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We need a clearer definition of public purpose if the Act continues to be used for commercial or private projects. The Act has been misused and this has to stop. One can not accept this order of compulsion for other factors of production.

In the case of labour, one only accepts the legitimacy of conscription in a narrowly defined class of emergency situations like a war threat or a natural disaster. Beyond these few cases, government should not use the excuse of public purpose to justify press-ganging people to work on terms determined by some public authority. And surely one should reject it altogether for any commercial venture.

Then why do we continue to accept it for land? There are many in the industry who accept that the use of the state's right of eminent domain will not work. They recognize that in today's India, this is a recipe for court battles and agitations. This argument for the use of market forces may sound appealing to many. But the land acquisition transaction between a large corporation on the one hand, and a host of mostly small land-holders on the other, is an unequal negotiation. To rely on market forces alone is not enough.

Large-scale land acquisition for development will involve acquiring settled lands with long-established rights. It will disrupt the life of some functioning community, and of all who live in it, not just the land-owners. In fact, the ones worst affected will be the share-croppers and labourers, the petty traders and service providers. These landless ones do not even have a juridical basis for compensation, if the transaction is seen simply as a sale of land, voluntary or compulsory.

The community must be made a part of the development for which its members are being asked to sell or surrender their land and livelihood. This is in the interests of the developers and can be done in many different ways. There is an example near Pune in the development of Magarpatta, where the landowners themselves got together and planned a development model that is becoming a major township. In other cases, one can envisage the corporate buyer assigning equity in the project or paying for the transfer of development rights.

Large-scale land acquisition, which affects a whole village or more, has to be treated as a transaction between the corporate or public buyer and the community, and not just as a transaction with individual land-owners. That is the only way in which we can take into account the interests of those who lose not just land but livelihood as well. It will also allow the community to assert its interest in common properties and heritage, which would be lost in a set of individualized transactions.

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Dr. Gursharan Singh Kainth started his career as Lecturer at Post Graduate Dept. of Economics, Government College, Gurdaspur, and later at Khalsa College; Amritsar, specializes in Quantitative & Development Economics. Has the distinction of serving Punjab Agricultural Univ, Ludhiana, for more than 2 decades and remained Director-Principal of Saint Soldier Management & Technical Institute, Jalandhar. Currently, heading GAD Institute of Development Studies, Amritsar, a self-financed research institute. Has been honoured with various awards, including Guru Draunacharya Samman, Vijay Rattan Award, etc.
Article posted on January 17, 2009.