In 1981, 2006 Kravis Prize winner Roy Prosterman founded the Rural Development Institute (RDI), now Landesa, with a mission to secure land rights for the world’s poor. Landesa partners with governments around the world to extend land rights to the poor and has offices in the U.S., China, Russia and India. NPR recently discussed Landesa’s program in India, which employs young men from 12 local villages and trains them to help people through the process of acquiring title to their land.
NPR interviewed RDI India State Director Sanjoy Patnaik, who discussed the pilot program in Chillipoi:
“Our prime focus is securing land to the world’s poorest. And as you see, this village displaced for 40 years without titles, no food. So these are the people who actually need the kind of facilities and support that Landesa is providing.”
According to the broadcast, 19 families have received title papers to their homesteads so far. Patnaik says the next big challenge for the project will be to scale up the pilot programs into an operation that can provide land title for up to 18,000 families.
Listen to the broadcast here and find out more about Landesa Founder Roy Prosterman here.
