Land Donation to Land Acquisition Bill: Republic in Motion

Some 62 years ago, Acharya Vinobha Bhave initiated a voluntary Land Donation - Reform Movement, under the name Bhoodan Movement.  The unprecedented voluntary action must be one of, if not the largest act of voluntary land transfer in the human history.  Over a period of twenty years, Vinoba inspired Bhoodan movement persuaded landlords to donate an estimated 4 million acres (16,000 sq. km) of land.

Today, the Land Acquisition Bill, actually named as "The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill" has been tabled in the Lower House of the Parliament.

While there have been questions about the intention and impact of both these acts - voluntary move and the present Bill, (and exploring those intentions and impact would encompass 2 research papers - at least - on their own), what has been missed is the differences on the ground between the two.

To take the Land Acquisition Bill alone, economists have been both full of praise and harshly critical of it.  While some economists and public policy experts are of the opinion that the Land Acquisition Bill will help the nation avoid controversies like the Tata Nano Singur plant and Nadigram SEZ in WB or the Bhatta-Parsaul Yamuna Expressway in UP, or the anti-Posco agitation in Bihar.

Primarily the yea-voters crow the present Land Acquisition Bill aims to mollify the land givers by providing compensation based on 4 factors -

• the market value of the land,
• the value of assets attached to the land (like trees and buildings),
• implementable obligations for resettlement and rehabilitation, and
• prevent forcible acquisitions.

The nay-sayers protest that the law in its present form is impractical and un-implementable because -

• every project, however small, requires to undergo a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) Report - which can be reviewed by committee, governments and courts, and
• Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R&R) requirements, which are again mandatory and another bureaucratic thread to tie-down progress.

Only time will tell who is right, though my present inclination is the SIA and R&R should not be required for smaller projects, like a cement factory or a container terminal.

But that is not the thrust of this article.  What I am in awe is the transformation of the nation within this 60-odd years.

To put it in perspective, around the time the Nation became a Republic, we needed a movement to prick the conscience of large land holders to donate or gift land to the landless. 

If we look at it from another angle, there were huge tracts of land owned by a few families and large number of people who did *not* have personal stake in those lands.

Today, this Land Acquisition Bill aims to protect or adequately compensate small land holders, if their holdings are taken over for industrialization.

From another angle, there are large number of small parcels of land owned by huge number of people who *have* personal stake in that land.

(image courtesy Vikram Nandwani @ pointblankcartoons.com)

Tags: Land_Acquisition_Bill,Bhoodan_movement,vinoba_bhave

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