Regional Development And Dispossession: Some Experiences On Land Acquisition In India

For an economy like India where agricultural land is the primary base of livelihood for land-dependent people in rural areas, land acquisition by the state for development without prior informed consent of the people-to-be-affected leads to displacement and dispossession of land-dependent people. Although land acquisition is justified under the 1894 Land Acquisition Act enacted by the British Parliament during the colonial period which legitimizes land acquisition by the state for ‘public purposes’, and the affected people are paid compensation by the state, the process causes immeasurable misery of the people abruptly dispossessed of their meagre means of production and base of livelihood. This paper focuses on some recent experiences of land acquisition by the state for industrialization in India, examines the role of the state vis-a-vis public response in this context, and suggests measures to be adopted in the process of land acquisition for industrialization.