Ground realities

Over to states after the land ordinance lapse

The biggest immediate impact of the government’s decision to allow the Land Acquisition Rehabilitation and Resettlement Ordinance to lapse, after two extensions and an eight-month stand-off with the Opposition, is the strong political message it sends out. This is an — admittedly belated — demonstration of political maturity, and one which contrasts sharply with the Congress’ obduracy, which stalled legislative business in the monsoon session of Parliament. Perforce, states are now responsible for formulating their own land laws; the 2013 Act becomes a model law for states to follow with the stipulated compensation acting as a kind of “floor price”. The fact that 11 of India’s states are ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party or its coalition partners might suggest that the intent of the ordinance is likely to be reflected, partly or entirely, in the individual laws of these states. An overarching law for a country as diverse as India, with opaque and complex land use and ownership patterns in each state, might be considered impractical in any case – though uniform requirements would have greatly eased the burden of inter-state projects like the many planned industrial corridors.

The ordinance was a clumsy attempt to rectify two perceived flaws of the 2013 Act – provisions, incidentally, the BJP had thought fit to approve when it was in the Opposition, thus weakening its own position when it came to power. One is the “consent clause”, which required 80 per cent of landowners in an area to agree to their land being acquired for private projects and 70 per cent for public-private partnerships. The other is the compulsory social impact assessment or SIA of projects for which the land is being acquired. These were intended to protect the interests of land- and livelihood-losers. However, the business community was justifiably worried about the potential for delaying tactics these provisions embedded.

But in trying to overcome these difficulties, the ordinance overreached. By disingenuously according the broadest possible definition to projects enjoying exemption from these two provisions, it managed to make it possible for any and every private project to requisition land. The five categories were: defence, rural infrastructure, affordable housing, industrial corridors and infrastructure (including PPPs where the government owns the land). Considering there are 13 Acts (covering land acquired for projects for the railways, highways, electricity, coal mining and so on) that allow governments to exercise the right of eminent domain without recourse to these two provisions, the exempted categories set out in the ordinance were not necessary. The government’s executive order of August 28 bringing the 13 Acts under the purview of the enhanced compensation and rehabilitation of the 2013 Land Acquisition Act but keeping them outside the purview of the consent clause and the SIA (only Union Rural Development Minister Birender Singh harbours some confusion on this point) strengthens the case against the ordinance. Indeed, instead of dictating the minutiae of land acquisition, a land authority and a national monitoring committee for inter-state projects would be far more constructive ways to dissipate tensions over this most sensitive of political issues. And, hopefully, states will now go ahead with new land acquisition laws without the rigid provisions of the 2013 legislation, which in themselves would create some competitive pressure on states that do not see merit in such relaxations.