Property Right to India Farmers

Sharad Joshi on “Land acquisition and resettlement” and suggest property right is the final answer to all these allegations that The State has created.

• “Many experts have suggested alternative forms of compensation and resettlement. These include: restitution of a part of the land to the owner after the development, or offering shares in the proposed industrial unit as part of the compensation, or promise of jobs to the children of displaced people, with appropriate arrangements for technical training.
• The formulation of an appropriate and rational scheme for land acquisition and compensation for the land acquired is unnecessarily made complicated by such sophistry.
• The solution can be much simpler if only, the powers that be recognise that the farmers are citizens of this Republic, have equal rights with all other citizens and have the right to carry on the vocation as also the fundamental right to acquire, hold and dispose of property that was granted to them by the original ‘Ambedkar’ constitution.
• The problem of land acquisition has been further complicated by the looming drought and the threat of famine and food insecurity.
• Any scheme for land acquisition must avoid reduction in the total land under cultivation. Any farmer who wishes, in spite of the gloomy prospects, to continue farming must have absolute immunity from any form of coercive land acquisition.
• On the other hand, a farmer who wishes to discontinue farming must have the full freedom to dispose of his land to a person, at a price and time that suit his convenience.”