"Land Acquisition Bill favours private companies and not farmers or tribals"

Jyotsna Singh (JS): Hello and welcome to Newclick. Today we are joined by Dr. Smita Gupta, Economist with Institute of Human Development to discussthe Land Aquistion, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill. Welcome to the show. So the bill has been has been proposed in the context of widespread protest that we are seeing all over the country against the land acquisition or a satisfactory compensation that the government or the private players provide. In that context do you think the bill actually addresses these issues?

Smita Gupta (SG): Absolutely not. Actually the bill has come in the wake of not only the recent agitations but from agitations right from the independence in fact before independence. Because it is an archaic bill which the British brought up in 1895. It's true that it has been amended twice after that. But even in the time when British brought it up, the whole debate in the assembly, whether the state should become real estate agent for the private sector or not. It was very clear that it was never envisaged as a bill to acquire land for the private sector. But what has been happening as increasingly with the changed policies of the government when they have actually abandoned any control over land use whatsoever. This is criminal in a country where there is so much hunger. Land and the agriculture is going down and food security actually has taken a back seat even millions go hungry every day. In a context like this, this bill is going to facilitate market based land use determination. The market will decide what is public purpose, what is land use and the conditions for satisfying land use is so vague that actually anything and everything will go as public purpose.

 

 

JS: There is a feeling among many forces including progressive forces also that this bill is an improvement over the previous bill or the bills that were proposed in 2007 where the land acquisition and R&R was a separate issue. Your comments on this understanding.

SG: Actually we have to see in the context of what was required. What was required to be changed in the 1893 bill as basically four or five issues. The first issue was most fundamental. Which is that land acquisition should be least displacing. It is when you acquire people's land it should not be at the cost of the livelihoods and the quality of life of those who use the land. So you must do it in rarest of rare cases, you must minimize displacement and you must do it for well established public purpose. This public purpose should not only be there but it should be seen to be there. Who will determine the public purpose is then a crucial issue. If the person whose land is being acquired is not convinced that the purpose for which it is being acquired is not then it will always be forced land acquisition. The issue really here is that how can you democratize even the compulsory land acquisition in the country and the as it existed earlier left it entirely to the the executive or the bureaucracy. So public purpose was the key issue, displacement was another very very important issue. Further issue which was fundamental but was never consider for the land issue was land used planning. How do you plan land use because you know the land is going to have a lot of contending demands and with going pressure on land, agriculture, industry infrastructure, hydro electric project, mining. I mean there are so many contending demand on land. Then what is it which should be done with the parcel of land is something that the state has to first plan and then think of how to acquire land. There is a related issue to all these. At the moment we are talking about land acquisition of the state. But you know in the last thirty forty years, the rapidity with which land has been bought by the private sector through so called open market purchases has really gone up. There has been very little implementation of land ceiling laws, land use change. You know the moment you buy land from farmer and you say I wanted to do some real estate development a bit of bribe, a bit of greasing the palms and giving a few flats to some powerful people. The more stark example is of course Adarsh where the government land with the army was given for private speculation. So it's not just private purchase but also transfer of land held by the state in public trust. So land use covers a lot of land and all these needs to be regulated. So the demand was really to have a land acquisition bill which would look at land use as a central core concern. Once you put it in the centre, then you say how do we democratize it, how do we sensitize it to national priorities like food security, environment and so on and then finally link it to rehabilitation. When you said this is your agenda and you look at the bills which have come whether in 2007 or in 2011, none of them do this. If fact what these bills do they just open it up and make it very easy for the private sector.

 

 

JS: So then what do you think is the central philosophy that this bill actually tries to address not the land use which you say is the primary demand.

SG; What this bill does is actually very clever double speak. What it does it takes up all the issues which peasant organizations, tribal organizations, movements against displacement has taken up. So it has a whole section which says, protecting food security. When you read what it does as provisions it has nothing of that kind. Similarly, it says consent, so it talks about 80% consent. But that's such a sham because it asks of a consent in very few case of land acquisition. Even there, there is full of loopholes. Consent for whom, how is consent to be got, when is it to be got and in case the consent is not got, then will the project be abandoned. So it is a very very week bill and it's full of loopholes and it's whole philosophy is to actually make it very simple for private sector to take over land. As long as they are producing some goods used for public, it's public purpose. You produce shoes, it's public purpose, you produce car it's public purpose because whatever you produce is for the the people. Perhaps growing you know drugs or something like that will not be public purpose. So organised crime I am sure will not be public purpose. But short of that anything will be of public purpose.

 

 

JS: Does the bill take care of all kinds of land acquisitions and land change use or does it not.

SG: No, it doesn't. I am glad you asked this question because there are two sections in the bill which is quite interesting. One is the section that deals with applicability. There is a section that deals with what is public purpose and where consent is required. So in these two cases what you find is thatif the private sector company acquires one acre of land and comes to the state to acquire 99 acres of land, in that case, consent is not required. Then the whole provision dealing with consent will not work then. But what is more even shocking is that the entire act will not apply to the other acts. For e.g. the SEZ act. Where the SEZ act is used in order to acquire land and to give the land to SEZs. It will not be covered by this bill. So neither the compensation nor the R&R. Similarly for railways, similarly for highways, none of these, there is a list of twelve acts which are not covered and this can be expanded any time. That's what the bill says. At that time, R&R provisions will not apply, the land acquisition provisions will not apply.

 

 

JS: So what would you propose as key improvements on the bill and rather would you say that it has to be completely rewritten because it actually doesn't address much of the issues.

SG: You know I would say this bill should be rejected in toto. One of the strong points of the bill by it's title was supposed to be bringing together marrying land acquisition with resettlement and rehabilitation. But it doesn't even do that because the R&R process, R&R institutions are totally devoid and separate from the land acquisition process. The bill is very very poorly drafted. So apart from the specific issues in the bill, even the drafting is bad. Though it makes R&R a legal right which is very important. I think we should not look down upon in. Even I whom so opposed to bill would say that is the single positive feature. That it makes R&R a legal right. But even there it puts all the R&R rights in schedules which can be changed by the government at any time. Everywhere it gives the loophole of not providing it. So therefore even when it makes it a right and gives in one hand it takes away from the other. It doesn't make them justifiable, not enforceable. So those rights if not given then where does the person deprived go. You are not allowed to go to lower courts. Lower court is allowed to give you a stay. So it's a big problem. So therefore, from this they demands which they have in which. So this demands to go back to the drawing board, have a bill which actually seeks consent. Seeks consent because the state is not going to acquire land for land distribution and land lords are going to say no. the state is acquiring land to actually give to big land sharks, to give to the real estate, to give to hydro electric and other such large private sectors for infrastructure development. So go back to the planning board and make public purpose much more rigid, make it accountable and democratic. Make displacement minimum. Ensure that the people have a say in deciding whether this is public purpose or it is not public purpose. Finally, make R&R as tight as possible so that there is absolutely no possibility for not giving it and do not allow anybody's land to be taken without R&R. Finally one issue which needs to be stated even though it is not been a part of the debate on the bill which is that who should be compensated. We are only talking about land owners all the time. But you there are so many people who are land dependent. There are people who come as agricultural labourers, they are artisans. The illegal occupants of land who are small tribals whose land rights have not been recognized. So therefore demand has to be anybody that ekes out a living from the land whether legal or illegal always the poor must be given compensation and R&R. So it is not enough to do some change cosmetic changes to please us, people who are fighting for people's rights and basically have a bill that makes FICCI happy and say we are giving lots of compensation.

 

 

JS: Thank you Smitha we hope that we have better bill than what we have and this debate will go on . Thank you so much.