Tenure means “to hold a tenant”. Land tenure is the relationship that people and groups have with respect to land and resource-based assets including trees, minerals, pastures, and water. The land tenure system specifies how land rights are distributed, transferred, used, or managed in a specific culture.
Types of Land Tenure System perspectives in Nepal
- Raikar System
- Birta System
- Guthi System
- Jagir System
- Rakam System
- Kipat System
- Jimidari
1. Rikar system
The land tenure system in which states provide the customary rights on land to the public in return for some taxes. The ultimate owner of Raikar land is the state though individuals who use it have a full right in terms of selling, using, inheriting, transferring, dividing, and leasing.
2. Birta system
In this system, the state grants land to those who successfully persuade the rulers of their worth by their particular activities or behavior. These personalities included heroic people, devoted military members, and priests and instructors.
3. Guthi system
The land Tenure system in which the land is given by the state to certain communities for public religious and social use such as the construction of temples, schools etc.
4. Jagir system
The system of granting land to people in exchange for their regular government service rather than paying them a salary in cash. The continuation of their desire and readiness to provide unpaid work was a condition of their right to continue cultivating the land in this manner. It can also be transferred to their generation if they continued to serve the government.
5. Rakam system
In this system, the land is granted as the remuneration for the performance of specific functions, mostly to carpenters, bricklayers, mail carriers, musicians, and caretakers of religious places. It is a temporary assignment of land until death or termination of the allocated period.
6. Kipat system
This is the system of communal tenure in which land is owned by the Limbus of eastern Nepal. The right to use the land was given to only the member of Kipat-owning ethnic groups with no government authority.
7. Jimidari
It is also called the Khaikar system in which land is registered under the name of a single person cultivated by other individuals by paying the tax to its owner. This is the strategy of the Government of Nepal to collect the revenues by making agents in the name of Jimidar, Patawari, Talukdar, Jimmawal, Mukhiya, Thari, Dware etc on whose name land is registered.
