World's Biggest Planned City Taking Place In Gujarat DHOLERA SIR

A long time ago, in an age far, far away, there was talk of turning Mumbai into Shanghai. Impressed with China’s infrastructure, people often mention Shanghai. Sometimes, they actually mean Pudong, carved out of nothing more than fishing villages. Shanghai wasn’t Greenfield. Pudong was. Of course, this involved land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation. The implicit assumption is this is easier in a country without democratic processes, so dissension and conflict can be contained. Doesn’t work in India. Our problem of urban planning is we can’t have Greenfield cities.

Consequently, we are stuck with chaotic Brownfield urbanization, inevitable because economic development is correlated with urbanization. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had smaller towns with population sizes between 50,000 and 1 million, as bridges between larger villages and 3 million-plus cities, which then lead on to metros? These 50,000 to 1 million cities will naturally be Greenfield. SEZs, especially if you leave out ITES-type ones, were meant to be this. They actually had little to do with exports. How they were marketed is irrelevant. Stuck with problems of land acquisition, the idea hasn’t worked that well. This doesn’t mean the idea is devoid of economic rationale.

Cities exist and prosper because they provide assorted network effects and positive externalities. That’s the reason urbanization is correlated with economic development. Who will develop these cities and govern them? Urban governance, provided threshold population and other criteria are met, must mandatorily be through elected urban local bodies (ULBs). Many States seem to be skeptical about ULB an capacity, which is why they use the “industrial township” route, acceptable at developmental stage, until the town is inhabited.

This is like a charter city, where the city is governed by its own charter, independent of other legislation. At Vibrant Gujarat, there was a special pavilion on Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR), described as a new Gujarat within Gujarat. The CM spoke proudly about it, describing it as something that would surpass Shanghai. If you watched the video at the pavilion, you would have believed this. The mind boggled. (You can boggle the mind by visiting the website too.) There’s a slight difference between a SIR and a SEZ. For a SEZ, one needs to acquire the entire contiguous land. With a SIR, even partial land acquisition works. Dholera will be Gujarat’s first SIR, also the first under Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Project (DMIC), the joint initiative with Japan.

Land Acquisition Bill Passed: 2015

In the past few days, since the Land acquisition bill has been passed, there has been a lot going on as a result of the reaction to it. We at AAMANI SPACES bring for you the detailed account that will help you understand the finer nuances of the act and how and where it does affect you, if you are a land owner or aiming to be so.

The government has decided to introduce an ordinance to make major changes in the existing Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013. It is in many ways aimed to be a course correction after the Act passed by UPA was deemed as restrictive by industry bodies. 

Let us start with the basics where we tell you what it means and what the basic is and context for such bill. After all BEST LAND INVESTMENT  for you is what we aim for.

Basics & Context: 

Land acquisition refers to the process where a government acquires land from land owners for any purpose. Generally, the purpose is related to development projects conducted either by PSUs (Public Sector units) or the private sector.

Prior to the passage of this Bill (and it is yet to become an Act), we had the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 which was imposed in India since the time of British rule. Under this Act, the government could acquire any land as it wishes to, in the name of "public purpose".

The British had never defined the words "public purpose" in a straightforward manner, which meant that in theory as well as in practice, a government could acquire land for any purpose they wanted, and term their purpose "public purpose".

After independence, this practice continued whereby Indian governments, both at the central and at the state level, acquired large amounts of land for various kinds of development and infrastructure projects, such as roads, highways, ports (air and sea), power projects (thermal, hydro and nuclear) etc.

 During 1947 till 1991, most of these acquisitions had been done by agencies or units in the public sector. After 1991, when liberalization had taken place, most of the land acquisition was done by the government to provide land for the private sector, either for private sector projects (infrastructure projects like power, roads etc.) but also for housing projects. 

On account of protests over the years against many such development projects, like against Tehri Dam, Sardar Sarovar dam, Singur or Nandigram, and many others which failed in preventing land acquisition, there were growing demands from not just the activists, but also to an extent from the corporates for a transparent and accountable land acquisition process so that while the people could get adequate compensation and would be suitably rehabilitated, corporates do not have to face delays on account of protests against land acquisition.

And it is in this context that the Land Acquisition Act (2011) was introduced, and finally passed in the Lok Sabha on 29th August 2013. 

In the coming parts we will analyse the highlights of the bill and also see if these have pros and cons attached to them. We at AAMANI SPACES ensure that you get the BEST INVESTMENT IN INDIA  with proper knowledge and understanding.