The Calcutta High Court's striking down a law, enabling the West Bengal Government to take over the land at Singur on which Tata Motors’ Nano car plant was put up, hardly comes as a surprise. The said law, for one, had not obtained presidential assent, necessary in view of land acquisition being a Concurrent List subject, in which both the Centre and the States have legislative powers. The State Government's contention was that the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, as the name suggested, did not entail acquisition. The 997 acres belonged to the State and was only leased out to the carmaker, the agreement for which was being terminated through the Act. But even if that position is accepted, the fact that Tata Motors had claimed to have invested over Rs 1,500 crore in the project entitled it to fair compensation. Not paying up amounted to the State, in a wider sense, arbitrarily exercising its eminent domain powers — even if against an industrial house, in this case. The clauses pertaining to compensation in the Act were vague and open-ended.

But Singur raises issues that go well beyond the constitutionality of legislation. These basically relate to whether governments should be acquiring land for private enterprise and, if so, for what purpose. Ideally, land purchases should be strictly a matter of negotiation between the companies and owners concerned. But in India, land records are often old and inaccurate, which exposes buyers to the risk of sellers not having full, unencumbered rights to be property being transacted. So, even if an industrialist were willing to pay more than the prevailing market rate for a piece of land, the very possibility of claimants other than its presumptive owner springing up, induces him to go through the government, rather than purchase directly. Such land, freed of all claims once vested with the state, can be subsequently transferred for use by the company. There can be no real market for land without up-to-date, computerised records and title registrations that confer conclusive, as opposed to presumptive, ownership of property.

Till that happens, some form of state involvement in land acquisition for privately-promoted industry is unavoidable. Adding to the complexity is the presence of share-croppers, tenants and others, whose livelihoods, too, depend on agricultural operations taking place in the land being acquired. Their resettlement and rehabilitation goes beyond the act of merely paying compensation to the legal owners. All this warrants state intervention, without which no State, West Bengal included, can attract investments today. Such a facilitative role is needed all the more in projects serving public purpose, whose definition must extend to any activity with capacity to generate significant employment. That, by itself, would automatically exclude land for real estate development or construction of hotels, malls, resorts and golf courses — where the state has no business to be involved even remotely.

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