The new land acquisition law has provisions that help avoid many pitfalls. But several of these are now on the chopping block: removing mandatory consent for Public Private Partnerships, bringing the consent percentage down to 50 for other projects; doing away with social impact assessments for all but large/PPP projects, an expansion of the urgency clause to even non-defence projects, and more. One of these, social impact assessment, helps avoid the mistakes Odisha made. Before any land is acquired for a project, an expert group must determine if the proposed acquisition serves a public purpose, the extent of displacement, whether the land sought is the bare minimum needed, whether suitable land is available elsewhere. This could avoid the acquisition of prime agricultural land unless essential. It could help ensure excess land is not acquired. “The combination of ‘public purpose’, ‘consent’, ‘compensation’ and ‘R&R requirements’ will finally put a stop to the thoughtless acquisition of fertile farmlands for factories,” Vinayak Chhatterjee, Chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s National Task Force on Infrastructure Projects, wrote in a recent column in Business Standard. “The LAA now leads both government and industry to follow a rational ‘merit-order’ for identifying land for industrialisation.” But it is precisely such provisions that industrial houses are opposing. And governments, both at the centre and at the states, seem eager to oblige.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 11:20:39 +0000