New Delhi: One reason why protests originate against the acquisition of land is because the compensation and rehabilitation packages aren’t properly framed.
Infrastructure Development Finance Co. Ltd’s (IDFC) India Infrastructure Report 2009, titled Land—A Critical Resource for Infrastructure, focused on this issue among others related to land and land acquisition.
Changing the law: The scene near a Tata Motors Ltd plant in Singur in 2008. Experts say compulsory land acquisition in India isn’t sufficiently sensitive to the idea that India is a democracy. Prashanth Vishwanathan / Bloomberg
Mint’s deputy managing editor Tamal Bandyopadhyay, IDFC chief executive officer and managing director. Rajiv Lall and six of the several experts who contributed to IDFC’s latest report, India Infrastructure 2009, discuss the issue. The experts are Sebastian Morris, Ajay Pandey, Ashok Singha, Rumjhum Chatterjee, Runa Sarkar and Bimal Patel. In the first part, which appeared on Wednesday, Mint presented excerpts from the discussion on the findings of the report and why there is opposition to some industrial projects and not others. In the second part it looked at the legislative aspect of land acquisition. In this, the third and final part, it presents excerpts on the issue of compensation:
Bandyopadhyay: Sebastian, this is a question for you. If the private sector needs to acquire land, on behalf of the government in certain cases and for their own purpose in others, what kind of compensation package should they devise?
Morris: First let’s understand the role of the government and the private sector. The private parties can always acquire the land, there’s no problem. Let them acquire land for whatever purpose they want. The problem is not that. The problem is when you need public infrastructure—roads, ports, bridges, railways, urban spaces to expand, a bus stop to come up, a market to come up —then the state cannot say well, if it doesn’t happen through the market process, I’ll stay away. It needs to get in and acquire land. So here even in the very greatest of democracies, we have the notion of eminent domain—that is, compulsory acquisition of land by the state—and this is enshrined in our laws and so that must be there. But the point is that this compulsory acquisition in India is not sufficiently sensitive to the idea that India is a democracy. The law is that of the British when India was not a democracy. And now that we are a democracy, we must constrain eminent domain through due process and through valid compensation process.
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