The land Bill likely to be tabled in Parliament on Tuesday might offer additional incentives to ease acquisition for urbanisation projects. It already provides for offering 20 per cent of developed land to project affected families (in proportion to what they lost and at a price equal to the cost of acquisition and development). This might be doubled in the version to be presented in Parliament.
In case the project affected family wishes to avail of this offer, an equivalent amount will be deducted from the land acquisition compensation, the Bill in its original version says. However, farmer leaders say experience with such offers do not make this sound a great proposition, unless the compensation covered the period taken to develop the land.
In Haryana, the agrarians had got compensation for agricultural land. But the money was used up when they had to buy apartments there, after the land status was changed, says Rajesh Bhatti, a leader of the Kisan Sangarsh Samiti. “It is tragic enough that a farmer has to first lose his land and then shell out his compensation to buy a piece of that very land. If he is clever, he might make that land yield money. But how many farmers can turn into property dealers overnight? That is why we have always maintained that we wanted not money but shares in the property itself, so that we earn something from it.”
Rakesh Tikait of the Bharatiya Kisan Union says the offer of developed land could be useful only if the law also provided for enough compensation for at least three years till the land is developed.
Madhuresh Kumar of the National Alliance of People's Movements says if 40 per cent of developed property is reserved for farmers, it does not mean the farmers who lost their livelihoods can now earn something from this property. It only means a farmer would have to spend all the compensation cash to buy a small piece of the very land that had once belonged to him in its entirety. The clause asking for consent of 80 per cent of landowners as a condition for land acquisition for private projects also does not impress many. “Experience tells us that the consent clause may never get implemented in the true spirit,” Kumar says.
