Farmers must wait longer for rehab pack

NEW DELHI: While lifting the freeze on SEZ approvals, the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) headed by external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee has left several ticklish issues unresolved.

The EGoM has left rehabilitation of displaced farmers –– a political hot potato –– to the ministry of rural development. One person from each displaced family would be provided ‘livelihood from the project’ and a comprehensive resettlement & rehabilitation (R&R) policy will be worked out is all the EGoM has to say.

Considering that a effective R&R policy will be the key to counter political opposition to SEZs, the gap left by EGoM could lead to persisting problems for SEZ developers. While there was discussion about part of the compensation being provided to displaced families in the form of equity in the project, the EGoM is silent on this factor too. In effect, the revised R&R policy is not ready yet and developers and rural landowners have to wait for the rural development ministry to come out with a new set of guidelines.

Even when private parties directly buy land from the rural population, an effective R&R package is necessary to ensure the welfare of displaced families and ally their fears. In the absence of adequate compensation for those whose land is taken over for SEZs, the policy is likely to face further turbulence.

The board of approval (BoA) for SEZs had recently said that only 10% of the land taken over for SEZs could be multi-crop land. The rest has to be wasteland or single-crop land. Despite the political controversy over land acquisition which forced the freeze on SEZs, the eGOM has not emphasised on this point. Stressing that multi-crop land would not be used for SEZs –– except in unavoidable circumstances like ensuring contiguity –– could have gone a long way in blunting political opposition to the SEZ policy.

The Centre has also not taken any concrete initiative to ensure that the price paid for land taken over by SEZ developers is at part with market rates. While compulsory acquisition by states has been prohibited, rural land-owners would get fair price if the centre and states initiate specific steps to achieve this goal.

State government will have a key role to play in land acquisition even now since they have to revise land use norms to allow rural areas to be converted into industrial clusters. The EGoM decision says state governments could still be ‘involved’ in facilitating private parties to buy land directly from farmers.