In the article “Land Bill needs a new public purpose” (June 7), Rajiv Kumar and Chetan Bijesure make the valid point that infrastructure projects on a public-private partnership, or PPP, basis must not be excluded from the “public purpose” category in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011. However, they go on to make two questionable arguments.
The authors do not say why the estimated one per cent of India’s total land area that is required for industry and infrastructure in the next 50 years cannot be carved out of 57 per cent of the land area that is not under food crops. Moreover, the fact that state governments do not have complete records of non-owners whose livelihoods depend on agricultural land does not make the need to rehabilitate them “fallacious”. It only underscores the need to create better state government records.
In “Growth, India’s highest priority” (June 7), Shyam Ponappa’s concern about shrinking profits of corporations and plea for an interest rate cut are understandable. But why Ponappa wants windfall gains through complex machinations of tax avoidance to be encouraged is less easy to understand. Does it not amount to asserting that instead of earning profits by providing value to their clients, businesses must be allowed to make money through dubious arbitrage opportunities that they may come across in the course of their legitimate business activities?
Alok Sarkar Kolkata
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