Capital Loss

 

- Jitendra Amaravati

ANDHRA PRADESH'S

 Land Pooling Scheme (LPS) was touted to be a model land acquisition initiative. But three years after it was launched, it has left farmers with no land or job. And the rise in living costs has rendered the compensation barely enough to survive.

When Andhra Pradesh was divided in 2014 and it emerged that Hyderabad would cease to be the state capital in a decade, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu decided to use LPS over the more stringent Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 to acquire land for building a new capital at Amaravati. Between June 2014 and February 2015, over 13,000 hectares (ha) of agricultural land was “pooled” from over 25,000 landholders in 28 villages.

The government opted for LPS because it is much easier to implement. The land acquisition Act requires the government to take consent of 70 per cent of the total affected families for undertaking a public work on agricultural land, but under LPS the government can negotiate the terms of transfer with individual landowners. For instance, Y Lakshmi Narayan, a farmer of Lingayapalem village in Vijayawada district, gave 1.5 ha of his farmland to the government and was promised R2 lakh a year for 10 years (with a 10 per cent annual rise) and return of 30 per cent of his land (which was to be developed to have road connectivity; power, water and sewage connections; and, medical and educational institutions in close vicinity) in eight months.