The
2017 Monsoon session of the Goa Legislative Assembly ended about a month ago.
In what could be construed as a remarkable show of governmental efficiency, six
bills were passed and one referred back to the select committee for further
deliberations and clarifications. Of these bills, The Goa Compensation to the Project Affected Persons
and Vesting of Land in the Government Bill, 2017 and The Goa Requisition and Acquisition of Property
Bill, 2017 have come under
the scanner of activists due to the consequences such laws might have on the
ownership of property, and especially of
marginalized communities.
It is believed that a combination of these two laws would allow the government
unfettered power in acquiring land from the people of Goa, to be disposed of as
the government deems fit. In many ways, activists argue,
such laws would secure the rights of investors over and above those of the
common people of Goa. Goa is no stranger to such laws with the Investment
Promotion Act, 2014 being at the centre of the Tiracol controversy.
What
is cause for concern in The Goa Requisition Bill, 2017 is an absence of a proper
definition of what constitutes “public purpose”. One should in fact ask: who
constitutes this public? Goan society consists of multiple strata of
communities who are unequal in terms of wealth, social status, and access to
land. Mundkars do not have similar access to wealth and social status
as, a bhatkar. The “public purpose” also claims to serve the landless.
Around the beginning of 2017, the case of a small tribe, the Vanarmares, who
were literally and figuratively living at the margins of
Goan society came to light.
They were landless and disenfranchised in multiple ways, and denied even the
right to vote. Will such a bill or law enable the government to acquire land in
favor of such communities? At the end of the day, the government needs to
produce a meticulous report so that the Goan public is made aware of the
consequences and ramifications of land acquisition legislations.
The
aforementioned bills are not solely a creation of our times; they have a
precedent in the past. The Land Acquisition Act, 1894, is said to be the forerunner of successive land
acquisition or requisition acts in British and post-British India. What is
crucial in these laws is the notion of “public purpose”, a claim made to
justify such legislations. Interestingly, both the Land Acquisition Act, 1894,
and The Goa Requisition Act, 2017, contain statements of “public purpose” in
them. One can think of these laws as introduced in separate political and
historical contexts: one by the British colonial state and the other by a
democratically-elected government within sovereign India. Ideally, one would
prefer the independent nation-state to completely move away from the practices
of the colonial state; at least this is the assumption by which we try to
function in a democracy.
Laws
or bills like The Goa Requisition Act, 2017, are similarly structured as the
Land Acquisition Act, 1894. For instance, the notion of what the law-makers
understood by the acquisition of land for “public purpose” is same. The idea of
“public purpose” in both these laws is rather a British colonial construct. Both the laws have provisions in them to acquire
land to rehabilitate the landless [vide 1894 Act, sec. (3) (f) (v); 2017 Bill,
sec. (2) (m) (v)]. Ironically, the same laws empower the government to clear
slum areas [vide 1894 Act, sec. (3) (f) (vi); 2017 Bill, sec. (2) (m) (d)
(iv)]. Thus, the law that could be used to acquire the land of slum-dwellers
and therefore potentially evict them also claims to rehabilitate the landless.
The law-makers in the 1894 and 2017 legislations act as if eviction and
rehabilitation are not two sides of the same coin; what if a developmental
project requires the land of those who dwell in slums?
Thus,
one can suggest that the definition of “public purpose” has remained the same
in the 1894 and 2017 laws. Indeed, it is common practice for states to follow
laws and rules formulated by a previous political formation. For example, kingdoms
and states in medieval Europe based many of their laws on older Roman laws.
Similarly, one can understand that most of the laws formulated or amended in
independent India were derived from the laws of the British colonial state. But
70 years after the departure of the colonial state, if practices pertaining to
the colonial state still persist then there is an urgent need to change the way
governance functions.
The
abovementioned legislations can be juxtaposed alongside the notion of “public
purpose” in the Right
to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and
Resettlement Act, 2013. While this law was a step
forward, it was subsequently diluted to
circumvent many of its progressive provisions. The 2013 Act not only has an
elaborate list of what constitutes “public purpose” [vide sec. (2)], but it
also further states that prior consent
of at least 80 percent of the affected people is necessary in the land
acquisition for private companies and 70 percent in the case of public-private
partnership. Such checks and balances are not visible in the draft of the Goa
Land Requisition Bill, 2017.
In
a situation where it is estimated
that around 300 million are landless in India, land acquisition by the
government per se should have led to an equitable distribution of
resources. However, that is not the case, with private companies benefiting the
most from such laws. The larger question, therefore, would be if such laws do
indeed promote the interest of the public.
(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 13 September, 2017)
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