-The Indian Express The political discourse over land acquisition has proceeded in binary terms - industry versus farmer, growth versus no growth - thereby obfuscating the real issue at the heart of the land acquisition debate: the fear of arbitrary exercise of state power in reshaping property relations in Indian society. Instead of tweaking the 2015 land acquisition bill with a few amendments here and there to appease political allies and...
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Losing the plots -Pratap Bhanu Mehta
-The Indian Express The debate over the land acquisition bill is increasingly marked by political tone deafness and legislative hubris. The government has offered minor amendments. But most of them are designed to display its consistent ability to be too clever by half rather than its ability to address deep issues. The 2013 bill had been framed in the context of several issues. The now much-maligned Land Acquisition Act of 1894...
More »Land bill passed in Lok Sabha
-The Hindu Nine amendments have been adopted. The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill, 2015, popularly known as the land bill, was adopted by the Lok Sabha after debating it for two days. Congress and Biju Janata Dal walked out ahead of the voting, to protest the removal of a clause that makes it mandatory to get farmers' consent prior to the acquisition of land...
More »Unconstitutional exercise of power -Suhrith Parthasarathy
-The Hindu The proposed amendment bill to the Land Act has amendments that are an exercise of state power without reason, with the basis for these changes on assertions of a vague agenda of development. What is equally disturbing is that at least some of the changes that these amendments propose, if passed, would also be patently unconstitutional In his celebrated treatise on constitutional law, H.M. Seervai began a discussion on the...
More »Appeasement for none
-Business Standard Intellectual property policy should focus on implementation A preliminary draft of a new intellectual Property rights policy for India has been the occasion for much discussion. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman even felt it necessary to assert on Twitter that the proposed revamp is not meant to appease the United States, given that this remains a major outstanding irritant in relations between the two countries. The government has argued that the...
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