and transfers.

In many parts of Kashmir, Jamabandis were uploaded into the system without any ground checks. Land that belonged to three brothers on paper might actually be in the hands of four—after a family settlement that never got recorded properly.

A corner plot may show a single name in English, while everyone in the village remembers it as jointly held, its past written in Urdu and spoken around fires.