The prime minister has promised to resurrect land acquisition reforms. But the bill in the works is quite a shoddy piece of legislation. It doesn’t even have the decency to say, “I’ll take your land, but I’ll make your son a chaprasi, driver or caddie.”

I say ‘shoddy’ because the principles behind the proposed legislation do not reflect the ingenuity or compassion of an independent nation. Instead, the objects and reasons remain inspired by the original Act that the British evolved 117 years back.

The result is a ‘tinkering approach’. Not surprising, therefore, the proposed bill will end up justifying eminent domain rather than compensate justly.

This has dangerous connotations. Until a decade or two ago, surplus land identified for acquisition belonged to rich landowners. Their objective, therefore, was limited to holding on to as much as they possibly could, but effectively speaking they were pretty much resigned to their fate. They wouldn’t, for example, raise arms against the state police.

The acquisition today is qualitatively at the cost of poor and not-so-poor farmers. Every time a Jaypee or a BPTP gets land courtesy the state, these farmers, and the thousands who subsist as tenant farmers, stand to lose their entire piece of livelihood. Also, the moment they have received their tuppence in compensation, there’s zero evidence of long-term and viable future-proofing. This may be a stereotype, but once the family debts have been settled, the daughter married off, the motorcycle bought, and the arrack guzzled down, there’s very little left by way of future security.

And while the compensation on the face of it looks reasonable, the anger seeing the land being sold 20-40 times higher by, say, Jaypee raises a sense of helplessness. The situation implodes when the real farmer has been bought off even before the formal process of acquisition kicks in. Here the nouveau owner holds out till the end, stokes the fire aided by the opposition party, and tries to skim off a better deal. The history of independent India is littered with evidence of abuse of privileged information and alignments of canals and public roads favouring the rich farmer, without fail.

I worry why the proposed bill does not address future-proofing. Indeed, it is dismissive about the original owner in a manner not very different than the British! The bill makes a preposterous suggestion that anyone having stitched 70 percent of the land will be entitled to state support for the remaining part. Is that legal? Wouldn’t leveraged buyout be a simpler way to handle future challenges?

Embedded in this point is the dubious role of India Inc. Take Infosys, the shining example of corporate governance if we had one. The land they have came out of the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Authority. The KIADA, on its part, got the land from the Karnataka Housing Board. Now, it is reasonable to assume that subsidised land helped Infosys reduce cost of services. Would it be foolish therefore to ask why Infosys, as in this example, didn’t give even one equity share to the toiling farmer whose land was usurped by the original consolidator of the state? If this is foolish, asking the Infosys of the future to mandatorily set up a polytechnic for the original landowner’s children, before setting up five-star kitchens and swimming pools for their pampered yuppies, would invite accusation of lunacy!

The broader point is that even under the proposed bill, states stand empowered to take over land on behalf of private developers. Their power isn’t moderated under a developmental goal. Instead, it’s assumed as if the original landowner is an enemy of the Indian state. Her right to cultivate her own land must remain subservient to the ‘public purpose’ of Jaypee building swanky townships and golf courses in lieu of a few kilometres of the Yamuna Expressway.

It isn’t my argument that public projects (and land acquisition therefore) should only be executed by the state. Nor is it logical to argue for ‘particular loss versus generalised gain’, the proverbial Gaulish village halting the march of society as a whole. My point is about abetment between governments and the developer. Why doesn’t the bill allow the developer to stitch her own parcel of land? Dhirubhai Ambani did that for his Jamnagar refinery. Of course he was too shrewd to tell the farmer the real purpose, the ostensible explanation was the search for ‘meetha paani’ wells! But it could be done, without doles and without land riots between farmers and the Gujarat police. Nor did the state, despite Dhirubhai’s formidable PR purse strings, had to evoke emergency powers that, say, Mayawati is slamming against her own voters. Her advisors should tell her of equity and voluntary sale of land during the construction of the Boston Tunnel.

Rather than getting her own hands dirty, Maya will be better off framing rules on determination of compensation on a voluntary basis.