Why Land ordinance?

• 1894’s land act was bogus and exploitive. So Congress government enacted new law in 2013, with provisions for social impact assessment, fair compensation, dispute settlement and other fancy things.
• LARR-2013 Act became effective from 1st January 2014.
• But, this LARR Act-2013 established an extremely complex and impractical land acquisition process.
• Holdouts: Jholachhap NGOs would instigate 20-25% of the affected families to stage holdout- promising them it’ll fetch them even higher prices. and Given the 70-80% consent requirement, the project will never kickoff.
• Litigation: because local (and therefore corruption) Patwari and Tehsildars never maintain proper land records of who owns how much land.
• This raised the land prices, red tapism and thus the overall project cost.
• Neither the farmer could sell its land and move to urban areas, no the entrepreneur could buy the land and move towards rural areas.
• Combined with Environment-activism and policy paralysis of UPA regime, the end result was infrastructure bottleneck, high inflation and fall in GDP.
• As such those stringent LARR provisions did not apply to 13 central laws e.g. if land was acquired under Railways Act or Atomic Energy Act, then Social-impact assessment, market-rate compensation etc. were not applicable.
• But this “Exemption” was given only for a year i.e. upto 1st January 2015. By the time, Government needed to amend those 13 acts so that LARR-like high compensation rates can be given to farmers in those projects also. But it was no possible to amend 13 central laws  due these reasons Frequent Disruptions in Winter session (December 2014), Modi doesn’t enjoy majority in Rajya Sabha. some of the union ministries hadnot even prepared the bills. 

Therefore, Government decided to use ordinance route under Article 123 of the Constitution.

Comparison of 

LARR-Act 2013	Land Ordinance 2014
Mandatory 70% consent for PPP projects. Mandatory 80% consent for private projects. Mandatory Social impact assessment (SIA) for every projects.	Those “mandatory” things are no longer required for 5 types of projects: National security and Defense Production Rural infrastructure, Rural electrification Infrastructure and Social infrastructure Industrial corridors Housing for Poors.
SIA mandatory for every type of project.	SIA not needed for Those five categories listed above PPP projects, IF Government owns the land.
other public need like hospitals, schools	Building private hospitals and private educational institutes will also count as “public purpose”. Means, they too can acquire land if 80% affected families agreed.
Compensation: 4 times the market rate in rural area. 2 times in urban area.	no change
Stringent provisions for relief and rehabilitation (R&R).	no change in these things
Private “companies” can acquire land for public purpose.	Private “entities” can acquire. Meaning private companies, NGOs, trusts, foundations, charity bodies, proprietors etc. too can acquire land for “public purpose”
If any mischief played on Government’s part then head of the department will be responsible	Head of the department can’t be prosecuted without prior sanction of government (under CrPC Section 197). This “immunity” is given to ensure bureaucrats don’t sit on the files, fearing media-trials and judicial activism.

Land ordinance: Criticism

1. Given the “Immunity” against prosecution, Bureaucrats will play mischief in land acquisition, to help Raabert Vaadra types unabated.
2. Those “five exempted categories” are very broad- particularly “infrastructure and social-infrastructure”. So, Pretty much all projects can be done without social impact assessment or taking consent of 70-80% of affected families. Entire LARR-2013 is made invalid through clever-wordplay.
3. Social impact assessment (SIA) not required in five types of projects. So, local laborers, artisans, small traders will either get zero or very small relief package, even if their livelihood is lost because of industrial/infrastructure project.
4. Private colleges and hospitals too can acquire land. BUT if they continue to charge hefty-fees then no real ‘public-purpose’ is served. Mushrooming of self-financed bogus-quality Engineering, Pharmacy and MCA colleges doesn’t help reaping India’s demographic dividend.
5. Ordinance doesn’t specifically say that such private hospitals and school/colleges are exempt from “Social impact assessment” (SIA). But they too can dodge SIA-bullet by claiming it’s a “social-infrastructure” project.
6. In parliamentary democracy, Ordinance should be used only for dire emergency. Modi could have waited till budget session, and get proper approval from parliament. [Counter-argument: there was deadline of 1/1/2015].