A discussion of the old and new Land Acquisition Acts in India, the proposed amendments in LARR 2013, and comparison with the Indian Forest Acts. Suggests that acquiring agencies will have to adapt to the new rights-based approach to balance with justice with development.

The recent land acquisition law in India would cause a great deal of delay in competing the process, which is not in the interest of either landowners or industry. Hence the procedure needs to be simplified.

Taking over possession of private land by the Government through the use of the power of the eminent domain of the state for the economic development has become one of the most burning issues all over the world. While the international development agencies are largely in favour of participatory methods of development and governance, the national Governments are found to fight with their own citizens over the issue of land takings, most often, with archaic laws. India is the country where the acquisition of land by the Government still takes place by a more than hundred year old British colonial law, while its law makers have also created democratic and participatory forms of Local Self-Governments, which has no place in the colonial legislation. Ironically, the recent move of the Indian Government to enact a democratic law for the acquisition of land for development downplayed the Local Self-Government by disregarding one of the basic tenets of the Indian Constitution and the various international charters.

Taking over possession of private land by the Government through the use of power of the eminent domain of the state for economic development has become one of the most burning issues all over the world. While the international development agencies are largely in favour of participatory methods of development and governance, the national Governments are found to fight with their own citizens over the issue of land takings, most often, with archaic laws. India is the country where the acquisition of land by the Government still takes place by a more than hundred year old British colonial law, while its law makers have also created democratic and participatory forms of Local Self-Governments, which has no place in the colonial legislation. Ironically, the recent move of the Indian Government to enact a democratic law for the acquisition of land for development downplayed the Local Self-Government by disregarding one of the basic tenets of the Indian Constitution and the various international charters.

The question of a constitutional property regime governing eminent domain gave rise to nuanced and principled debates in the Constituent Assembly (the body which framed the Indian Constitution between 1947 and 1950) and in subsequent Parliament meetings regarding Constitutional amendments. However, these extensive deliberations resulted in a clause which only addressed the most superficial aspects of property rights in India. Similarly, the statutory frameworks which govern government acquisition of land, in particular the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, are important to understand, but they provide only another part of the puzzle. This paper starts earlier in history – at the inception of eminent domain in India – in order provide the colonial context on which my argument rests. I argue that this concept of compulsory land acquisition by the government, as inherited from the British and encapsulated in the Constitution, the statutory law, and in practice, is inappropriate for the reality of how property rights are held and exercised in India and incapable of being reformed toward the socially inclusive purposes for which property rights were included in the Constitution. Because of this discord, efforts to re-formulate the law which hold current forms of eminent domain as their focal point continue to fall short of real transformation of the property rights regimes in India.

Taking over possession of private land by the Government through the use of power of the eminent domain of the state for economic development has become one of the most burning issues all over the world. While the international development agencies are largely in favour of participatory methods of development and governance, the national Governments are found to fight with their own citizens over the issue of land takings, most often, with archaic laws. India is the country where the acquisition of land by the Government still takes place by a more than hundred year old British colonial law, while its law makers have also created democratic and participatory forms of Local Self-Governments, which has no place in the colonial legislation.Ironically, the recent move of the Indian Government to enact a democratic law for the acquisition of land for development downplayed the Local Self-Government by disregarding one of the basic tenets of the Indian Constitution and the various international charters.