Land Bill '15: A Paradigm Shift From Constitutional Ideals

In his latest book, The Indian Constitution and Social Revolution: Right to Property since Independence, historian V Krishna Ananth has traced the trajectory of the socialist project, the political and judicial divide over property as a fundamental right, and the recent attempts to enshrine the Directive Principles as rights-based legislations. Here, he talks to INNLIVE on the continuing relevance of the socialist project and the State's position on land acquisition.

We present the edited excepts of this question and answer session:

The focus of the State has shifted completely away from land reforms towards land acquisition. What is your sense of the future of land acquisition?

There is a pronounced shift away, without doubt, from the egalitarian objectives that guided the nation-building process to market principles since the 1980s. The commitment or the pretension to mild or extreme degrees of socialism that marked the idea of a nation in the post-War phase, world over, is no longer a factor and land as commodity, as we find in the Land Acquistition (LARR) Act, 2013, and the Modi government Ordinance, is indeed reflective of this. 

The “unprecedented” Opposition unity is more driven by political posturing than any commitment to the ideals that drove the Nation state in the quarter century after Independence. I will hold that the LARR Act itself was a reversal of the trajectory that was achieved during the earlier phase that I discussed in my book.

In your book, you have concluded that the constitutional scheme pertaining to socialism, as enshrined in the Preamble, has worked. What are your reasons for this conclusion?

The legislative interventions and the judicial pronouncements until 2011 (the 1973 Keshavananda case judgment and its logical culmination in the three judgments striking down appropriation of agricultural land in the NOIDA region), in my view, marked a phase that was rooted in the Nehruvian scheme and as outlined in the Constituent Assembly debates. It is another matter that there was a huge deficit on their implementation. 

It is true that this scheme too ended up displacing people. But then, there is a qualitative difference between such projects in the Nehruvian era and those in the neo-liberal phase. Contrast the acquisition of land for the PSUs, schools and hospitals with land being grabbed for golf courses and housing schemes for the rich. 

There is a pronounced difference insofar as the definition of “public purpose” between the two that one cannot be oblivious of Article 31 (right to property - deleted through the 44th amendment) had remained an obstacle in the way of egalitarian legislations on the agrarian front. owever, its deletion turned out to be a means, since the advent of neo-liberalism, to dispossess the peasantry. 

That is the irony!

In the 1960s, the State departed from land redistribution towards Green Revolution. Today, the idea is that marginal agriculture is no more sustainable, those engaged in farming must move to cities, and that land acquisition will benefit the country more. How do these developments fit into or diverge from the constitutional ideal?

The resort to technology-driven solutions in agriculture did render redistribution of land an unworkable proposition. It is true that the techno-driven measures warranted consolidation of land holdings. But then, this issue could have been addressed by way of cooperative farming. This was mooted in the 1959 Nagpur Congress session. 

Though it remained an idea that led nowhere, it provoked the landed gentry to found the Swatantra Party! But then, let us not gloss over the emergence of the rich peasants as a politically strong constituency, especially in Northern India, and that the protests against the Modi Government’s LARR Act amendments are strongest here. 

Nevertheless, it is a fact that the farmers, particularly in those parts where land redistribution had taken place, have been driven to part with their holdings for a compensation and this indeed is what made the 2013 Act (with substantive enhancement in the compensation scheme) found acceptance.  The point is: there is a clear departure from the constitutional ideals against dispossession of the tiller.