Gaining ground

If Parliament clears the Land Acquisition,Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill this winter session,it will cap a five-year legislative process. The bill will replace the 118-year-old Land Acquisition Act of 1894,which has been the basis on which India has built industries,cities and just about anything that required land. There has been heated argument around the replacement of this bill,but at no stage did the Centre attempt an empirical study. It would have certainly been interesting for the Centre to collaborate with a state government and test the proposed clauses,to see if industry can successfully implement a rehabilitation programme or if a community can muster a two-thirds majority to allow the sale of land for a project,in order to devise a practical approach. Instead of pushing for this admittedly difficult experiment,political parties and civil society activists only shouted themselves hoarse,pointing to the defects of the proposed legislation. And so,as it stands,the land bill is an untested model with huge implications. The two states that did try to come up with workable solutions on the rehabilitation front,Haryana and Uttar Pradesh,do not find their experience incorporated in the bill prepared by the ministry of rural development.

In the absence of counterfactuals,it is difficult to judge the restrictiveness of certain clauses,like largely keeping agricultural land out of the acquisition process. Agriculture ministry data shows that 28 per cent of land in India is barren or fallow land,another 7 per cent is taken up by towns. These are the areas from where most of the land has to be acquired,so the question of how much room is available for further acquisition is moot.

Even after the bill is passed,it will not have the omnipotence of the existing legislation for a while. The 1894 act applied to all of British India,but as land has been a state subject since Independence,any amendment will have to be made by them. This Central legislation will be a guide at best,except in the states that pass a resolution to adopt it. The provisions will,however,act as a floor for state governments in the settling of critical issues like compensation rates. All said and done,even in the current form,the land bill will rank at the top of the governments reform measures so far.