India - Whose land ?

A parliamentary committee has submitted its report on the proposed law that will define all future land acquisition by the government. Somewhat controversially, it has weighed against the plan (advocated in these columns, and incorporated into the proposed law) that asks private parties to acquire project land directly from farmers, with the government stepping in to acquire only the final 30 per cent of land required after 70 per cent has been sold by farmers of their own free will. The committee’s reason for arguing against this eminently sensible scheme is somewhat specious, for it says that only the 30 per cent landowners whose land is forcibly acquired will be able to claim relief and rehabilitation benefits, and that this differential treatment is unacceptable. This argument ignores the fact that the two categories of landowners are on different footings; those who have sold land of their free will do not need any relief or rehabilitation. The alternative, whereby the government will do all land acquisition—including on behalf of private industrial promoters—is fraught with the kind of conflict that the country has seen in half-a-dozen states. It is of course true that private acquisition of land can involve coercion in subtle and open ways, and therefore no method is immune to misuse. Even the 70:30 formula would not have worked in Singur, where 90 per cent of farmers were happy with having sold their land for the price they received; the remaining 10 per cent got powerful political support and the whole project came unstuck. But while there are dangers in all methods of land acquisition, it is necessary to choose the least bad system—and that should be one which allows volition to the seller, to the extent practicable.


The committee has done signal service by looking at a variety of related issues. It has endorsed the viewpoint, articulated in these columns and supported by several experts, that prime agricultural land should not be used for industrial and other projects, to the extent possible. It has looked at the issue of vast tracts of government land lying unused and idle, which can be used for projects of various kinds so that project promoters do not need to turn to agricultural land (the Gujarat government giving 1,100 acres of a government-run farm for the Nano project is a good example of how this can make life simple and devoid of conflict—with the state government getting Rs 400 crore in the bargain). The committee has also endorsed the view that land given to a company for a project should revert to the government if the concerned project does not come up in five years—there is no shortage of cases where companies have taken land and done nothing with it for years on end.

The committee has also gone into the specifics of a relief and rehabilitation programme, which in many cases is the trickier issue because it involves more complex problems relating to the psychological damage done by uprooting traditional communities, and the impoverishment that results when the money that is received is soon squandered by people who have no experience of dealing with large sums. The country desperately needs a programme that works well in all these contexts, because there is no other way to develop industrially while being fair to those who get dispossessed.