The need for digitizing land records in India

Clear land titles will make it easier for the poor to borrow from the formal financial sector

The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has often pointed out that a modern market economy requires a strong system of property rights. India is a mess on this front. Land titles are presumptive rather than conclusive. The Hindi film Khosla Ka Ghosla provides brilliant insights into the damage done by dysfunctional land titles. That is one reason why some have estimated that nearly twothirds of all pending cases in Indian courts are related to property disputes. NITI Aayog has said that such property cases take an average of 20 years to settle. The result is that millions of Indians cannot use their principal asset as collateral to borrow from the formal financial system. The poor suffer the most

The Union government has been busy trying to address this problem for almost a decade. The United Progressive Alliance government led by Manmohan Singh kicked off the National Land Records Modernization Programme in August 2008. It is now part of the Narendra Modi regime’s flagship Digital India initiative. The broad aim is to modernize land records management, reduce the scope for property disputes, make land records more transparent and move towards conclusive property titles. In short, the plan is to pull a system developed in the age of zamindari into the modern era.

The progress over the past decade has been uneven, with some states, such as Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, doing better than the others. However, there are challenges, even in advanced states such as Maharashtra, as a recent field study by Sudha Narayanan, Prerna Prabhakar, Gausia Shaikh, Diya Uday and Bhargavi Zaveri found. Their study of 100 land parcels in five villages spread across two tehsils showed that the new digitized land records do a good job in reflecting ownership of land, but less so when it comes to recording encumbrances and area of land parcels.

Some of the most interesting work of sorting out the land titling mess has been done by state governments, as has been the case with labour law reforms as well. Three are worth mentioning here.

First, the Bhoomi Project in Karnataka led the way even before the Union government got into the act. The state government began to digitize land records at the turn of the century. The relevant document—the record of rights, tenancy and crops—has been made available through kiosks. The need to pay bribes to get access to this basic information in government offices has been done away with.

Second, the Rajasthan legislature passed the Rajasthan Urban Land (Certification of Titles) Act in April 2016. This law ensures that the state government is a guarantor for land titles in Rajasthan, and will provide compensation in case of issues of defective title. The guarantee is based on certification provided by the Urban Land Title Certification Authority, which will verify ownership of any property for a fee.

Third, Andhra Pradesh has taken a leap into the future. Its state government has tied up with a Swedish firm to use new blockchain technology to prevent property fraud. As in all other trades, blockchain will allow participants in a distributed ledger to check the ownership of a land parcel. As de Soto and former US senator Phil Gramm wrote earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal: “If blockchain technology can empower public and private efforts to register property rights on a single computer platform, we can share the blessings of private-property registration with the whole world. Instead of destroying private property to promote a Marxist equality in poverty, perhaps we can bring property rights to all mankind. Where property rights are ensured, so are the prosperity, freedom and ownership of wealth that brings real stability and peace.”

The Indian push to digitize land records—and establish conclusive rather than presumptive titles—should have been completed by now. The government has now pushed the year of completion to 2021. The delay may have been avoidable, but is understandable. Clear land titles will ease a lot of constraints—from making it easier for the poor to borrow from the formal financial sector to easing commercial land acquisition for infrastructure projects instead of the misuse of eminent domain. And, even as computerization continues, some more attention should be paid to the possibilities offered by new technologies such as blockchain.

Source: Livemint epaper, 8-08-2018

This land is their land 

Despite the new land acquisition law, questions of resettlement and rehabilitation persist

The Bhangar violence in West Bengal recalls yet again the intensity of conflicts over the acquisition of land for infrastructure projects. These conflicts continue despite the new and ostensibly improved land acquisition law, with its higher terms of compensation, social impact assessments, and prior informed consent for projects involving the private sector. But if the 2013 law was enacted to comprehensively address opposition to land acquisition, why do governments still get land acquisition wrong?
Infrastructure projects are initiated for the “greater common good”, but the people dispossessed by them of their land, livelihood, and environment rarely benefit from all their goodness. The scale of the projects keeps growing. The information regarding them is little or often not accessible at all, and those affected discover the project’s full implications either by accident or by doggedly exercising their right to information. Prior informed consent remains a farce. There are no clear procedures for establishing consent in the case of private sector involvement and there is complete exemption for state-led projects. Compensation is often the proverbial fish bone — the inadequateness of compensating security of land, livelihoods, socio-cultural lifeworlds, not to mention the loss of environment and biodiversity, have been discussed ad nauseam. The impoverishment of large numbers of small and marginal farmers and the landless is inevitable, but the insecurity faced by large farmers once compensation money dries up in conspicuous consumption has also been documented widely.

The insider and the outsider

Agitators are portrayed by ruling governments as being under the influence of “outsiders” when, in fact, infrastructure paradigms, investors and beneficiaries are always the outsiders. The state asserts its sovereignty as the sole authentic “insider” and moves in police troops to protect its sovereign right from agitating locals. The outsider trope is particularly irrelevant when it applies to citizens of this country, but remains salient in state attempts to delegitimise agitations against land acquisition.
Dating from the struggles of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) in the 1980s against the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), the quality of state intervention and discourse outlined above remains uncannily familiar. This is despite the 2013 land acquisition law, and extends across parties.
Thousands affected by the SSP were in fact on dharna during the monsoon of 2016, marking 31 years of the NBA’s struggle for justice for those dispossessed bythe project. At a height of 138.68 m now, only the reservoir gates of the SSP dam remain pending before full submergence of the upstream areas. The 2016 agitations saw relay fasts by those already dispossessed and woefully short of promised rehabilitation, and satyagraha by thousands more facing submergence — some without promised resettlement and others not even recognised as adversely affected. The year passed with yet another assurance of just rehabilitation, and the 2017 monsoon already looms ahead.In bitter irony further downstream, residents from 22 villages affected by the Dholera Smart City project protested against the ‘denotification’ of agrarian lands from the SSP’s promised irrigation canals in Ahmedabad district, Gujarat. The water that was promised to peasants in Gujarat by the construction of the SSP is now to be officially diverted to supply real estate and infrastructure projects for a city that, if developed, will destroy the existing agrarian infrastructure and socio-cultural and ecological lifeworld of the area.
The official endorsement of what constitutes ‘infrastructure’ is rooted in ideas of infrastructure aiding capitalist circuits, increasingly created in direct partnership with capitalist investors. Existing agrarian and local infrastructure is devalued, rendered backward, and considered in need of improvement for greater economic growth to accrue. Who benefits from these projects? The thousands agitating in the Narmada valley at the end of three decades bear witness to this trajectory of economic growth and development. So do the residents of the Dholera villages who stand to lose not just the promise of irrigation, but the very land they survive on.The agitations over Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are other recent reminders. POSCO’s inability to set up a plant in Jagatsinghpur, Odisha, as it had not yet obtained forest and other clearances is a case in point. This came after 11 years of tenacious struggle by local residents against the project. Similar agitations have unfolded in Nandigram, Mangaluru, Maharashtra and Goa, stalling projects or eventually pushing out SEZS developed by corporate giants and backed by state forces.

The Bhangar story

In the violence in Bhangar, the Trinamool Congress that agitated against the high-handedness of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Nandigram and Singur claims the people first agreed to part with 14 acres of land and then outsiders created unrest. The local residents, reportedly organised under the Jomi, Jibika, Paribesh O Bastutantra Raksha Committee, claim that they had no knowledge of the full extent of the project. In negotiations with the government and the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited, they were informed only of a power sub-station that would improve the power supply of the area. They discovered belatedly that on completion, the Bhangar sub-station would receive power from the Sagardighi thermal power plant and the Farakka unit that would then be transmitted via high-tension wires to Kolkata, the northeastern States and Purnea in Bihar. They demand an environmental impact assessment to ascertain the adverse impacts of the high-transmission lines on the local population, agriculture and ecology. Agitations have left two dead, several arrested and many injured since November 2016. The story unfolds in painfully familiar tedium as state representatives claim that land was acquired with consent, compensation was negotiated with the residents, and outsiders are instigating violent agitations.

Who pays for the losses of life, livelihood, peace and well-being of the local residents during months and years, sometimes decades, of agitation? What of the loss to the exchequer, and ultimately the Indian public, for all the effort made to suppress agitations and democratic principles by the state’s sovereign assertions over the greater common good? Where does the state source its sovereign power over citizens in a democracy? Eminent domain is a colonial doctrine imported by the colonial government to India and retained by the independent Indian state to institute capitalist development — the sine qua non of pre- and post-Independence development in India. Who is the ‘insider’ occupying the sovereign powers of the state over citizens?

Preeti Sampat teaches Sociology at Ambedkar University, Delhi.

Source: The Hindu, 31-01-2017

 

Land Law Must Give Way to a Better One





The goods and services tax is more important than the land Bill, said Adi Godrej, speaking for many . He is spot on. The land acquisition law is flawed in fundamental ways, not just in the version that the government now wants to distance itself from but in its 2013 form forged by the UPA. The problem is not just in terms of specific provisions of the law but far more basic. India's growing economy needs land to be released for new economic activity , without doubt. This has to be understood as a challenge of urbanisation, rather than merely as a policy of releasing patches of land across the country .As industry and organised services grow faster than agriculture, and look for expanded urban environs to accommodate them, urbanisation happens. More urban spaces come up and more people move from village to town. If half of India beco mes urban over the next 20 years -China has crossed this point already -roughly 25 crore more people will be added to Ind ia's urban population. With any reasona ble measure of population density , something like 20,000 sq km of additional urban land will be needed to accommodate this incremental urban population. Existing towns will need to expand and rebuild, new towns will need to be built. Does the land law of either the UPA or the NDA address the challenge of releasing land on this scale?
The point is to make those who lose land to economic progress stakeholders in the prosperity that comes up on their erstwhile land. There is no unique one way of doing this. But the stakeholder principle must be incorporated into whatever mechanism is adopted to release forest or agricultural land for new economic use. That should be the only purpose of a central law on the subject. Industry and farmers have to learn to become partners in India's progress.

Land Law in Search of Dumping Ground





Land cannot be left to the states without legislation

The strategy to let the states devise their own ways to acquire land, hinted at by the government after the meeting of the Niti Aayog governing council, might seem attractive in principle but resolves nothing in practice. As of now, the 2013 Act is in force. For a new regime to take effect, whether the 2015 law or of the new strategy of leaving everything to the states, the 2013 law will have to be repealed or superceded. That calls for legislation, with both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha agreeing to make the change. Since this agreement is missing, all that the government's new so-called strategy amounts to is political disowning of a hot potato, putting any amendment to the law in cold storage for an indefinite period.In the meantime, it is to be noted that some significant acts of land acquisition have taken place or are taking place in some states. The government of Uttar Pradesh has acquired sufficient land to build an expressway between Agra and Lucknow. The Chandrababu Naidu-led government of Andhra Pradesh is acquiring land for a new capital city with relative ease. When farmers see value in giving up some land, they do it with gusto. After initial setbacks, the Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh, too, had arrived at a method of acquiring land that was agreeable to farmers, involving upfront compensation, annuities over an extended period and return, in developed form, of about an eighth of the acquired land to the farmer. The previous Haryana government led by Hooda, too, had arrived at a similar compensation package.
This newspaper has long advocated a model of lease, instead of total alienation of land and one-time compensation, so that the farmer remains a stakeholder in the value created by the new, non-farm use of his land. It is better to let different states find their own methods of releasing land for industry , without a straitjacket imposed by the Centre. No law can refuse to accept that farmers, too, have property rights and a right to fair compensation. The effort should be to work for consensus on this principle. That calls for engagement, not subterfuge.

Against the Grain

At a time when the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015 is being examined by a joint committee of Parliament, the promulgation — for a third time — of an Ordinance shows scant regard on the part of the Narendra Modi government for democratic norms. Despite public expressions to the contrary by even Mr. Modi, the BJP-led NDA government appears disinclined to concede any ground to the Opposition on its key demands to restore clauses relating to consent and social impact assessment that were integral to the 2013 Act. Not surprisingly, therefore, Opposition MPs on the joint committee are planning to disassociate themselves from it. Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) general secretary and a member of the committee, has described the re-promulgation of the Ordinance as “absolutely untenable constitutionally in a democracy”. Even as the ruling dispensation shows no sign of relenting, murmurs of unhappiness have come from within the BJP itself, especially from MPs who represent rural constituencies. In fact, at the first meeting of the joint committee some BJP members, worried about the political fallout of the proposed changes, expressed their concern. Even the BJP’s NDA allies, the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Shiv Sena, have raised questions about the wisdom of persisting with such an unpopular move.

Evidently, the Modi government misread the signs: for even senior officials who see merit in the proposed changes (as they feel it would simplify land acquisition and put infrastructure projects on the fast track) say the government should have engaged the Opposition in a discussion before bringing the Bill forward. It should have also, they add, conducted a countrywide exercise of opinion-making before attempting to initiate changes. Now, the Opposition, led by the Congress, has had sufficient time to run its campaign against the government-sponsored changes. Reports from the ground suggest that a substantial swathe of the population believes the government draft goes against the interests of the rural poor and is anti-farmer. Unfortunately for the government, all this has coincided with unseasonal rain that has damaged crops, and a hike in fertilizer prices. Yet, the minimum support price for crops has not been increased commensurately. Taken together, the message is that this is indeed a suit boot ki sarkar — in Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s shorthand — that does not care for the agricultural class; it just wants a land law that would favour the corporate rich. The ruling dispensation’s plan to call a joint session after the current Land Bill is defeated in the Rajya Sabha, flies in the face of pragmatic politics, as it would just give the Opposition even more ammunition. The only explanation is that its numbers in the Lok Sabha have blinded the government to the predominant national mood.

Keywords: re-promulgation of land ordinance, Budget Session of Parliament, Land Acquisition Bill

Make Land Deals a Win-Win for All





It is welcome that the BJP has finally reached out to the Opposition to get the Ordinances on insurance and land converted into law. It is, however, unlikely that the BJP will get any support from other political parties, social organisations and activists to dilute the land acquisition law. This law was created by the UPA, and supported by the BJP in Parliament last year.Even the BJP's parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), wants no dilution of the law. The current law makes it compulsory to seek the consent of at least 70% of owners before acquiring their land for public-private partnerships; it also requires an assessment of the social impact that such acquisitions might cause. The BJP wants to dilute both.Today , land acquisition appears to be a zero-sum game: the buyers' gain is the sellers' loss. It need not be so. Rewrite the law to ensure that both buyer and seller gain from the transaction. This can only be done by making those who sell land stakeholders in the prosperity created by the projects concerned and enhanced value of the land. There are several ways to go about this. States like Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have successfully experimented with annuities, in addition to upfront payment and return of a fraction of the acquired land, post-development.
Other options could include giving land-sellers direct equity stakes in the businesses that come up on their property . Some projects like schools or hospitals might not yield immediate monetary returns; in that case, the government should lease -rather than purchase outright -land, and pay a steadily increasing rent to landowners as the property appreciates. Instead of trying to ram an Ordinance into law in Parliament, the BJP must consider options that make land transactions a winwin proposition for all.

Dec 30 2014 : Mirror (Mumbai)

Govt approves ordinance on land acquisition, with changes

LAKSHMI IYER

NEW DELHI





The Narendra Modi Government on Monday approved an ordinance to amend the Land Acquisition Act, diluting what Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's had in mind for the bill. The incorporation of Clause 10(A) seeks to exempt five more areas from the prerequisites in the Act.It has also changed stipulations including securing consent of 80 per cent project-affected families in case of private companies, and consent of 70 per cent of such families in case of acquisition for public-private partnership. The new limit has been set at 50 per cent.
While making land acquisition easier, it also does away with the mandatory requirement for a social impact assessment and impact on food security. Though the government is yet to make details of its proposed ordinance public, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley said the five areas to be exempted are land for defence purposes, rural infrastructure, affordable housing and housing projects for poor, industrial corridors and infrastructure or social infrastructure projects, including those public-private projects in which ownership will remain with the government.
He said the exemption will fasttrack acquisition for projects and bring in economic opportunities for those living in the area. Jaitley said compensation will remain high as per the Act, and rehabilitation and resettlement will be carried out.

Dec 29 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

Make the Land Loser a Stakeholder





Projects must be sustainable for society at large

The Narendra Modi government is planning to change land acquisition laws, amended in 2013, through an Ordinance, preferably before January 1, 2015. At least 13 sectors will be exempt from the strictures governing land acquisition, including mining, railways, roads and even urban metro rail networks, ostensibly in the interest of promoting faster growth. Why not also include real estate developers, mall builders, land speculators and their myriad agents, subagents, brokers and dalals in the ambit of this Ordinance? The main problem with the original, colonial land acquisition rules of 1893 was that the state was supposed to be the ultimate owner of all land.Everybody , including those with pattas -or written land rights -amounted to nothing, if the state invoked its suzerainty over land.This is what led to Singur, Nandigram and Bhatta Parsaul, where farmers resisted the state's occupation of `their' land and the toppling of the regimes of the Left in Bengal and Mayawati in Uttar Prade sh. Industry cribs that it is impossible to get the sanction of 80% of landown ers to dispossess them, while govern ment projects like road building are stuck for a 70% clearance from the owners of land under the 2013 law. Un der the colonial law, once the state decided to acquire land, it would give a one-time compensation to the victim, who would henceforth vacate their farm, vegetables, betel vines, poultry and fish ponds for the public weal -whatever it was supposed to be.
This model can't work in the 21st century . Anybody who has to give up land or livelihood has to be compensated for its growing valuation over time. This can be done through leasing, where the owner lends her land to the government for a steadily-increasing rent, or through an annuity-based system as practised in Haryana and Noida, Uttar Pradesh. The days of forcible acquisition through diktats from the state are long gone: people need a stake, ever-growing, in the land they give up. This Ordinance is misconceived. Incorporate stakeholdership for the land loser instead.

Jun 12 2014 : The Economic Times (Mumbai)

The Land Acquisition Conundrum





States are protesting against the land acquisition law put in place by the previous government; the president, in his recent speech, talked about a national land use policy; many voices from the NDA government have already called for a simplification of the law and for ease of implementation; industry is demanding it.
M Rajshekhar unravels why this is such a vexing problem There's hope the current dispensation will improve the land acquisition law's implementation -to make it easier for industry while being considerate to the needs of the land owner Land acquisition has become gnarled and twisted for India Inc and the mining sector, compunded by a climate of mistrust and forced choices

O n May 8, Thiess India was hit by two thunderbolts. Its chairman and managing director, Raman Srikanth, was arrested on charges of cheating and criminal breach of trust, charges the company denies. The same day, the Indian subsidiary of $24.4-billion Australian infrastructure, mining and real estate firm Leighton Holdings received a letter from NTPC terminating the contract between them.
Despite several extensions, the notice said, Thiess had failed “to make any headway“ in extracting coal from Pakri Barwadih, a coal block in Jharkhand.At one level, the notice was the latest broadside in an increasingly acrimonious dynamic between the two companies. At another level, it was the latest act in a cautionary tale of how gnarled and twisted land acquisition has become for India Inc in general and the mining sector in particular.
It goes beyond the law and into the practical endeavours of this exercise. It goes beyond the traditional reasons cited, of villagers' demands for better compensation and jobs, and into the complex, transactional construct of land acquisition, and the climate of mistrust and forced choices it fosters.
The flashpoints keep increasing. The Reliance SEZ in Raigad. Coal India in Korba, Chhattisgarh. Tata Motors in Singur, West Bengal. The abortive hydel power boom of Arunachal. The previous land acquisition law gave the government sweeping powers to acquire land -at low rates and by ignoring local concerns by citing public interest.
This resulted in an inevitable blowback from communities.
In 2013, the previous Congress-led government introduced a new law. Among other things, to mollify local communities, it asked private companies to obtain consent of 80% of project-affected families. “This new Act has swung to the other extreme,“ says Gaurav Jain, a real estate professional who worked with Emaar and DLF before setting up his own consultancy, Samyak Properties & Infrastructure. Little land acquisition has happened under the new law, partly because of the economic slowdown and partly because of the law itself.
Change might be coming. A stated intent of the new Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre is to get the wheels of industry moving. “Till now, industry was saying the Act needs a relook. But now, even the new government is saying the Act has made land acquisition difficult and expensive,“ says Jain. “It will undergo changes.
There is no way out.“
A department under commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman plans to make a submission to the rural development ministry -which is in charge of the land acquisition legislation -to do away with the `social impact assessment' before land acquisition, which entails gauging a project's impact on local livelihoods, sources of drinking water, grazing lands, places of worship, etc.
Earlier this week, state governments joined the chorus against the new land acquisition law, saying its provisions will adversely impact infrastructure projects and the overall investment climate in the country. “With this land acquisition bill“, says Vishal Dev, industry secretary, Orissa, “We can just forget about attracting industry.“
“If land acquisition took four to five years under the old act,“ Dev told ET on the phone, “it will take 1.8-2 times as long with the new one.“ That is because, he says, the new bill wants more notices to be given out, more studies to be commissioned and stipulates long periods for communities to respond to these notices.
In its initial remarks after taking over, it appeared that the NDA would retain the new law, but work on improving its implementation -to make it easier for industry while being considerate to the needs of the land owner.
It's a balance that was, even after 10 years, never achieved at Pakri Barwadih.
`Pakki Barbadi' With geological reserves of 1.6 billion tonnes, Pakri Barwadih is the largest coal block given out by the Government of India for captive use till date. In all, since 1993, the government has given out 195 blocks, 155 of them between 2004 and 2011. Of this, very few have got going. Most have been held up in processes or clearances, land acquisition being one of the issues.
Pakri Barwadih was allotted to NTPC in 2004 at a time when the company wanted to meet 20% of its coal requirements through its own blocks. “The company's then-CMD told us it was a goldmine for NTPC. We could use it to meet our coal requirements,“ recalls a former senior employee in NTPC, not wanting to be named. “Employees now call it pakki barbadi (definite ruin).“
Located about 23 km to the south of Hazaribagh, BJP leader Yashwant Sinha's erstwhile constituency, this is a poor part of the country. Most of the 2,000-odd households living over the block eke out one crop from their fields during the rains and work as labour in Hazaribagh or elsewhere the rest of the year. NTPC, and 26 other companies who were allotted blocks in the Karanpara coalfield, had to acquire land and start mining. So far, NTPC has not been able to and once almost saw the block deallocated.
NTPC blames Thiess. “Mining in India entails passionate involvement in local conditions and managing the environment,“ NTPC chairman and managing director, Arup Roy Choudhury, told ET. “None of these initiatives could be seen in the local representatives of Thiess. Hence, no work could actually happen at the site.“
A senior Thiess India official told ET, on condition of anonymity, the arrangement was that NTPC would acquire the land and Thiess would develop the mine and carry out operations thereafter. NTPC, he adds, neither made land nor basic infrastructure available. NTPC declined comment on specifics. “Since it is a contractual matter, it will not be appropriate to comment now,“ an NTPC spokesperson said. A legal battle seems likely.
Land Rights The reason Pakri Barwadih could not be operationalised lies in the messiness of land acquisition. As with most projects, the 6,600odd acres that NTPC needed to acquire had diverse owners. Based on the legal statute of their holding, these can be classified under four heads: revenue land owned by farmers, forest and deemed-forest land owned by the forest department, and government land.
Acquisition ran into trouble in each.
People are living and farming in the lands shown as belonging to the government and the forest department. “With land acquisition running into delays, we were told to start work in the forest area NTPC had obtained,“ says the Thiess manager. “After a survey of about 1,200 acres, we found people were cultivating 206 acres.“
Weak laws and social patterns collide here. Many of these people have been farming here for several generations. They see the land as theirs in spirit, but the law does not confer legal status on all. “For sarkari land, the `adverse possession' rule and several court orders say that anyone who has lived on government land for more than 30 years should be paid compensation as per government rules,“ says Sunil Kumar, collector of Hazaribagh. But there's no policy for those who have lived in these places for less than 30 years.
The Forest Rights Act (FRA), passed in 2006, conferred legal status on forest dwellers, but it has been poorly implemented.
“Some villagers had applied under the FRA, but we never heard back after submitting our forms,“ says Jitendra Bhogata, who lives in Iti Sirma, a tribal village in the Pakri Barwadih block.
Titles are not a problem in revenue land, which accounts for 4,071 acres of the block's 6,600-odd acres. But NTPC, says the Thiess official, has acquired only 10%-15%. In this place where people are poor, have small landholdings and no alternative sustainable livelihoods, NTPC is willing to pay `15 lakh an acre, twice the going rate. In addition, it is offering an annuity of about `3,000 every month for 35 years, but not jobs.
Villagers are unhappy with the compensation terms. “We cannot buy land in the vicinity. The whole valley is going into coal blocks,“ says Satyajit Singh, a tempo driver from nearby Pandeypara village. “We will have to look for land in areas new to us. Also, can we search for new land, buy it, build a house, etc, in that `15 lakh?“ Villagers like him have calculated the quantum of coal lying below each acre by dividing the size of the coal reserves by the block's acreage. Says Singh, “Agar koyla ka ek tonne `2,000 ka hai to ek acre ki kimat kitni honi chahiye? Hame to uska adha per cent bhi nahin mil raha hai (If a tonne of coal costs `2,000, what would an acre of land cost? We're not even earning half a per cent of that)“.
As tempers have flared, the site has seen police firing. People have died. The company continues to acquire land. But that is due to the imposition of Section 9, which prohibits locals from selling land to anyone but the company.
The land acquisition in Pakri Barwadih was under the Coal Bearing Area Act of 1957, which makes fewer demands on a project proponent than the new Land Acquisition Act. “The Coal Bearing Area Act assumes there is a public interest since the government is acquiring land,“ says Raipur-based lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj. “There is lesser burden on the project proponent to prove the project is in public interest.“In contrast, the new land acquisition act mandates prior consent from at least 80% of affected families (and 70% consent in the case of PPP projects).
Rural development minister Gopinath Munde was favour of these percentages and the compensation terms in the new law. It now remains to be seen what the next rural development minister thinks.
`Managing' The Environment Another reason for NTPC's slow progress on revenue lands is a local Congress MLA, Yogendra Sao. The Karanpara coalfield stretches across most of his assembly constituency. Needing to walk a tightrope between industry and locals, Sao has been speaking mostly about good compensation. In early 2011, when NTPC was offering `10 lakh per acre, he sat on a dharna, asking for more. In 2013, two months after NTPC agreed to pay `15 lakh and a higher annuity, he hiked his demand to `40 lakh. “NTPC is now in a dilemma,“ says the Theiss manager. “What if it agrees and he hikes the number again?“ According to an NTPC official, NTPC got then power minister Jyotiraditya Scindia to speak to Sao. But even that did not help. The local administration has not acted against Sao, who has been a minister in the state government. Repeated attempts by ET to contact Sao failed.
Meanwhile, a set of new actors have entered the equation. Small political parties like the All Jharkhand Student Union and Jharkhand Vikas Morcha are getting active in this area. As are the Naxals and two local militias, the Tritiya Prastuti Committee and the Jharkhand Prastuti Committee, all of which are extorting money.
This is also the case in, for example, Arunachal Pradesh, where a boom in hydel power resulted in local political leaders brokering land acquisition deals, and student unions extorting money from project proponents.
Economic Costs The Theiss official estimates that, by not operationalising the block, NTPC is spending `7,000 crore importing coal from Australia -10 million tonnes of relatively better coal at `7,000 a tonne. In contrast, he says, coal from Pakri Barwadih would cost just `3,000 crore -15 millions tonnes at `2,000 each.
According to him, the company could easily resolve the issue by giving jobs to the projectaffected families. “At `15,000 a month, or `1.8 lakh per household per year, that would work out to `36 crore a year,“ he says. As it is, the cost is passed on to the customer.“
But NTPC does not have any policy on providing employment. “Hence, the numbers which are being talked about are only hypothetical and cannot be commented upon,“ says the NTPC spokesperson.
Outsourcing Model Given all this, NTPC terminated the Theiss contract. It now plans to re-tender Pakri Barwadih and appoint another private company as the new mining development organisation (MDO). “We hope the new MDOs would be more grounded in these geographies and get the coal extracted,“ says Choudhury of NTPC.
NTPC has already issued one such tender, for a mine called Kerandari, which abuts Pakri Barwadih. A manager in NTPC's fuel security team, who did not want to be named, says the MDO will be responsible not just for extracting coal, but also for all clearances and land acquisition -an outsourcing model. NTPC will only make the payments. In other words, while NTPC continues to have legal possession over the land, the onus for ensuring physical possession moves to the MDO.
Even Coal India, the country's public sector producer of coal, is gravitating towards the outsourcing model. “In one project, Rajmahal, with a production capacity of 30 million tonnes, we have included R&R (rehabilitation and resettlement) in the tender,“ says Narsingh Rao, its former CMD.
“In future projects, we want to move R&R, forest clearance and land acquisition to private companies.“
Vinayak Chatterjee, CMD of infrastructure consultancy Feedback Infra, sees this as a failure of the state. “What you are describing to me is something that I am seeing over and over again,“ he says. “The state is shrugging off its responsibilities and outsourcing its core functions to the private sector.“
As such, the Pakri Barwadih issue also touches on one common f law of most PPPs in the coal sector. Says Kameswara R ao, leader ( power a nd mi ni ng), PricewaterhouseCoopers, “They push all the risk onto the private company even as the gains stay fixed.“
Others are more hopeful. According to Gaurav Jain, the NTPC and Coal India idea might work as companies are struggling to obtain 80% consent, and such an arrangement creates a via media. A private company can acquire land through private land aggregators, who can then sell it to the contractor.
But similar models in Chhattisgarh for mining and power projects resulted in suboptimal outcomes. Land aggregators bought land from farmers at far lower rates than what they eventually got from the company.
The farmers, since they had not sold directly to the company, were not treated as projectaffected people.
There is also the possibility of human rights violations. The NTPC tender comes with penalties for delays. Also, says the spokesperson: “The MDO has to ensure, at all the times, physical possession of land required for next five years.“ Thus, there is a risk the private contractor, if close to local elite, could simply force the villagers off their land.
m.rajshekhar@timesgroup.com

The clamour for land in Assam

Cracked Earth

5 May 2014

As land scarcity increases in Assam, government mismanagement and class tensions are manifesting themselves in dangerous ways.

Increased migration to Guwahati has implications beyond city limits.
Photo: Flickr / Sabed Hussain

From far-flung hamlets they arrive early on buses, minivans, trucks, and even bicycles. The morning chill fails to dampen their spirits as they rush to reach the protest site to hear their leaders speak. Most of them are daily wage earners sacrificing a day’s pay to turn up for the rally. The Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) is demanding 12 bighas and 1.5kothas of land be allocated to the landless in rural and urban areas respectively. This is a revolution for them, a revolution that gives voice to their aspirations for land ownership. Uncomfortable questions, however, cannot be avoided.

Never before has the clamour for land been so intense in Assam. On 29 January, more than 10 people lost their lives in fighting at the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border at Behali reserve forest in Sonitpur. Violence on 7 January between the Karbi and Rengma Naga tribes that left 16 dead illustrates the depth of ethnic animosity in the region while the self-immolation and subsequent death of a KMSS protestor on 24 February outside the Assam Secretariat speaks volumes about the intensity of the struggle for land. The Tarun Gogoi-led government was busy distributing land pattas on the same day as the immolation, though only to a select few.

Both the government of Nagaland and its inhabitants have been at constant loggerheads with Assam over land issues. While the government of Assam is accusing the Naga administration of aiding land theft, it is lobbying the Centre to demand the return of territory that has been encroached upon. As the Assam police carry out indiscriminate reprisals on villagers, clashes have become a regular affair in the bordering hamlets of Sibsagar and Jorhat. Tea gardens dominate the region, which means labourers often bear the brunt of violence.

Although the adjacent conflict with Arunachal Pradesh is nothing new, its seriousness has been underscored by recent deaths, capturing the attention of the public as well as the authorities. Claims emerging from the intelligence agencies that Maoists are setting up footholds in the border areas of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh are cause for concern. The Chief Minister of Assam Tarun Gogoi asserted that recent land-based conflict with Arunachal Pradesh was aggravated by Maoists attempting to implicate locals in an active confrontation with armed encroachers. That corruption and ineffective governance in the handling of land titles was instrumental in the Maoists establishing a presence in Orissa provides an ominous precedent for current events.

Meanwhile, xenophobia among the Assamese middle class is rising, with widespread concern over the rate at which land is being sold to non-Assamese outsiders. The upward aspirations of Assam’s middle class have resulted in the sale of generations-old land to facilitate their joining the elite in Guwahati. While the abandonment of spacious houses in surrounding towns in favour of migrating to cramped high-rise apartments is perplexing, it is part of a more insidious problem. High-rise buildings are often constructed by companies who illegally occupy land in Adivasi belts, or purchase it from the government at inordinately low prices, giving weight to accusations of corruption. The hand-in-glove relationship between the land mafia and the authorities has culminated in Guwahati becoming a high-rise city. Most of the land in small towns is now owned by this vigilante merchant class, resulting in the declining land share of the indigenous Assamese.

Difficult questions
Within Assam, the KMSS has led protests and dharnas throughout the state demanding land pattas for peasants. As these demands increase, the question of citizenship cannot be avoided: in Assam, both are intricately related, with citizenship often treated as a fluid issue. Clauses within the Assam Accord, which asserts 1971 as the ‘deciding year’ upon which citizenship is based, are yet to be implemented. With the KMSS demanding the immediate allocation of land pattas to landless peasants throughout the state, anxiety concerning undocumented immigrants profiting at the cost of the indigenous people of Assam has been an unfortunate byproduct. Issues related to undocumented immigrants have, however, persisted since Independence. In 1964 the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee adopted a resolution to expel ‘illegal’ immigrants in accordance with the 1951 National Register of Citizens. The agreement failed to be enforced due primarily to intra-party tensions, with many suspecting the pernicious influence of vote bank politics. In the absence of effective governance via systemic corruption and opportunism, class tensions have once again manifested themselves in potentially explosive citizenship-based grievances.

The 11th hour striking down of the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) (IMDT) Act by the Supreme Court in 2005 is testament to the government’s flawed approach to the issue. While the legislation was clearly draconian, unconstitutional and unworkable, the char areas have nonetheless suffered in the absence of regulation. Continuously appearing and disappearing due to the torrents of the mighty Brahmaputra, the chars are now a haven for the land mafia. With Bangladesh just a few kilometres away, the lack of effective land allocation has seen local goons and landlords profit at the expense of vulnerable populations from both sides of the nominal ‘border’. Maintaining land records has proved a herculean task due not only to relentless river-borne erosion, but also an ad-hoc land management system operating in a region completely lacking official oversight. These char areas have become labyrinths in which indigenous and undocumented migrants live precariously in immense poverty and devoid of basic amenities. The issuance of voter ID cards, ration cards and land pattas to these communities has been counteracted by political disputes and business interests.

Within this context, the issue of citizenship is critical: even if the government agrees to allocate the land pattas demanded, the point of reference for their allocation will be contentious. The All Assam Students Union (AASU) demands the NRC of 1951 be implemented with 1971 as the cut-off date, while minority bodies including the Assam Minority Students Union (AMSU) oppose this, demanding a fresh NRC on the basis of the 1971 voter list. The eviction and dispossession of Adivasis from traditional lands is prompting some, however well-intentioned, to posit the problem of land scarcity as an either/or scenario, giving voice to a dangerous discourse. Ongoing efforts on behalf of the KMSS to secure Adivasi land for 80,000 to 85,000 families conflicts with official census statistics that put the number of legitimate candidates at around 65,000. Accusations that the 20,000 difference is a result of interloping ‘illegal’ settlers underscores the highly charged nature of the final ruling on the NRC and what it means for those seeking land.  

Legal obstacles
The age-old Assam Land and Revenue Rule (1868) is of a vintage unfit to address issues of land conflict in the region. A new, more comprehensive land policy is vital. The Assam Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act (2010), supposedly drafted to protect indigenous people from land theft, has failed miserably in achieving its stated goal. Rather, the Act inverts the equation, positing the landless as criminals while safeguarding the interests of the land mafia. With tribal and agricultural land illegally used by business groups for non-agricultural purposes, Right to Information applications highlight the consistent violation of the Land Ceiling Act, which restricts the individual possession of more than 50 bighas of land. A lack of transparency and a corresponding dearth of knowledge among landless peoples have created uncertainty over what exactly constitutes tribal land, forest land, eksonia land or myadi land. Officials agree that though formal transfers have been minimal, the temporary alienation of land is common.

Though the sixth schedule of the Constitution has adequate provisions to restrict land alienation, they are formal, individual-based and fail to understand traditional Adivasi laws which recognise community ownership. This has led to the concentration of land in the hands of a few wealthy chiefs while the majority of Adivasis are landless and remain vulnerable to eviction. The non-tribals living under these council areas in the meantime complain of being discriminated against and allege that their political as well as socio-economic aspirations are endangered. Land has been one of their primary greivances as many seek a transfer or stay of the land, demanding the intervention of the revenue department in Dispur rather than the relevant local council. Meanwhile, the existing autonomous councils under the aegis of the Sixth Schedule have given birth to demands for separate states, adding to the clamour for land. Though many cite historical kingdoms to justify their demands for the demarcation of new states, the present versions of those kingdoms reflect the incongruity of the proposals.

While government reports state that over 80,000 hectares of Assamese land is being illegally encroached upon by its six neighbouring states, outrage at the possibility of a land swap deal with Bangladesh makes clear the politicisation of anything land-related. As opposition parties such as the BJP make apparent their opposition to a land swap deal, the Assom Gana Parishad has staged protests throughout the state citing the proposed ceding of land as a failure on the part of the government to protect the land rights of the indigenous Assamese. They have instead demanded a ‘repatriation treaty’ with Bangladesh that will aid in ‘cleansing’ Assam of ‘illegal’ immigrants. By now, it is clear that a land swap deal will help both sides reiterate the border in a definitive way, thereby providing a citizenship framework for thousands of stateless people to pursue their basic rights. Sensationalist discourses concerning land in general and Bangladesh in particular are largely responsible for the misrepresentation of a land swap deal as a ‘selling off’ of land to Bangladesh. The fact that this land deal can contribute in a major way to a permanent and secure border mustn’t be overlooked in the current frenzy. Until a new Act is drafted, a land swap implemented, corruption brought to an end and the land mafia made solvent, ongoing conflict between Adivasis and undocumented migrants is likely. There will be no winners.

~Anuraag Baruah is a Delhi-based writer and poet.

Source:http://himalmag.com/clamour-land-assam/