Demystifying The Land Aquisition Ordinance: CONSENT

Demystifying The Land Acquisition Ordinance

 Part Two: Consent

Consent is attractive because it hands the dignity of choice to the land owner. But, in practice, it is also the easiest thing to manipulate.

The Opposition is piously outraged at the striking down of this clause, because it defangs their protests. It is shouting, along with clueless professional agitators like Anna Hazare, that it is anti-farmer and anti-poor, ignoring the fact that without development there is nothing. And no growth means no money to help anybody with.

Remember that Mamata Banerjee who calls the Ordinance ‘draconian’, kicked TATA out of Singur all the way to Sanand. But that land agitation lifted her to the Chief Ministership and the TMC into power.  It also gave West Bengal an anti-industry image but who cares? To them, sacrificing a car factory with thousands of would-have-been jobs and knock-on prosperity was a small price to pay.

But this time, the Opposition is gnashing its teeth, because the BJP is firmly in the saddle till 2019. Still, it is making a meal about the changes made. It is deliberately ignoring that the original 2013 law was hostile to business, industry, and infrastructure development.

On the plus side, minus this double-edged weapon, vital government/private projects cannot be blocked. The Modi Land Acquisition Ordinance has removed the Consent Clause from defence projects, rural infrastructure, housing for the poor, industrial corridors, infrastructure and social infrastructure including public-private partnerships which are owned by the Government. The side-car to consent, the loosely defined process for ‘social impact assessment’ has also been dropped for these priority sectors.

The 2013 law included land acquired five years or more before the Act came into effect. It also applied to those properties which were stuck in litigation or subject to court ‘stays’. All this retrospective stuff too has been zapped.

The Government has given itself more time to implement its long term projects, and scuttled the provision to return unutilised land after five years. The trouble is, land is owned in tiny bits and pieces by hundreds and thousands of people. Any builder ‘group housing project’ which is a ‘collaboration’, has pages and pages of collaborators. So in an industrial corridor stretching from Delhi to Mumbai, just imagine the complications. A small farmer could turn up and want his one Kanal back after five years!

Those less crucial private or public land purchases which still have to deal with the Consent Clause, and the Social Impact Assessment, will just have to pay their way out of trouble!

The Land Acquisition Ordinance is the standing law. Creating a ruckus in place of reasoned debate will not undo it. Theoretically, any ordinance can be extended time and again. Besides, once the dust settles, the Government has the numbers to pass it into law by calling a joint session of parliament.

Failing adequate cooperation in the Rajya Sabha  where a debate has been admitted at last, the Government will withdraw the bill that would replace the Ordinance. Why shouldn’t the ‘united’ Opposition be frustrated?

For: The Quint

(491 words)

February 26^th, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee

Gautam Mukherjee is a plugged-in commentator and instant analyser.