Land Ordinance infringes liberty, tread cautiously

‘O n Liberty’, originally published in 1859 and intended as a short essay, was the greatest 19th century British philosopher J S Mill’s attempt to establish standards for the relationship between authority and liberty.

Mill explains, “The subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual.”

Any attempt by the state or society to exercise power over the individual stands dangerously on the borderline of violation of such liberty and consent. The recent amendment, through the ordinance route and its introduction of the bill to replace the ordinance to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2014 (LARR 2014) by the BJP-led government hangs on a precipice.

The amendment has been accused by the Opposition of reverting the land acquisition process in the country to the pre-colonial times of the Land Acquisition Act (LAA) of 1894, when land was easily acquired by the state without much consideration being given to the will of the people to whom the land belonged.

It was under the previous UPA regime that, after decades of debate and deliberation, the older LAA Act had been replaced by the newer LARR 2014 which had made consent of 80 per cent of those giving up their lands mandatory prior to the process. However, ordinance that amended the Act by including five new categories of projects that would not require prior consent as well as Social Impact Assessment (SIA) from affected families.

The amended Section 10(A) of the Act covers projects for defence and defence production, rural infrastructure including rural electrification, affordable housing and housing for the poor, industrial corridors as well as infrastructure and social infrastructure projects including public private partnership projects wherein the ownership continues to vest with the government.

The reason being touted is to kickstart hundreds of billions of dollars in stalled projects, the argument being that restrictions on buying land are among barriers holding up projects worth almost US$300 billion in sectors such as rail, steel, mining and roads.

The older Act had been criticised by the industry and certain other sections for making land acquisition more complicated and tedious. But we need to tread this path with caution and ask critical questions. Does making less complicated mean less consent to be sought?

Under the older Act, Social Impact Assessment (SIA) was mandatory and had to be completed within six months. The complaint against the SIA is that many difficulties were faced  in its implementation. In order to remove them, certain amendments have thus been made in the Act to further strengthen the provisions to protect the interests of the ‘affected families’.

A government release stated that the “proposed amendments meet the twin objectives of farmers’ welfare, along with expeditiously meeting the strategic and developmental needs of the country.”

Idea of liberty

Mill’s On Liberty is an accurate compass of liberty, pointing us in the right direction, helping us to consistently evaluate and challenge the actions of the state by reference to its simple but profound principle - the idea of liberty.

It evocatively states that individual liberty cannot be suppressed, and reasserts that imperative need of the “liberty not to have one’s opinion suppressed by the collective decisions of the society or the state”. However, the actions of our political class mirror an image of state actions dismissing the need to assess the impact of its decisions.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the higher compensation, resettlement and rehabilitation package would apply to the exempted legislation as well: “With regard to the process of land acquisition, the priority of the government was that the interest of farmer whose land is to be acquired is paramount.” The Act also contains an urgency clause – related to natural disasters and wars – where the acquisition of land is exempted from the stringent requirements laid down in the legislation.

As per the changes brought in the ordinance, multi-crop irrigated land can also be acquired for these purposes. In all such scenarios, the interest of the farmer is being simply made to succumb to the greater cited national interest. The politics of eminent domain have re-entered the discourse of land acquisition.

An ordinance is an urgent measure that has to be passed in the next parliamentary session. The government has already resorted to using the ordinance route three times in its last six months in office due to a lack of majority in the Rajya Sabha.

It reflects a style of governance that is keen on doing away with debate, discussion and deliberation, or delaying it to a later time in Parliament. Such actions evoke the memory of Mill’s liberty as the principle that mediates conflicts and posits freedom as an essential component of the idea of individuality. Already, the Land Ordinance has evoked much opposition, particularly in states like Karnataka, Assam, West Bengal and even Uttar Pradesh.

Without freedom, society is itself enfeebled by dogma and beliefs held by such a society degenerate into prejudices and opinions and lack rational foundation. Needless to say, this timeless essay of Mills addresses points that resonate into our twenty-first century world, into the India that is being ‘made’ today.

(The writer teaches political science at the Master’s Department, St Joseph’s College, Bengaluru. Views are personal)