What if the problem you are solving is a land problem?
Ask a mining company why an expansion is delayed, a renewable energy developer why a solar park is stuck, or a real estate firm why a project has stalled. Often, the answer leads back to land: an unclear title, a contested boundary, an invisible relation, a customary claim that was never recorded, a rehabilitation commitment still pending, or a green investment being asked a justice question?
Land is not only the crucible for development; it is also the cradle for investment. From renewable energy and infrastructure to urban growth, climate action and rural livelihoods, many of India’s ambitions sits on land. Yet, unlike labour, capital and institutions, land receive limited attention in business discourse, B-school curriculum and cases, business decisions and business investments.
No longer land can be ignored or outsourced. Land deserves more than responsibility and sustainability commitments. It is transforming from being seen as not-a-business, to voluntary to compliance to corporate governance agenda.
It is fast becoming an imperative for business conversation and action – not only to make growth more inclusive, just and fair, but also to make it more climate-resilient and net-zero compliant and sustainable.
How Business Has Handled Land: Outsource and Manage
Be it a greenfield or a brownfield project, and despite the conflicts and contestations around land, decisions on land are mostly outsourced. In a country like India, it has long been presumed that handing the matter to a retired bureaucrat, a lawyer or a chartered accountant will take care of it. Land became a matter of liaisoning, government interaction and legal compliance, rather than of a professional community engagement.
Of late, this business as usual is not working. Even the real estate sector has started to feel the pinch and is looking for better coordination between policy and practice, and for more responsible and fair ways of investing in land. The same is happening in renewable energy, mining and infrastructure, where unresolved land issues are adding to costs, reducing profits, sometimes causing losses and sometimes stalling projects altogether.
The reporting landscape is changing too. Indian Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) now relates to land in five principle (4-8) and directly talks about land in two of its principles (5 and 7) reporting parameters, making land part of how companies account for their sustainability.
The Land Value Chain
Land engagement is not a one-time transaction for many businesses. In mining, real estate, infrastructure and energy, land investments and land interactions have a long-term horizon with many touch points. They run across a value chain that spans both the way a company gets land and the way it gives back to land.
For example in mining and extractive industries, land engagement starts with acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation. Many public sector companies have adopted reformist, forward-looking R&R policies, providing jobs and housing to families whose land was required, and even counting every adult and married couple as a separate family for entitlements. Yet few have looked closely at tenure and community relations: the informality and customary regimes through which people relate to, hold and use land.
However, the engagement doesn’t stop at R&R. As mines expand through brownfield investment, companies keep engaging in land dealings. At the other end of the chain, they invest in land restoration and climate action: plantations within their premises, green-growth commitments in their reporting, CSR projects and, of late, for mine closure.
Real estate follows a similar arc. It begins with land purchase and land pooling, and increasingly extends to green buildings, balanced land-to-building ratios, and on-site or off-site plantations towards net zero. Elsewhere, renewable energy projects need clarity on land tenure and communal land use; urban development depends on reliable land records, land value capture and effective planning; and nature finance and conservation initiatives need to recognise the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LCs), whose livelihoods, stewardship and care are closely tied to land.
Business engages with land at every stage of its value chain. Yet its engagement has remained sporadic, isolated, siloed and ad hoc.
Why Land Is Still Seen as a Threat
Why does this gap persist despite such strong imperatives? One explanation lies in how land is looked at and perceived. Much as climate change was long seen only as a threat, land is often viewed through a lens of risk: a challenge that reduces profit and must be avoided, sidelined or managed. A lack of information a dominant complexity lens on tenure, rights and community relations only reinforces this view, and make it more opaque and a difficult question to answer through corporate framework.
But the ground is shifting. With climate change and disasters, growing competition for land and rising conflicts, land issues can no longer be handled at arm’s length. The cost of treating land as an afterthought now shows up in project timelines, balance sheets and reputations.
Treating Land Like Labour, Capital and Institutions
The time has come to stop outsourcing land. Instead of seeing land as a siloed, ad hoc matter to be managed, business needs to integrate it into the whole corporate governance mechanism, across the land value chain. Land deserves the attention that labour, capital and institutions already receive, in research and B-school case studies, in dedicated verticals within companies, and in decisions at the top.
This means investing not only in projects that depend on land, but also in the systems and institutions that make them possible, such as reliable and adaptive land records, accessible land information, secure tenure and above all an informed iterated engagement with land system and actors. It also means recognising community stewardship: the collective responsibility, knowledge and care through which communities protect, manage and sustain land, forests, water and other natural resources. Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities need to be seen not simply as beneficiaries, but as stewards of the landscapes on which both business and conservation depend.
Responsible investment in land must go hand in hand with secure rights, community participation and long-term stewardship – better relating to people who are related to land.
Understanding Land in Its Entirety
Doing this well requires understanding land in its entirety. Land is not a single discipline but an interdisciplinary subject. It is an economic resource, but it is also cultural identity, political power and social relations. And it looks different depending on who is looking: a farmer, a tenant farmer, a pastoralist, a woman farmer, a forest dweller or a government official.
Yet the people and institutions who hold these perspectives, including government departments, researchers, civil society organisations, technology providers, legal experts, businesses and communities, often work in separate spaces, with few opportunities to engage with one another.
The India Land and Development Conference (ILDC) was established to bring these disciplines and actors together. Now in its 10th edition, ILDC has spent a decade building and sustaining a platform for dialogue and collaboration across the land sector.
ILDC also follows the trends and developments in how land is tenured, used and recorded, how land information is accessed and how land issues are understood, in India and globally. It looks at the land-based investments now coming in, and at how they are trying to become more responsible, just and fair by adopting global guidelines such as FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT).
An Invitation to Business
For a corporate actor, coming to ILDC is an investment worth making: a chance to build a more nuanced understanding of land, so that land issues can be addressed in a professional, businesslike way.
The 10th edition of ILDC will be held in Bhubaneswar, from 17 to 19 November 2026 at XIM University. As ILDC completes a decade, the focus is also on what comes next, and on the sustained engagement between government, academia, civil society, communities and the private sector that a stronger land sector will need.
We invite corporate leaders, CSR teams, ESG professionals, institutional investors, philanthropic organisations and development institutions to join the 10th India Land and Development Conference and be part of the conversations shaping the future of land governance in India.
Treating land as seriously as labour, capital and institutions may not be business as usual today. But it holds the future of business as usual.