Govt should'nt act as broker for industry

The New Indian ExpressFirst Published : 26 May 2011 10:52:00 PM ISTLast Updated : 27 May 2011 12:54:46 AM IST

It was as if the government was waiting for Mamata Banerjee to resign from the Union Cabinet before pressing the accelerator on its land acquisition initiatives. Such a view will seem credible since the latest proposals penned by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council are exactly what the former railway minister had opposed during the Singur and Nandigram agitations. Her point then was that the West Bengal government was using the 1894 law to grab land for the corporate sector. Now, the NAC has done exactly that by suggesting that the government should acquire all the land even if its purpose was to serve the private industry.


In a society where land is valued more than life, this is bound to create more problems. The argument that the government acquisition will stop private entrepreneurs from cheating innocent villagers is untenable as the government has enough powers to prevent this. Instead of using law to deprive farmers, the government should let the private sector buy all the land it needs directly from the farmers at the market prices and on their conditions. At best, it can acquire 10 per cent of the land for development of infrastructure after the entrepreneurs have bought 90 per cent from farmers without using coercion or deceit.

The other suggestion about moving ahead with the acquisition if 75 per cent of the landowners agreed is problematic as it ignores a ground reality that many rural communities are not homogeneous groups, but societies splintered based on caste and creed and skewed power relationships. An artificial attempt to forge consensus in these communities could lead to social strife and even violent clashes. As Union minister for rural development Vilasrao Deshmukh has himself pointed out, NAC’s suggestion to club the compensation and rehabilitation packages under one law is impractical, because displacement-related rehabilitation is required in other circumstances such as natural calamities also. The fact that the Sonia-led NAC and the ministers of the Manmohan Singh government speak in many voices on such an important policy issue only underlines the complexities of two power centres in the process of governance