Land banks: A lesson from history

If the land is not used or when the project life is complete, it is returned to the owner, to do with it as he chooses

At the recent annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, I was struck by the fact that every time a development-related issue was discussed — infrastructure, rehabilitation, resilient housing for disaster mitigation and others — the biggest challenge seemed to be land acquisition. Particularly for countries in South Asia and East Africa, this is a major concern. In Africa, the land is typically owned by the tribe but in India individually-owned private plots of land in rural and urban areas are coming in the way of development projects. They need to be acquired by the government.