States as a facilitators have to invent innovative and creative ways for providing land for the development projects or the industries for improving ease of doing business. This was the suggestion of Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion at an event of the Indian Chamber of Commerce here on Saturday.
"Every State has to find a solution.... There are various options like leasing or annuity based agreements with the land owners. In any case, the farmer landowners needed to be made partners for the development projects. Providing developed land could be another option", Kant said.
In case of acquisition of land for the Delhi-Mumbai corridor, Maharshtra Government devised a novel way of "negotiated purchase". The State Government after issuing formal land acquisition notification created local level committees, which interacted with farmer landowners and arrived at a negotiated price through consensus, he mentioned.
He suggested that there should be a mixture of Government intervention for building up unanimity of opinion over the land acquisition and price issues among the stakeholders. "It has to be a joint process," he added.
DIPP Secretary hinted that just legislation might not provide solution to the land acquisition issue.
Index for ease of doing business
He said the first index for ease of doing business in States would be ready by August end.
DIPP under the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry in association with World Bank was preparing the index, which would rank all States on 93 points and 9 different parameters.
"All the States were involved in the process of preparing the index and it would ready after the evaluation of the action taken reports by the States on all the relevant counts", he explained.
Babul Supriyo, Union Minister of State for Urban Development, Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation said called for 'politics of logic' for ushering in economic development and cooperative federalism.
He said the West Bengal Government failed to produce fund utilisation certificates for 34 Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) projects, out of 75 for which it got central funding of around Rs 7,620 crore in the past.