For readers interested in the subject of eminent domain in India, there is an additional informative news item — an on-line interview with the Indian Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh; see Rupashree Nanda, Jairam Ramesh Calls New Land Bill “a Compromise,” ibnlive.in.com, September 10, 2011, click here. We learn from it that the proposed Indian legislation represents an overdue major break with that country’s prior eminent domain law, enacted in 1894.
According to Minister Ramesh, the new legislation is candidly designed to protect the interest of small Indian farmers who have been bearing the brunt of the existing law, as noted in our post of a couple of days ago: Redevelopment in India – It’s the Same the Whole World Over, September 9, 2011 — click here. It turns out that during the past 50 to 60 years some 50 million people have been displaced in India “on account of various development projects,” with some of them displaced more than once, and some who have not yet “received their R and R package” 40 years after the taking. R and R stands for “relief and rehabilitation,” which we surmise is their equivalent of what we call Relocation Assostance. Minister Ramesh opined that abuses of that kind are “one of the reasons for Naxalism in Central India.” Naxalism, it turns out, is a violent Maoist insurgency movement that has been a serious problem in Central India. We have not seen Naxalism covered in the American news media but you can check it out on Wikipedia.
In India, land may be taken by eminent domain for “industrialization and urbanization” and that combined with the rule over there that land taken for one purpose may be used for another (where have we heard that one before?), and evidently prevailing undercompensation of displaced rural landowners, has resulted in takings of more land than is needed.
The proposed legislation provides for compensation at the rate of four times the “registered land price” (which we surmise is what we would call “assessed value”), with compensation payable not only to property owners, but also to “livelihood losers,” such as sharecroppers.