INVOLVE LAND-OWNERS IN DEVELOPMENT

Sixtytwo years have passed since India became independent; still rural India is as backward and uneducated as ever. Some urban areas have developed by making farmers poorer and helpless. The methods of development are crude and rustic. Under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, wide powers were reserved by foreign rulers for themselves. Every state in the country has an urban development authority. A rural development authority is never heard of. Living conditions in villages are pathetic. Seventy per cent of youth in Punjab's rural areas are unemployed and drug addicted.

As long as development is done through centralised institutions like PUDA, development will remain lop-sided and expensive. Its benefit will never reach the grassroots. The whole process encourages inflation and price rise. Slums are multiplying. PUDA, the developing authority, wants to make as much profit as private contractors.

In the original Punjab Regional and Town Planning and Development Act, 1995, Section 136 provided that any saving made from a project should be spent on the same project after consultation with the people. The said people-oriented section was deleted in a subsequent amendment.

The attitude of the bureaucracy makes the acquisition proceeding extortionist. Hence, resentment among the people. It is calculated that 48 per cent live in slums in Mumbai and more that 33 per cent in Chandigarh.

An average farmer family of five people in India does not own more than two acres. It is one of the wonders of the world the way they survive. By acquisition we deprive them of this small piece of land and push them on the road to slums in cities.

People can be made partners in development. Land should only be acquired for roads, sewerage and open space or schools and colleges etc. The owners should be paid regular rent for the same out of the taxes, fees charged from the users. The places where shops and houses or other things are to be made should be built by people jointly by taking loans etc. This is being done in Maharashtra and Gujarat with much greater success. The system can be modified according to local requirements.

In Punjab when octroi was abolished the government had agreed to compensate the municipalities. Similarly, some sort or procedure can be evolved which distributes benefits to all sections of societies and not only to the builders and planners. The owner of land should also benefit from its development instead of being sacrificed for it same. In the present system everybody earns except the owners of the land which is acquired.

Development Laws should be amended to make them people-oriented.

Greater Mohali Area Development Authority recently made a land pooling scheme. It is just a clever attempt to acquire land without the payment of adequate compensation. People were not consulted before the scheme was launched.

All aspects of the scheme are still not made public and ultimately people are given 1/5th of what they own. In real and pooling people should get much more than what they surrender. Therefore, there are not many takers of

the scheme.

A scheme should be such where land owners crave for it and not resent it. It is a myth that with land pooling development will be slow. It will be faster than the present method where every affected person runs to the High Court to get a stay and then the project is halted for years.

In Punjab many land acquisition works have been at a standstill for the last eight-nine years and yet cases are pending at initial stages in courts. Every method in which people become partner will be faster than the present one in which they first acquire and then develop. That is anti-people and not suitable in the country where there is no surplus vacant land available and personal holdings are small.

Nowadays land is allotted to societies which construct houses on approved lines by pooling resources. The same can be done by the original owners. The role of the developing agency should be to assist the owners instead of exploiting them. Nobody in Punjab has tried this method so far and we are adopting the same procedure which was being used by our masters before Independence.

Under the land pooling scheme farmers will cooperate and there will be very limited litigation. Let us try this at least for some time and it can be improved by experience. At least, there will be no protests and agitations. Instead. there will be cooperation.

In Punjab roads to each village were made on peoples' land, without acquiring it. People come forward to build roads. The labour and earth was supplied by villagers free. Government provided other material, skilled labour and machinery. Whole project was completed in record time and foundation was laid down for the progress of Punjab. With little more effort, imagination and better motivation wonders can be created to take the state amongst the most progressive ones in the country. To fulfil this vision, the administration has to change its way of thinking for the grass root man and his benefit. Hundreds of ideas will strike, some of them can be used to change the process of planning for the benefit of the society as whole and not only from the points of view of the already affluent section. One dedicated, motivated man can change the face of the State that will make all of us proud of.