Land acquisition, to be or not to be
Land acquisition, to be or not to be, is the issue before the government, political parties, social activists and socially conscious intellectuals, and everyone seems to be addressing the issue with myopic vision and prejudices.
Unlike other living beings, who consume necessaries in their natural form, humans produce necessaries of life by transforming natural resources provided by the mother earth into useable form with their individual and collective labour power. During this production process, humans learn more about the laws of nature and use this knowledge for improving efficiency and productivity of human labour and Mother Earth.
Earth provides not only crops and minerals as raw material for production, but land also for housing infrastructure and industries for productive activities. When a piece of land is good for a single category of activity then there is no problem but when a piece of land can be put to various uses, there can be a conflict of interests and in such a situation, normally the rate of return on the perceived cost of the land will decide the land use.
A problem arises when the land is owned in parts separately by different people. Land divided in small plots, say few hundred square meters, though owned by different individuals may still be suitable for agriculture, but for infrastructure or industry a minimum size of land, few to hundreds of hectares may be required and if such land is owned by different individuals, then there is problem because of differing perceptions about the cost of land. Those who are politically or economically more powerful may demand a much higher price for parting with their piece of land or may refuse at all, rendering the infrastructure or industrial development prohibitively costly and unviable.
Only government is in a position to consolidate, by acquisition through enactment of appropriate law, fragmented plots into minimum land mass necessary for the infrastructure or industrial development. But successive governments have been failing to enact appropriate law because on one hand they have been guided by the interests of powerful sections and not of the weaker sections. On the other hand, in land acquisition, the interests of land owning feudal class and the interests of industry developing capitalist class are antagonistic and government of the day does not know how to resolve this contradiction.
When agricultural land is converted into industrial or commercial use, its value increases or in other words ' surplus value is created '. This surplus value must belong to the society and not to any individual, landlord or industrialist. If government formulates policies to utilise this surplus value for the benefit of the society at large, the riddle of land acquisition and industrial development will be solved.
Suresh Srivastava
16 July 2015
Land acquisition, to be or not to be, is the issue before the government, political parties, social activists and socially conscious intellectuals, and everyone seems to be addressing the issue with myopic vision and prejudices.
Unlike other living beings, who consume necessaries in their natural form, humans produce necessaries of life by transforming natural resources provided by the mother earth into useable form with their individual and collective labour power. During this production process, humans learn more about the laws of nature and use this knowledge for improving efficiency and productivity of human labour and Mother Earth.
Earth provides not only crops and minerals as raw material for production, but land also for housing infrastructure and industries for productive activities. When a piece of land is good for a single category of activity then there is no problem but when a piece of land can be put to various uses, there can be a conflict of interests and in such a situation, normally the rate of return on the perceived cost of the land will decide the land use.
A problem arises when the land is owned in parts separately by different people. Land divided in small plots, say few hundred square meters, though owned by different individuals may still be suitable for agriculture, but for infrastructure or industry a minimum size of land, few to hundreds of hectares may be required and if such land is owned by different individuals, then there is problem because of differing perceptions about the cost of land. Those who are politically or economically more powerful may demand a much higher price for parting with their piece of land or may refuse at all, rendering the infrastructure or industrial development prohibitively costly and unviable.
Only government is in a position to consolidate, by acquisition through enactment of appropriate law, fragmented plots into minimum land mass necessary for the infrastructure or industrial development. But successive governments have been failing to enact appropriate law because on one hand they have been guided by the interests of powerful sections and not of the weaker sections. On the other hand, in land acquisition, the interests of land owning feudal class and the interests of industry developing capitalist class are antagonistic and government of the day does not know how to resolve this contradiction.
When agricultural land is converted into industrial or commercial use, its value increases or in other words ' surplus value is created '. This surplus value must belong to the society and not to any individual, landlord or industrialist. If government formulates policies to utilise this surplus value for the benefit of the society at large, the riddle of land acquisition and industrial development will be solved.
Suresh Srivastava
16 July 2015
