The Price of Land

Description

In the last half decade in India, stories of confl ict over land acquisition have dominated the media and popular imagination. The numbers involved are astounding—hundreds of crores of rupees for a single acre of urban land; hundreds of thousands of villagers dispossessed for a single project. Confl ict sites like Singur, Nandigram, Niyamgiri, and Maha Mumbai are well known. However, in the explosion of information and misinformation, analysis often gets compromised. This book brings clarity, depth, and understanding to the issue by taking us through the present, past, and future, exploring answers to three fundamental questions: What are the realities of land acquisition today? How did the situation get to this impasse? What are the ways forward? Combining analytical rigour with an accessible writing style, the book captures three core themes: • The economics of the land market, and the problems in land pricing • The role of state intervention, especially through contradictions between the ‘giving’ state, which does land reforms, and the ‘taking’ state, which acquires land • The changes in the land market and the agents involved, and the emerging legal and policy approaches to resolving the crisis Steering clear of easy answers, this book provides an engaging account of what is believed by many to be the ‘biggest problem’ in India’s development.