Observação participante

6.2.1.1. Office open since 2008

The local land office was opened in 2008 with MCA funding and benefitted from technical assistance provided by French technical operator FIT Conseil. It had two employees during the first year and one remains today. Having had the same employee from the outset has benefitted the operations of the office by ensuring the safeguarding of institutional knowledge and the continuation of practices. The employee is well-known and seen as the focal point on land issues in the municipality, reflected by the unwillingness of other municipal or civil society actors to pronounce on matters of land administration.

When discussing the creation of the office with municipal actors, they gave an impression of an idea imposed from the outside. This means that the proponents and the donor MCA had exercised power by persuading the mayor and the municipal council to open an office (Allen 2009). Ankazomiriotra was hence linked to the wider assemblage of the dominant policy narrative and organisational resources were reserved for it (Allen 2009). If the office was seen as ‘imposed’ from above in the beginning, over time municipal actors found that people have gradually come to appreciate its utility. Its presence has not been questioned locally, even though political leadership in the municipality has changed. This chimes with Burnod, Andrianirina-Ratsialonana et al.

(2014), according to whom the surviving offices are in municipalities that saw a real advantage in their operation and in the certification process. The example of Ankazomiriotra also confirms that this survival is related to the ability of municipalities to cover the salaries of their employees through its own budget or fees charged for certificates. They have also found complementary administrative activities for their employees. Observations indicate that sometimes employees have created side activities for themselves (e.g. printing businesses), especially if their salaries are not paid on time.

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6.2.1.2. Relative proximity to people

One of the logics behind the dominant policy narrative was to decentralise land administration at the level of municipalities, bringing them closer to people. According to Teyssier et al. (2007), this would ensure more equitability and efficiency. Based on observations and interviews, I identify physical, psychological and behavioural proximity between people and the local land office. The office is located on the main square, on the ground floor of the main municipal building, meaning that people can visit it while dealing with other administrative issues, especially on Thursday market days during which people gather in the main square. Considering that the employee of the office is well known to local people, there should be few barriers to asking questions and seeking solutions. People also have an opportunity to monitor and exercise control over the operations (Teyssier et al. 2007; Ribot et al. 2006). It is thus common to see the chiefs of fokontany and farmers passing by the office asking for information, checking on the progress of their demands, making first contact or just seeking discussion.

The difference between the local land office and deconcentrated offices of the state land service, the court and the notarial offices is notable. These are in Antsirabe or Betafo, half a day away from Ankazomiriotra. The first two have long waiting times before accessing services, while the third is a very polished and coded environment. I observed these psychological and behavioural distances myself. Visiting a notarial office or the court in Antsirabe is like entering an unfamiliar environment. Staff dress smartly, use legal language and behave very formally. The offices are shiny and neat compared to the regular municipal offices. For me, these are ways of exercising power as spaces are restricted to a certain type of people (Gaventa 2006). Indeed, these are spaces to be accustomed to and their codes to be learned before being able to lead meaningful discussion, make demands and request services. This distance was eloquently expressed by a national civil society actor:

It is far away, it is expensive to travel, especially if you have to make several trips, and the people in the city also scare off farmers. Here they have ties with clean shoes.

Interview with a national civil society actor (CSON001), 28.06.2016

By bringing services down to the municipal level, some of these barriers could be removed. However, the municipal building can still remain physically intimidating to

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farmers coming from further away fokontanys of Ankazomiriotra and the administrative services remain inaccessible to illiterate people. Local society is not exempt from behavioural codes. A visit to a municipal office might require clean clothes and wearing shoes – something that is not a given for all farmers. When observing municipal life, I can see farmers washing themselves in the river before going to the centre, wearing their only set of clean clothes and finally timidly going up the stairs to the main offices with a couple of papers in their hand. There is then the formidable need for an ability to understand administrative procedures, read and write.

These barriers are reflected in the attitude of farmers towards administrative processes.

It was clear in several interviews that illiterate people are afraid of signing papers and being involved in official procedures, afraid of their signatures and consent being misused.

That is why people are afraid because maybe it is a letter that accuses them, for example, they leave from their place in the countryside and a person who has studied prepares a letter and asks them to sign. They sign the letter, but they did not know that the letter was an act of sale. That's why people are afraid of offices.

Interview with a farmer (PEA003), 04.04.2016 Some farmers hence feel powerless. To counter such situations, one chief of fokontany observed that illiterate parents prefer sending their children (those with school education) to handle administrative matters, as they might have more facilities to read, write and follow the administrative codes, and thus ensure that their rights are respected.

Consequently, the accessibility of the local land office and certificates remains relative.

I demonstrate further in Chapter 7 that it is mainly the wealthier, those with education and with a certain ease when dealing with municipal affaires who visit the office and apply for certificates. They are the most empowered (Rowlands 1995) and could have potentially visited the deconcentrated offices of the state land service as well.

6.2.1.3. Information dissemination relying on key brokers

The dissemination of information is reactive where the employees of the local land office respond to specific demands, and passive where notices are available to farmers.

Information is displayed on posters, leaflets, notices and administrative circulars inside and outside of the office, thus readable by anyone literate passing by (Images 6.3. and

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6.4.). Some of these posters and leaflets date back to the MCA funding, thus including information on the project and adopting its branding. In addition to written materials, the local land office organised public meetings in fokontanys when it still benefitted from MCA funding. These meetings were opportunities for the mayor, municipal actors and chiefs of fokontanys to enhance the local presence of the office, promote certificates and talk in favour of the Kara-Tany Malaky process. Such meetings do not exist anymore. The employee of the office does not have time to visit fokontanys personally.

Information is rather passed on from the municipality and local land office to the chiefs of fokontanys, and from the chiefs to farmers.

Image 6.3. MCA project poster Image 6.4. Information displayed outside of office

The observations and interviews indicate that information flows from the municipality to the fokontanys. The local land office maintains close links with the chiefs, who gather in the centre of the municipality each Thursday to receive updates on municipal matters.

These meetings are also used to share information on tenure issues. In addition, it is common to see the chiefs in the local land office exchanging view with the employees.

The chiefs have furthermore disseminated information to the inhabitants of the fokontanys at their own meetings. Some of them confirmed being available individually to advise farmers. For instance, one chief explained encouraging people to certify their land rather than registering the bills of sale and other petits papiers at the level of the arrondissement. The former is not only cheaper but also provides legal proof of

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ownership. Another chief described collecting applications and transferring them to the local land office on behalf of the inhabitants. This practice was confirmed by the farmers of the fokontany. By playing these roles, some chiefs claimed stronger roles for themselves than what is foreseen in the law. They positioned themselves as the middle men between farmers and the municipality and consequently fit the description of brokers (Olivier de Sardan 1995; Bierschenk et al. 2000; Mosse 2005).

The mayor, the employee of the local land office and the chiefs are thus key agents defining the success of the policy and how it is perceived locally among the final beneficiaries. There are, nevertheless, risks in relying on these local actors who can gain power from brokering and who also retain political positions. For instance, the certification process can be used for political purposes. The Ministry of Agriculture (2008) observed that in some places candidates for municipal elections had made promises for cheaper certificates to gain popularity prior to elections. Political changes can also impede implementation if new-decision makers question the value of the certificates or do not have an interest in awareness-raising. Furthermore, if the policy is associated with some key brokers, power imbalances can be created in which people close to them benefit from the policy while others are excluded. Finally, while these people play a role in increasing awareness, it is not possible to tell from the qualitative data to what extent their personal efforts contribute to the rise in the number of applications.

6.2.1.4. Institutional isolation

While the local land office is functional and linked to the fokontanys, the interviews indicate that it operates with reduced institutional contacts at regional and national levels. Working relationships exist with the employees of the CRIF and other local land offices of the district of Mandoto, but there is no direct higher supervision. Furthermore, the municipality of Ankazomiriotra and the OPCI are not able to advise on tenure issues, but only serve as funding bodies. This means that daily activities are conducted in isolation, based on guidance and training received at the beginning of the policy implementation. This creates some frustration among the employees. A feeling of powerlessness can be observed where the employee does not benefit from ‘power

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within’ i.e. a self-confidence that would enable more proactive policy implementation (Gaventa 2006).

The degree of institutional supervision and technical assistance changed during the policy implementation. The local land office and CRIF used to communicate with a regional coordination unit of the land policy located in Antsirabe. This unit supervised local land offices and technical operators of MCA. Its former employees felt that they were at the disposal of the demands of the central coordination unit and the MCA, not always knowing to whom they should report. In addition to institutional links, the local land office and CRIF benefitted from training programmes, for instance, on the certification procedures, land legislation, taxation and communication, delivered by the technical operator of MCA. Employees in the local land office keep the training guides and documents in one of the office cabinets with all the bookkeeping material and administrative circulars and refers to them in cases of doubt. After the withdrawal of MCA in 2009, the regional unit was closed, and the technical operators stopped their activities. This left the local land office to operate alone. Yet, the current institutional isolation should not exist. In fact, the 2005 LPF foresaw policy supervision, coordination and technical assistance roles to bureaux spécialisés that are part of the deconcentrated offices of the state land service. According to the municipal actors, these offices are almost non-existent, and no relations have been established with them. Instead, the decentralised and deconcentrated administrations function separately.

Due to the lack of institutional contacts, the information flow between decision-making levels (local, regional, national) is slow. Policy resolutions and operational decisions arriving from Antananarivo take months to reach Ankazomiriotra. This furthermore affects the operations of the office. A concrete example is the case with a repeal to a resolution that had prevented the allocation of certificates on tanety. It took four months for the repeal to arrive at the local land office, in which time the office followed previous instructions, not allowing farmers to certify lands on tanety. Another case has been encountered with guidance on book-keeping. It was not until 2017 that the local land office realised that the paper parcel registry (registre parcellaire) is a legal guarantee of ownership. Locally, certificates had been issued and information entered in the PLOF without taking a written note of them in the parcel registry. Some municipalities of the district of Mandoto have not even had enough funds to buy the book. Consequently,

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administrative sources of tenure insecurity can be created due to lack of information and funds.

When institutional connections are weak, people rely on personal contacts. The employees of the local land office and CRIF affirmed being in contact with some private operators and regional officers for information. These are people in Antsirabe who used to work for the technical operator of MCA or for the regional coordination unit. They pass by the local land offices if they are going to the field for other matters, but mainly check the procedures and book-keeping ensuring that rules are respected and details up-to-date. They consequently continue to act as intermediaries, even though this is no longer their institutional role (Olivier de Sardan 1995).

6.2.1.5. Uncertain future

Section 6.1.1. outlined how donors and technical experts see the local land offices as nodes for local development and sustainability. Such plans are, however, invisible and unrealistic in Ankazomiriotra. The municipal actors did not express any vision for the local land office, nor proactivity in policy implementation. This could have included estimating the potential number of future applications for certificates, showing willingness to revise the prices of certificates in line with the expectations of farmers, planning awareness-raising activities and foreseeing modifications to certificates.⁴⁷ Rather, the office is standing there, with its physical equipment deteriorating.⁴⁸ Its employee works on a day-to-day basis handling ad hoc demands for certification. The neighbouring office of the CRIF, in turn, is usually closed, mobilising its resources when it is time to digitise certificates. The computers are covered in dust and the printers have stopped working. There are delays in the payment of salaries by the OPCI due to internal disagreements persisting since the previous municipal elections (see also Bidou et al.

2008 on the challenges of OPCI).

In this situation, both the local land office and CRIF hope for new funding that could render their practices more dynamic. While nothing concrete had been signed by the end

47 However, since opening the office, only 14 changes have been registered to the certificates, representing a minor workload and source of revenue.

48 At my last visit in November 2017, the office desk (funded by MCA in 2008) had also just broken.

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of 2017, the influence of the World Bank CASEF project, for instance, could be felt through the advancement of some pending matters, such as the updating of databases and clearance of backlogs. Moreover, some training programmes were running again in the region, benefitting employees not formed under the MCA project. Finally, the employees have started to refer to local land use plans and taxation approaches in their narratives without having, however, a clear idea what they entail.

This discussion of the operations of the local land office in Ankazomiriotra underlines discrepancies between the plans elaborated in Antananarivo and the realities on the ground. Policy-makers may set requirements that the local land offices are not capable of meeting. In Ankazomiriotra, working with digital material and expanding its responsibilities beyond ad hoc certification remains a distant vision. The example of Ankazomiriotra also shows the futility of setting up offices, operations and communication mechanisms based on the assistance of technical operators and donor funding. In this light, the criticism of some proponents in regard to the project-led character of the policy implementation is valid. Finally, the case of Ankazomiriotra demonstrates the pitfalls of decentralised approaches where responsibilities are transferred to local government, but this is not followed by the transfer of resources (Le Bris and Paulais 2007) or mechanisms of supervision. More sustainable institutional structures are needed to prevent local land offices working on their own and responding ad hoc to outside ideas and practices.