Indians and MNCs operating in India (remember Union Carbide in Bhopal), are notoriously slack when it comes to liability, after-sales service, warranty, guarantees, and other such sticky nicety, once the goods are sold.
Organisations, institutions, the Government, tacitly rely on our slow legal system. So sue and be damned is in the small-print slyness. Besides, life is cheap in India and the poor are routinely shafted.
So, in reaction, the UPA Government made a land acquisition law in 2013 so tight that it is impossible to live up to. On paper the Relief and Rehabilitation Clauses (R&R) are very good. Subsistence allowance, a job or money in lieu, transportation allowance, resettlement allowance, a new home to replace one lost, developed plots in newly urbanised areas, profit sharing on land sales of acquired land, additional benefits for scheduled castes, community infrastructure etc. But, the Indian track record on R&R is not good. Babus tend to be corrupt and interpret all provisions meanly.
Watching foreigners learn from our home-grown callousness. NGOs do make a fuss, but the media soon gets bored. Governments, convinced the pragati is worth the pain, don’t budge. That is why you had Medha Patkar of Narmada Dam fame sitting in with angry Anna at Jantar Mantar. Modi will have to walk the talk well beyond just passing the ordinance into law.
The hysterical sticking point today: infrastructure/industry projects worth Rs 20 lakh crore are stuck. The ordinance has effectively got rid of the consent and social impact road blocks. The compensation and elaborate relief and rehabilitation clauses are solid. But these will vastly inflate the cost of acquisition. Will the Government be able to afford it down the road, let alone the privates?
The touchy-feely Land Law to replace its imperial 1894 predecessor was clearly passed in haste. There was silly-season bipartisan support for it, everyone outdoing the other to demonstrate how much they loved the farmer.
What our MPs forgot in their opportunism then, is that farming earns 15% of GDP and houses 60% of the 1.3 billion population. It is now unviable for so many people to be involved with it. They need to migrate to other jobs. These have to be created. That’s what the Modi Government is trying to do. A course correction on the land law was inevitable.
And it has come, despite all the out-of-date jai kisan noise. In the abstract, this R&R plus the compensation is more than fair. It is miles better than what went before. Everything depends on the implementation though. But it covers only land owners, when most rural people are actually landless, labourers, or working in the unorganised sector. They will get nothing by right.
If only this R&R was all fun and games. That Rest and Recreation (R&R), was the US Armed Forces/leisure industry euphemism for GI Joes doing some very innovative partying. Sunny Saigon or safe Pattaya put on a lot of neon and lipstick during the Vietnam War fifty years ago.
(Gautam Mukherjee is a plugged-in commentator and instant analyser)
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