Skip to main content

Capital investment worth worth 3% of GDP stalled in India due to land acquisition problems: Report

 
A new report “India Land Governance: Country Narrative” has estimated that demands for urbanization in India, infrastructure and rapid expansion of industry would require an additional 10% of the land area (152 million hectares), currently used for agricultural production, though regretting, the process of making available such huge land would remain “complicated”.
Especially blaming the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act, 2013, passed by the previous UPA government, the report, prepared by a private firm, NR Management Consultants,  says, "Capital investments worth 3% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) were stalled due to land acquisition problems”.
According to the report, “As on 2015, some 8-14% of the projects were stalled were related to land conflict. Out of 80 high-value stalled projects, more than 25% of projects were stalled due to land disputes risking the total investment of Rs 1,926 billion”, adding, “Conflicts covering 5.62 million people affecting Rs 12,853 billion and 1.8 million ha of land as on July 1, 2017.”
Especially raising alarm over tribal areas, the report says, in Schedule V Areas, i.e. tribal districts of Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Rajasthan –incidence of conflicts are “1.5 times greater the national average number of conflicts.”
Pointing out that “land acquisition of both common and private lands is a major cause of projects delays”, the report says, “Contrary to the common perception of disputes being limited to private lands, at least 15 percent of the stalled projects were on common lands, the total investment value of which was Rs 1,188 billion.”
“Due to land acquisition conflicts 5,780 (14%) of the more than 40,000 projects announced between January 2000 and October 2016 were stalled”, the report estimates, adding, “Infrastructure projects accounts for almost half of all the land related conflict.”
The report notes, out of the total geographical area of the country, 329 million hectares, since 1950, “the area of non-agriculture use (usually urban land) has been steadily increasing with decreasing of cultivable wastelands”, adding, “It now constitutes 8% of the geographical area, almost trebling in 60 years”, with the area under rural (excluding non-agricultural use and forests) has decreasing from 72% to 64%.”
The report says, “Satellite-based analysis available indicates that majority of the urbanization has primarily occurred in the cropland areas (0.7 million ha) while only 0.12 million ha of the forest areas were cleared for urban development during 1880–2010. The built-up area (or urban area) has increased by 5-fold from 0.46 million ha to 2.04 million ha during 1880–2010.”
The report says that, while the net sown area has increased by 20% since 1961, “the area of grazing and permanent pasture has been continuously declining including fallow and uncultivable wastes, which are mostly comes under village common land categories.”
“Satellite based analysis indicate that majority of the cropland expansion has been resulted from conversion of forest (16.9 million ha), grasslands/shrublands (14.8 million ha) as well as other types that primarily include fallow lands”, the report says.
“A total of 26 million ha forest areas (from 89 million ha in 1880 to 63 million ha in 2010) and 20 million ha of grasslands/shrublands (from 45 million ha to 25 million ha) has decreased in India. In contrast, total cropland area has increased by 48 million ha (from 92 million ha in 1880 to 140 million ha in 2010)”, the report underlines.

Comments

TRENDING

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.  

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members.  As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and the Civil Aviation Minister.

Global NGO slams India for media clampdown during conflict, downplays Pakistan

A global civil rights group, Civicus has taken strong exception to how critical commentaries during the “recent conflict” with Pakistan were censored in India, with journalists getting “targeted”. I have no quarrel with the Civicus view, as the facts mentioned in it are all true.

A conman, a demolition man: How 'prominent' scribes are defending Pritish Nandy

How to defend Pritish Nandy? That’s the big question some of his so-called fans seem to ponder, especially amidst sharp criticism of his alleged insensitivity during his journalistic career. One such incident involved the theft and publication of the birth certificate of Masaba Gupta, daughter of actor Neena Gupta, in the Illustrated Weekly of India, which Nandy was editing at the time. He reportedly did this to uncover the identity of Masaba’s father.

From SECI CMD to #OpenToWork: Gujarat cadre ex-IAS RP Gupta’s curious LinkedIn journey

Recently, I wrote a blog on retired Gujarat cadre IAS bureaucrat RP Gupta, with whom I used to interact during my Gandhinagar Sachivalaya days as the Times of India man. Written in the backdrop of the Government of India controversially easing him out of his position as CMD of the PSU Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), a special purpose vehicle to promote solar energy, the title of the  blog  — "RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?" — is self-explanatory about the blog’s contents.