The new land acquisition bill passed by the Indian parliament will make it impossible for industry to acquire land for new projects
It is not just the ridiculous nature of the cost of the land in the new Land Acquisition Bill that is the problem. The entire process has been so designed that it can only result in endless delays ensuring that the economic viability of any project proposed on such land will be seriously threatened. Here are various steps involved in the acquisition process.
Social Impact Assessment (SIA)
The Bill specifies that for every acquisition of more than 100 acres in rural areas, a Social Impact Assessment, be carried out in consultation of the affected Gram Sabhas, to ascertain among other things number of families affected, extend of lands, housing and settlement affected, impact on families residing in adjoining lands etc.
Along with these reasonable sounding provisions, the Bill mandates that the SIA is also supposed to assess two key parameters and these have the potential to derail any project anywhere in the country. According to the Bill, The SIA is supposed to also assess whether the project in fact is in public interest and whether land acquisition at an alternate place has been considered and found not feasible.
What this means is that a bunch of villagers and other unspecified experts who are conducting the SIA are to decide if a particular project – be it a power plant, a dam, or an industrial project – is in public interest. This is a complete inversion of Eminent Domain – the legal principle governing land acquisition all over the world.
Apart from this, the acquirer will have to these villagers and so called experts that alternative locations were looked at and not found feasible. The possibilities of the entire process being mired in a discussion about the desirability of one location over the other, even before the SIA – the first step in a lengthy acquisition process – is prepared are very high.
Expert Group
Once the SIA is ready, the government will appoint amulti-disciplinary expert group including two “non-official” social scientists, two experts on rehabilitation and a technical expert on the subject of the project.
Committee of Secretaries
The report of the Expert Group will be referred to a Committee of Secretaries. This committee will have the Chief Secretary as its chairperson and have a bunch of other secretaries from Finance, Revenue, Rural Development, Social Justice, Tribal Development, Panchayati Raj besides secretaries of the concerned departments. The committee will also have three non-official experts.
This Committee will examine the SIA, the recommendations of the Expert Group and will finally decide if the project is in public interest and recommend such area for acquisition which would ensure minimum displacement of people, minimum disturbance to the infrastructure, ecology and minimum adverse impact on the individuals affected. It will also ascertain whether consent of 80% of the people affected has been obtained.
Preliminary Notification
If the project proposal passes all these hoops, the Collector of the district where the project is located will issue a preliminary notification giving details of the project, the quantum and locations of the land to be acquired, its public purpose etc.
If for whatever reasons this preliminary notification is not issued within twelve months submission of the SIA, the report will deemed to have been lapsed and a fresh Social Impact Assessment shall be required to be undertaken.
Any person interested in any land – note not just the land owner – which falls under this preliminary notification, has the right to object to the project, its public purpose, amount of land required or findings of the SIA. The Collector will have to give a hearing to all such people objecting, record their objections and then submit a report to the government with his/her findings.
Interestingly, once the Preliminary Notification is published, no one is allowed to make any transaction of land which falls under the purview of the notification. Effectively what this means is that while the government machinery grinds on, the villagers have already lost the right to their land. So much for social concerns of the Bill!
Surveys
Now starts the survey phase. The Collector and the Administrator appointed for rehabilitation and re-settlement – typically a Deputy Collector — will conduct a survey of the land, built up properties – both public and private – people affected, livelihoods lost besides public amenities and infrastructure affected by the project.
Based on this survey, the Administrator will prepare a Draft Rehabilitation and Resettlement (R&R) Scheme. This Scheme will conduct public hearings in all the Gram Sabhas affected by the project to discuss the R&R scheme. He will then submit a report to the Collector who with his comments will then submit it to the Commissioner Rehabilitation and Resettlement for approval. The file will ultimately move the a Secretary in the Government who, provided the scheme has passed all these hoops will make a declaration.
Award
The next stage is where the Collector will make the award – i.e making payments to the people affected.
Payments have to be made based on individual awards to all the affected families. The compensation amount has to be paid within three months and the monetary component of the R&R in six months. Further all the infrastructural aspects of the R&R have to be provided within 18 months. It is only after all these payments are made and infrastructure provided that the land can be acquired.
If this process of award is not completed within two years of the declaration then the entire proceedings lapse and the process has to start all over again.
Applicable also to Private Purchases
Now here is the strange part. The provisions of the Act will apply even if someone is acquiring 100 acres of land in rural areas through private negotiations. So the whole process of SIA, Committees, R&R will apply even if the deal is between willing parties. No land use change shall be permitted if rehabilitation and resettlement is not complied with in full.
National Monitoring Committee for Rehabilitation and Resettlement
The Bill also envisages establishing of a National Monitoring Committee for R&R. What this Committee will do, besides collating data from various state governments is not presently clear, but it creates another potential roadblock to the process of land acquisition
Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Authority
To confuse matters further, the Bill also establishes a Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Authority (LARR). This will have judicial powers and will be headed by a functioning or retired Judge. Strangely, the Bill says that the LARR will not be bound by the procedure laid down in the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 but shall be guided by the principles of natural justice and subject to the other provisions of this Act and of any rules made there under. It will have the power to regulate its own procedure.
Any person who is not happy with the award by the Collector can approach the LARR which then provide a hearing. If the LARR finds that award provided by the Collector inadequate and decides to raise it, its orders will apply to all people similarly affected by the award.
Of course the orders of the LARR can be challenged in the High Court or the Supreme Court, leaving the door open for further judicial delays in the land acquisition process.
As environment minister he was responsible for stalling countless industrial projects. Now in his avatar as Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has ensured that no industry will come into India thanks to the new Land Acquisition Act.
What this long winded procedure means is that it will be almost impossible for any industry to acquire substantial parcel of land to set up new industries. The process will have endless delays, open to countless challenges and mired in controversies. It is highly unlikely that India will attract any Foreign Direct Investments in manufacturing. Even large Indian industrial houses like the Tatas or the Birlas will find it easier to set up plants overseas than in India. This has drastic implications for the Indian economy.
This Bill represents a mindset that frowns on industry and wants to “protect” the farmers. The best comment on this mindset comes from Dr. Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate and darling of the neo-liberal, “activist types.” While reading the comments reproduced below, one should keep in mind that Dr. Sen has recently co-authored a book on Indian economy with Jean Druze, who happens to be member of the National Advisory Committee (NAC) which has been one of the driving forces behind the Bill.
Speaking to Kolkatta-based The Telegraph newspaper in July 2007, Dr. Sen made several telling comments on land acquisition and industrialization. Though he was speaking in the context of the land acquisition controversies in Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal, they hold true for the whole of India as well.
“The prosperity of the peasantry in the world always depends on the number of peasants going down. That is the standard experience in the world. It is not that historically agricultural production goes up so much that they become hugely rich on that basis. Bengal has done very well in terms of agriculture compared to other states. But that has not made Bengal immensely prosperous. In countries like Australia, the US or Canada, where agriculture has prospered, only a very tiny population is involved in agriculture. Most people move out to industry. Industry has to be convenient, has to be absorbing.
When people move out of agriculture, total production does not go down. So per capita income increases. For the prosperity of industry, agriculture and the economy, you do need industrialisation. Those in effect preventing that, either by politically making it impossible for an industrialist to feel comfortable in Bengal or making it difficult to buy land for industry, do not serve the interest of the poor well.
The Communist Party made a mistake earlier when it drove industries out by union action, which was intended to create benefits for workers but ended up making the workers having no job. Second time it is happening now, not from the Communist Party but from the Opposition, preventing industrialisation, which is not in the interest of Bengal in general and the poor in particular. So if Bengal is to regain what it used to be — being one of the richest in the world — industrialisation has to happen. Prohibiting the use of agricultural land for industries is ultimately self-defeating.”
“…There is no way in which you will be able to avoid industrialisation around Calcutta, any more than you could have avoided it in London, Lancashire, Manchester, Berlin, Paris, Pittsburgh. You will find industry will come up where there are advantages of production, taking into account also the locational preferences of managers, engineers, technical experts as well as unskilled labour.
But we should not make the mistake of thinking that somehow while you are trying to attract business based on the market that the government can say: ‘I want you to go to Siliguri and that is where you are going to be.’ That is not the way the market economy works. The market economy has many imperfections…. but it also creates job and income and if the income goes up, government revenues go up, so there is money available for education and healthcare and other things.
So in order to do that, you have to give the market economy the operational rational of choosing one location over another, depending on their market-based calculation. You cannot be governed by the market but nor can you ignore the logic of the market if you want to use the market as one of the instruments in advancing the country.”
No comments:
Post a Comment