Fenced out

It is no surprise that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided to bury the controversy over the land acquisition Bill by allowing the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Ordinance to lapse. Extending the Ordinance for yet another term would have posed risks for the Centre. Given the rancour that currently exists between Treasury and Opposition benches, and the Centre lacking the requisite numbers in the Rajya Sabha to push through a constitutional amendment on its own, the Ordinance had little chance of making it to the statute books in its current form, if kept alive. With crucial assembly polls in a major agrarian State such as Bihar in the offing, it would have also been politically difficult for the ruling BJP to counter Opposition charges that it is anti-farmer.

While politics can chalk up a victory over economics, the issues the Ordinance sought to address remain. There is widespread consensus in both political and business circles that the existing law on land acquisition — which is now back on the books — is, for all practical purposes, unworkable. State governments, who have experienced first-hand the roadblocks to development created by the old law, had gone slow in implementation. The lapsed Ordinance sought to remove some of those impediments, by more clearly defining “public purpose” and restricting the government’s power of “eminent domain” to a few important areas by creating a separate category of projects where this would apply. This special category covered key infrastructure projects to be taken up under the public-private partnership mode, industrial corridors, defence, rural infrastructure, rural electrification and affordable housing for the poor. There can be little argument that such projects are a national priority and are vital to pushing the objective of inclusive growth, to which political parties of all colours lay claim. But without land acquisition, they would be non-starters. Of course, it is equally important that any law is fair and transparent, protecting the interests of all stakeholders.

This is not impossible to achieve. Much of the opposition to the land acquisition law — both old and lapsed — stems from conflating processes with principles. Those who seek land are not against paying a fair price to land owners per se, but want the process made faster. Those who hold land are not against development, but want fair compensation and livelihood protection. These two objectives can be married into a single law without too much difficulty, provided the process is made more efficient and transparent, and removes arbitrary power from the hands of officials, the root of much of the abuse of the old law. It is now up to the States to frame laws that are both workable and fair.

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