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

By Rajiv Shah 
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.