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Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]latest-news-updates/all-for-the-state-7961.html"/> LATEST NEWS UPDATES | All for the state | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

All for the state
-The Indian Express
 
Much hope surrounds India’s land acquisition bill, which is to be introduced into Parliament soon. Given how questions about pricing and purchasing agricultural land have begun to affect, and in some cases warp, politics all over India, much depends on getting the institutional framework right. It is necessary to ensure that the land-use change that accompanies this urbanisation be carried out fairly, efficiently and effectively. It has already been held up for far too long, in particular by intransigence on the part of the Trinamool Congress’s Mamata Banerjee.

The earlier draft of the bill required end-users to buy at least 70 per cent of the land in a desired area before the government could step in, declare that handing the land over to industry served a “public purpose”, and compulsorily acquire it. It was this that Banerjee objected to: 30 per cent, she implied, was too large a group of naysayers. State power should not be used; the individuals concerned should be approached directly by the purchasers. It is this too that the National Advisory Council looked at in its recommendations on the land acquisition bill that it hammered out in a meeting on Wednesday. Except, they reached absolutely the opposite conclusion. For large projects — those affecting over 400 people — they have said that the private sector should not be involved in the purchasing at all. The entire operation should be done by government. This is, oddly, exactly the position taken by large real-estate developers, who would prefer that land for large projects be arranged for using the government’s powers.

There is much that is ill-thought-out about the NAC’s recommendations. Land acquisition needs to be made more market-based, and to involve less state power — or the capacity for rent-seeking will remain. It certainly is unlikely to reduce the feeling of disempowerment shared by many who fear losing their land without receiving compensation based on a proper, market-determined price for it. Compensation, the NAC suggests, should be six times the registered price. But, so often, the registered price means nothing in real, market terms, so stunted is the market for agricultural land. The ability to change the use to which land is put, too, can increase the value of land by several orders of magnitude. In the end, too much of this proposal smacks of the pre-1991, controlling mindset — not least the fact that it will make already powerful interests very happy.