Chapter 5 – Rural Administration Notes

Content Structure

1. A Quarrel in the Village
2. Area of the Police Station
3. The work at the Police Station
4. Maintenance of Land Records
- 4A. Patwari
- 4B. Responsibilities of Patwari
- 4C. Divisions and Subdivisions
5. A New Law

The quarrel between Mohan and Raghu.
The agricultural field is separated by a small boundary called a bund.
One morning Mohan noticed that Raghu had shifted the bund by a few feet but Raghu refused to accept it and beat Mohan instead.
Mohan was badly hurt on his head and hand.
After much discussion, it was decided that Mohan would go to the police station along with some of the neighbors who had seen the incident.

Every police station has an area that comes under its control.
All persons in that area can report cases or inform the police about any theft, accident, injury, fight, etc.
It is the responsibility of the police of that station to inquire, investigate, and take action on the cases within its area.

After reaching the police station, Mohan went to the person in charge.
Or the Station House Officer or S.H.O. and told him what had happened.
At first, the S.H.O. refused, but later, he agreed that he would register the case.
Finally, the officer agreed and asked Mohan to write down his complaint and also told the people that he would send a constable the next day to investigate the incident.

You saw that Mohan and Raghu were arguing heatedly about whether the common boundary of their fields had been shifted.
Measuring land and keeping land records is the main work of the Patwari.

The Patwari is known by different names in different states – in some villages, such officers are called Lekhpal, in others Kanungo or Karamchari or Village Officer, etc.
Each patwari is responsible for a group of villages. The patwari maintains and updates the records of the village.
In this instance, the Patwari would have measured both Mohan’s and Raghu’s fields and compared them with the measurements on the map. If they did not match, then it would be clear that the boundary of the fields has been changed.

Regulating the measurements of agricultural fields, updating details of the map, collecting land revenue from the village farmers, and offering the government information on the crops grown by the farmers are all done by Patwari.

All states are divided into districts. For managing matters relating to land, these districts are further subdivided.
These subdivisions of a district are known by different names, such as tehsil, taluka, etc.
The head is the District Collector and under her are the revenue officers, also known as tehsildars.
Several officials under this department guide and supervise a Patwari’s work, including the Tehsildar, SDM, and Naib.
Farmers often require a copy of their land’s record together with a map. They have a right to this information. They may have to pay a small fee for this.

The new law of the ‘Hindu Succession Amendment Act of 2005’ suggests that land is segregated among the daughters, sons, and mothers of the family. The same law is also applicable to union territories and the states of the country.