[Whether the bill is passed in the coming weeks or months will be an early indication of Mr. Modi’s ability to deliver on promises made to ease business restrictions over the long term and spur development of everything from new cities and factories to more roads, to speed commerce.]
By Nida Najar
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In a rare show of unity, members of
India’s opposition parties marched last week to the
presidential palace
to protest a land bill.
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NEW DELHI — When the
government of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi muscled through an executive order in December simplifying
the government and private companies’ ability to obtain land for what it deems
important development projects, it sent a message to voters — and Mr. Modi’s
political adversaries — about his decisive style of leadership and his
commitment to industry.
“Modi govt to give
industry its promised land,” read one newspaper headline.
But as Mr. Modi tries to
translate the land order into permanent law, he has met a wall of protest from
a united opposition, threatening a part of his economic reform agenda meant to
overcome longstanding barriers to growth in India.
On Friday, the Parliament
broke for a monthlong recess without passing the bill. Venkaiah Naidu, the
minister of parliamentary affairs, indicated that the government would push
for the bill in the second half of the session, but Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley did not rule out the possibility of canceling the rest of the
parliamentary session and reissuing the executive order, which is set to expire
by April 5.
Whether the bill is
passed in the coming weeks or months will be an early indication of Mr. Modi’s
ability to deliver on promises made to ease business restrictions over the long
term and spur development of everything from new cities and factories to more
roads, to speed commerce.
On Sunday, during a
recurrent radio broadcast from the prime minister, “Mann Ki Baat,” Hindi for “A
Talk from the Heart,” Mr. Modi appealed to farmers to support land acquisition.
He denied that the bill made it easier for corporations to obtain land without
consent for private projects, a common concern.
Last week, more than 100
lawmakers led by the matriarch of the opposition Indian National Congress, Sonia
Gandhi, marched on the presidential palace to protest the bill. The
party says it will weaken protections for farmers who earn a living from the
coveted land.
“The government will very
quickly understand that it’s one thing to win landslide elections and another
thing to run a government,” Renuka Chowdhury, a Congress parliamentarian, told
the television channel Times Now.
For certain development
projects, the land bill would do away with two central provisions of a law,
passed by a Congress-led government in 2013, that required projects carried out
by private companies to have consent from at least 70 percent of farmers in an
area before their land could be bought for development. It also does away with
the requirement for a detailed survey to determine all the people affected by
the loss of land, including sharecroppers.
The Modi-led government
has said those demands were chasing away investors needed to fuel India’s
growth.
The conflict over the
proposed changes has led to a showdown in good part because many farmers do not
trust the government and are afraid that they will be forced to part with their
land for too little money.
The dispute also has a
political dimension, analysts say, as the opposition Congress party struggles
to retain relevance after a humiliating loss of power last year to Mr. Modi’s
Bharatiya Janata Party.
“What I see is an
opportunity by the opposition to bring the B.J.P. to its knees,” said Sanjoy
Chakravorty, a professor of geography and urban studies at Temple University.
“You can never go wrong by claiming to be pro-farmer in India.”
The farmers’ wariness is
rooted in past abuses over land acquisition. The village of Makora, just
outside Delhi, offers an example of the underlying tension between farmers and
the government.
In 2008, the state of
Uttar Pradesh invoked an emergency clause to acquire more than 500 acres that
it said were needed for industrial development. But instead, farmers said, the
state-run authority began constructing apartments on the land and did not
adequately compensate them for their loss. After years of litigation, the
farmers succeeded in reversing the acquisition in 2011, winning a case before
the Supreme Court. The buildings now stand half completed, iron rods rising
toward the sky on acres of what were once vast fields of wheat.
The village head of
Makora, Raj Kumar, said the deal would have left farmers with too little money
to live in the area after its development.
“We want money, but we
want our due,” said Mr. Kumar, who shares four acres of wheat and vegetable
fields with his brothers. “We want a provision where we can buy a flat in that
area. We want to be able to build a life there.”
The Congress party said
the 2013 law was meant to avoid such abuses, and critics of the new
government’s proposed changes said that the new exemptions could be used to
further a range of private projects not strictly beneficial to the public,
reversing needed protections for farmers. But Mr. Modi and his supporters say
the revisions are a necessary step to industrialization that will eventually
help many farmers out of poverty.
The bill loosens
restrictions on buying land for five types of developments that Mr. Modi
believes are central to India’s economic growth, including the building of
rural infrastructure and industrial “corridors” that would encourage more trade
between major cities.
In one important
corridor, between Delhi and Mumbai, a significant part of the project — the
proposed construction of a warehousing area — has been abandoned because
farmers have been unwilling to sell, according to Amitabh Kant, the project’s
chairman.
The new bill passed in
the lower house of Parliament, where Mr. Modi’s party enjoys a majority, on
March 10, but faces serious hurdles in the upper house, where the B.J.P. is in
the minority.
Even critics of the bill
say that the reforms, if properly done, would greatly benefit farmers, most of
whom make a substandard living off the land.
“The farmers are going to
make money from acquisition which is 25 times or maybe 100 times more than
they’re going to get from farming in perpetuity,” said Mr. Chakravorty, the
Temple professor, who wrote the book “The Price of Land: Acquisition, Conflict,
Consequence.”
There is some indication
that more farmers would sell under the right circumstances. A report published
last year by an arm of a Delhi-based think tank, the Center for the Study of
Developing Societies, found that 61 percent of farmers would leave farming if
they were able to get a job in a city.
Ankit Rana, 20, whose
father owns about five acres outside of Delhi, is one of those who agrees that
farmers would be better off selling, but only for a price that would allow them
to live well. Years ago, a power plant was proposed in his village, but farmers
fought the acquisition of the land because they felt they were offered too
little in exchange. Although he agreed with that decision, he said the plant
would have benefited the community, helping it urbanize.
“If the plant is set up
here, this too will be converted into a city,” he said. “Of course we want
that.”
Suhasini Raj contributed
reporting.
