Taking Land: The 2013 Act and the Social Impact Assessment

In one line

Before land is taken, somebody must study what taking it will do to the people who live on it, publish the study, hear them, and have an independent group say whether the project is worth it.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, replaced the Land Acquisition Act, 1894; section 4 requires a Social Impact Assessment study in consultation with the local body before any acquisition; section 5 requires a public hearing in the affected area; section 6 requires the study to be published; section 7 requires it to be appraised by an independent multi-disciplinary Expert Group which may recommend that the acquisition be abandoned; section 8 requires the appropriate Government to examine both; section 9 exempts an acquisition under the urgency provisions of section 40; and section 10 safeguards food security by restricting the acquisition of irrigated multi-cropped land.

Why the 1894 Act was replaced

Because it asked one question and the new Act asks three.

The Land Acquisition Act, 1894, asked whether the land was needed for a public purpose, and if it was, it took the land and paid its market value. It did not ask what happened to the people afterwards, it did not distinguish an owner from a tenant or a landless labourer who lived off the land, and its urgency clause allowed possession to be taken before the objections were heard.

The 2013 Act asks whether the acquisition should happen at all, through the social impact assessment; what it is worth, through a multiplied market value and a solatium; and what becomes of the people, through rehabilitation and resettlement as an entitlement rather than a policy.

Application and the definitions that matter

Section 1 gives the short title, extends the Act to the whole of India, and provides for its commencement.

Section 2 states when the Act applies: to an acquisition by the appropriate Government for its own use, for a public purpose, and for a public purpose for a private company or a public private partnership, and it imposes the consent requirements, being the prior consent of seventy per cent of affected families for a public private partnership project and of eighty per cent for a private company.

Section 3 defines the people the Act protects, and the definitions are the reform.

"Affected family" includes not only a family whose land is acquired, but a family which does not own land and whose members are agricultural labourers, tenants, share-croppers or artisans, or who have been working in the affected area for three years before the acquisition and whose primary source of livelihood stands affected; the Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers who have lost forest rights; a family whose primary source of livelihood for three years is dependent on forests or water bodies, including gatherers of forest produce, hunters, fisher folk and boatmen; and, in urban areas, a family residing on the land for the preceding three years or whose primary source of livelihood is affected.