Land acquisition policy and praxis: The case of peri-urban Delhi

Abstract

Until recently, land acquisition in India had been undertaken closely following the provisions laid down by the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 (i.e. during the time of this study) which was created by the colonial powers to seize private property in consonance with their imperialist motives. This Act has been amended several times by the State Governments. These amendments generally have pertained to the elaboration of compensation issues and have shrewdly retained the ambiguities to make way for corruption. The new land acquisition act has come to force only on 1 January 2014 and it has been referred to as “The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013" (henceforth refereed to as the New Act). Although it marks a step forward in sensitively addressing some of the earlier concerns, it is not without a few loopholes that need to be questioned. This paper discusses the critical elements of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 in comparison to the New Act, and through the case study of land acquisition in a village located in the urban fringe of Delhi, attempts to look into the nuances of the interlinkages between land dispossession and livelihood transformation. Specifically, this paper tries to assess the efficacy of the provisions laid down in the previous act in relation to the village study and attempts to comment upon implications of the livelihood outcomes of the farmers losing land to the state perpetrated land acquisition. This paper is composed of four sections. Section 1 contextualizes the study. Section 2 attempts to critically discuss some of the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act 1894 and 2014 in relation to its implication to the land dispossessed. Section 3 elaborates upon the case study of land dispossession in a fringe village in Delhi with a view to highlight the drawbacks of the Land Acquisition framework in India. Section 4 attempts to conclude the discussion bringing out the concerns persisting in the current law with reference to the case study.