Acquiring farmers’ lands for industrial and other non-agricultural uses has been a cause of tension and unrest in different parts of the country in recent years. If Singur in West Bengal dramatically made history and firmly placed Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamul Congress in the lead in the politics of the state, the recent case of the twin
villages of Bhatta-Parsaul at Noida in Uttar Pradesh, not far from the national capital, served to place chief minister Mayawati on notice in the context of the political rivalry she has faced from the Congress, and more directly from Rahul Gandhi, that party’s young leader aspiring to regain for his party its lost glory in India’s most populous state. Such is the promise of winning over the vast agriculture producers’ constituency through striking the right note on the question of land acquisition that Mr Gandhi went to the extent recently of announcing at Varanasi that he would launch a campaign in every village of Uttar Pradesh on the land acquisition policy of the Mayawati government, of which he was critical.
No political slouch, the chief minister has hit back with deed, not words. She has amended the land acquisition policy of her state, which had been passed less than a year earlier. The new procedures she announced deserve a serious look by other state governments as well as the Centre. The relevance of the announcement in Lucknow cannot be lost on the UPA-2 government which proposes to table a land acquisition policy in the Monsoon Session of Parliament that would seek to amend the policy first passed in the colonial era in 1894.
The key element of Ms Mayawati’s new policy is that in the event the state itself is not acquiring farmers’ lands, the intending private purchasers must come face to face with the farmers for direct negotiations on price which must be six times the prevailing rate for agricultural land in the area (as land typically gains in value when switched to industrial use); and further that lands can be sold to private entities only if at least 70 per cent of the proprietors of the parcel of land sought to be purchased — for industrial or commercial purposes — agree to sell. (The latter stipulation addresses the difficulty that had arisen in Singur.) In this process the government would only play the role of facilitator. Then there are add-ons, such as 16 per cent of the land, once fully developed by the new owners, would be given back to the farmers in addition to an attractive annual payment. The BSP government has not spelled out the terms that would apply when the state itself would acquire land for public purposes. However, in the Mayawati scheme, does the concept of “eminent domain” (of the state on all lands), descended from the colonial era, lose some of its force? Anyhow, in laying down the principle of direct industry-farmer price negotiations Ms Mayawati offers concrete terms for an open debate along lines that some have advocated of late.
Clearly, the UP chief minister has sought to trim the role of the state in the process of alienating the land of the farmers by placing greater reliance on the role of the market. In this she veers sharply from the approach of the National Advisory Council which recently held that the state alone must be the instrument of land purchase from farmers even if this would be given over to private parties subsequently. Such a view implies the state’s responsibility — fully — in seeing to farmers’ welfare and well-being. The outlook is more in line with the traditional notion of paternalism.