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: COMPENSATION- II

In the previous part we have seen the benefits and features of compensation that was being offered to the people whose land was taken by the government for the development purpose, in this part we will see what are the cons of the compensation system of the bill. The bill has been criticized mainly for two things which are discussed in detail as below:

First, there is a huge debate on account of whether such compensation amount would be enough or not. Activists argue that prior to the coming up of a development project, the market price is quite low particularly in rural areas or semi-urban areas, and so the compensation amount (up to 4 times the market price) may be too little for a landowner/farmer who is losing his/her livelihood in a big way. 

Corporates argue on the other hand that this compensation amount is too high particularly in urban areas where the prices may already be very high. They also state that once it is announced that a development project is going to be constructed in a particular place, the market price of that land increases significantly for any area (rural/urban) and so, the compensation amount would be too high to provide for a private producer or the government. 

Activists however reject this argument by stating that it would be a little share of the overall investment in the project and so would not affect the project budget significantly. Still, a compensation of up to only 4 times the market price seems low, and many Member of Parliaments suggested that this should be increased to at least 5 to 20 times the market price in at least rural areas if not urban.

Second, those who would be affected after the establishment of the project, they have not been considered at all in the bill although one could say that this was not the primary purpose of the bill, and second, one could address these through proper implementation and enforcement of the environment regulations for air and water (if not for land). There are issues with those norms though, but for once, this is a secondary problem with the bill itself.

There are other issues however, such as that compensation should not be denied/reduced even if land-for-land is provided, and that those who are losing their livelihood because of land acquisition should also be given monetary compensation. 

These are major issues which remain unaddressed in this version of the bill. Also, concerns were expressed by a few MPs, notably the Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj in the Lok Sabha, that many landowners who become rich overnight on getting compensation money do not understand what to do with this excess money and use it to buy cars and vehicles rather than invest it in some productive activity. That concern also remains. 

India is a democratic country and to bring an act that is as important as this one is a very humongous as well as delicate task. All the aspects need to be discussed in detail and then after lots of pondering ad discussions, such decisions need to be taken.

You also can have a say in this, just post what you feel is right or what is wrong on our website adsn we will make sure you are heard, if your point is valid.