The much debated land
acquisition bill is likely to be placed before Parliament this session. A few
worries
The Right to Fair Compensation, Resettlement, Rehabilitation and
Transparency in Land Acquisition Bill will reach the union cabinet next week.
It has passed the scrutiny of a House panel and a Group of Ministers. Neither
rural development minister Jairam Ramesh who shaped it nor GoM head Sharad
Pawar who cleared it revealed the contours of the final consensus but it is
learnt that the contentious consent clause is back to 80%.
While the industry is upset over what it calls unrealistic terms for
consent and land cost, the weaknesses of this well-meaning Bill may lie
elsewhere. In fact, the apparently inflated land value – two to four times the
market price depending on the plot’s proximity to urban areas – may still be
below the actual market price which is far above the government circle rates or
registration values of similar plots in the recent past.
It is no secret that registrations are usually done at absurdly low
prices to save on stamp duty and to keep the black money in circulation. So in
urban areas, even after a 100% solatium, the land value for acquisition is
likely to remain lower than the actual market price. If anything, the buyer can
only crib about having to pay a near-market price entirely in white money.
Then again, the debate over consent – whether two-thirds or 80 per cent
of landowners should agree to allow acquisition – misses a crucial point. As
projects keep getting bigger, the number of project-affected often runs into
several thousands and across many villages. Unless the proposed 80 (or 67) per
cent consent is sought separately from every affected gram sabha or the
smallest local democratic body, the very purpose of seeking consent may be
defeated.
Consider the Posco project in Orissa. The proposed plant affects some
22,000 landowners in seven villages. Dhinkia, the centre of resistance where
not even 10 per cent agree to acquisition, has a population of around 4000.
Now, hypothetically, if the other six villages agree to trade their land,
should villagers in Dhinkia be forced to give up theirs?
The compensation prescribed in the Bill is generous. But there is the
danger of handing out too much at a time. Every family gets transport and
rehabilitation allowance of Rs 1 lakh and another Rs 5 lakh if no job is
offered. Another lump sum, presumably not less than Rs 3 lakh, will be handed out
if no housing is provided. Added to the price of the land with solatium, that is
a lot of money at one go and can easily destroy susceptible families.
The biggest security of rural or poor women – a wife, daughter, mother or
sister -- is shelter. Rehab packages in the past are rife with instances where
the men of the family splurged the compensation bounty or took off with it,
abandoning the wife, children and dependents without home or livelihood. The
Bill needs to make alternative housing compulsory and transfer the major cash
components of the compensation to joint accounts of spouses. Widows are
considered separate families. But when they are dependent on their
adult sons, they should also be made party to such joint compensation accounts.
The other unspoken victim of such schemes is the unmarried adult woman,
who is at the mercy of a father or brother. While unmarried adult men are
deemed separate families eligible for compensation, the government’s
rehabilitation policy, as in the case of voluntary relocation from critical forest
areas, ignores the women, effectively leaving the most vulnerable out of the
security net. The draft Bill put out for public scrutiny last year described every
unmarried adult, male or female, as a separate family. The final Bill must make
the clause explicit.
The provision for job for a member from each affected family is another
clause the Bill should re-examine. It is arbitrary and does not link the buyer’s
liability to the quantum of land acquired. Consider two companies acquiring 100
acres each. Depending on the nature of land holding, one may need to deal with
20 families while the other may have 50 on its hand. Clearly, projects dealing
with numerous small-holders will have to provide more jobs.
The other issue is with the “job” itself. The Bill fails to specify the
buyer’s liability in terms of employment worth a certain wage or salary per
acre land acquired. Besides, it will be difficult to gainfully employ unskilled
labour and even if trained, those legally entitled for jobs are unlikely to
have any incentive to be productive.
To avoid such a scenario, the package can offer stakes in the project
instead – worth Rs 5 lakh which is the one-time compensation presently
prescribed in lieu of a job -- in the project for which land is acquired. This will
ensure long-term financial benefit to the affected families. The buyers will
not be forced to hire what they may consider unproductive staff. The sellers
will not have to be saddled with jobs they may resent.
The brouhaha over the details notwithstanding, the rehabilitation
mechanism still depends to a great extent on the state’s discretion. The Bill
now allows states to decide on the minimum size of acquisition that will have
to follow the new rehab formula. The states also get to decide if and how they
mark up land price in rural areas and what percentage of agricultural land in a
district will be up for acquisition. Land being a state subject, states deserve
such powers. But given that a number of states have a history of aggressive
land acquisition, the Bill should specify the limits to which its provisions
can be diluted.
Finally, two key areas need a rethink. It may be too late for the Bill to
redefine “public purpose” but the soft language – “infrastructure,
industrialization and urbanization projects…where benefits largely accrue to
the general public” -- keeps, perhaps deliberately, the possibilities of
manipulation alive.
And then, Ramesh and his colleagues in the GoM have made the district
collector the sole authority to determine the price of land. That is one office
which figured with alarming regularity at the centre of all that has been
disgraceful – from forging gram sabha consent to ordering police brutality --
about land acquisition. In the same spirit, the chief secretary has been named the
ex-officio head of the state compensation and rehabilitation committee.
What the Bill owes us instead are independent authorities at the centre
and state level to assess if a project is indeed in public interest, confirm
the price of land, monitor the acquisition process, and watch over the bureaucracy
that has only been too eager to take orders from its political masters and big
money. In its present form, this much-needed legislation leaves a lot to
convenience of interpretation which is the recipe for unrest, litigation and
delay.
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