Even as the amendments in all nine moved by the ruling party were approved by the lower house where it commands majority to ram through, it could not take this to the upper house where it lacks the requisite majority. So, for a second time, the ordinance was re-issued in March this year which was due to lapse on June 3. In the meanwhile, a joint committee of 30 members of Parliament was set up to study the amendments and come out with its report in the forthcoming monsoon session.

But even as the Joint Committee was holding its first meeting, the very next day the Union Cabinet decided to promulgate for the third time the ordinance amending the 2013 LAA. Given the reality that there is a parliamentary process under way, the Cabinet’s decision to proceed with re-promulgating the ordinance betrays the nervousness of the Treasury benches over the building up of resentment among political parties and peasants to the official amendments. It is small wonder that the All India Kisan Sabha urged the government to treat the ordinance as “null and void” till the House panel completes its tasks and Parliament takes its considered view of the amendments proposed and carried out by the ruling party in the Lok Sabha.

In just a year, with absolute majority in the lower house, the ruling party has clamped as many as 13 ordinances including the third time on land acquisition. An exasperated President Mr. Pranab Mukherjee was reportedly against the frequent use of ordinance route through executive order bypassing Parliament but still he signed off the ordinances in a short span!

With the Modi Government holding the manifestly erroneous view that expediting the land bill would ensure ease of doing business in India so that acquisition of land for projects does not come in the way of the economy cruising on a high growth path, the issue is bound to be sticky. Most of the scattered Opposition parties trying to re-group find the cause of farmers an ideal opportunity at a time when rural distress is acute on the back of tepid agricultural growth. . No wonder there is a virtual scramble among all and sundry to take up the cudgels on behalf of the beleaguered domestic farmers albeit the government’s justification that that it had to resort to the ordinance route only to “ensure continuity” so that “farmers don’t face hardships on compensation.

The 2013 land law, the direct successor to the 1894 Land Acquisition Act that emerged after several rounds of stakeholders’ meeting including with the then leading Opposition the Bharatiya Janata party had its first draft placed in public domain in July 2011. But the rub of that 2013 Act was that the time expended to acquire land under it would escalate but in the process it ensured minimal social conflict that followed acquisition. In essence, the 2013 Act ensured the enforcement of a minimum acceptable standard on four things, according to the former Union Rural Development Minister Mr. Jairam Ramesh, who piloted the Bill and got it into Act after protracted talks with all stakeholders over a couple of months.

These include, he contends, consent, social impact assessment (SIA), compensation and rehabilitation and resettlement. But the NDA which came to power in May 2014 suddenly found no merit in the 2013 Act and gratuitously introduced certain questionable amendments including the removal of social impact assessment and consent clause that became a bone of contention and a new opportunity to stage protests politics by the disparate Opposition.

With the Prime Minister Mr. Modi asserting that the land bill is “not a matter of life or death for me” as it is an initiative in response to a demand from the States (land acquisition being on the concurrent list with States having their own land acquisition laws), wisdom lies in evolving a certain minimum acceptable standards on basic things like consent, SIA, compensation and rehabilitation and resettlement.

This is crucial because those who part with their land holdings do so with their livelihood asset and they need fair compensation in a transparent and efficient manner with assured re-settlement for any one member of their family so that they do not get reduced to penury before long. So from the standpoint of farmers, it is a matter of life and death to them and the State needs to be sensitive and the project owners who eye their lands should have a modicum of mercy to see that the farmers do not lose outright by trading their small holding for myriad misery and poverty in perpetuity.

When the government extends so many open and hidden concessions and tax sops to entrepreneurs of all genre- small, medium and big with banks particularly oblivious to the massive borrowings of the big industrial houses to get away without payment of mounting interest through bailout package with political patronage in the absence of the bankruptcy law, it is time the small farmers toiling on the soil from dawn to dusk to eke out a meager existence is not deprived of a fair compensation in case his land is to be taken over by industry or project owner for greater wealth creation and employment generation!

The State has a moral duty to be on the side of the weak and the vulnerable and not on the side of the robber barons who bamboozle their way with impunity. There is substance and substantial merit in the weighty words of the distinguished farm scientist Dr. M.S Swaminathan when he lamented that “suicides by farmers have not stopped and agrarian distress has become more severe. The land acquisition act has generated considerable controversy”. If what he adverted to is the land acquisition act of 2013 or the still-born one that remains equally controversial, the authorities need to be more watchful of the game and gambit they play on hapless farmers lest the fallout should be frightening.

With the Modi government’s first anniversary celebration over, the kisans of the nation ought to get the deserved focus so that their hard labour is rewarded. Political parties of varied hues across the country including the regional ones need to introspect on how best they could help the domestic farmers to cope with the challenges of nature and a volley of man-made policy fallacies that threaten to drive them to despair. Unless rural India’s and agrarian health are in the pink, the economy will sink into a mire of slow growth momentum, the recovery from which would be intractable. (IPA Service)