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Govt must pay more to acquire land

Economists speak on industrialisation, infrastructure development

Star Business Report
The government should pay more prices than market value for land acquisition to ensure equity and sustainability of industrialisation and infrastructure development, a panel of economists said yesterday.
"There are strong economic arguments for over-compensation of farmers and tenants on grounds of efficiency, equity and political sustainability of industrialisation programmes," said Dilip Mookherjee, a professor of Boston University.
He made the recommendation, based on the findings of a joint study, “Land Acquisition and Compensation in Singur” at a session of the two-day South Asia Growth Conference. International Growth Centre (IGC) and Economic Research Group (ERG) co-organised the conference at Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka.
Mookherjee said the then leftfront government of the Indian state of Pashchimbanga, realising the need for non-farm jobs, acquired 997 acres of mostly prime agricultural lands to facilitate Tata to build a factory in Singur, 90 kilometres from Kolkata.
However, the local community protested the acquisition, leading Tata to stop building the factory and withdraw to Gujarat, another province of India.
The study finds flaws in prices paid by the then Pashchimbanga govern -
ment to land owners for acquisition. The government bought lands at close to market prices but it could not satisfy the land owners.
Referring to the study findings, Mookherjee said many owners personally valued their lands higher than market prices.
"Market values understate personal valuation of land for many
reasons: role of land as a financial asset. Those who have not sold their land have personal values that exceed the market price," he said.
"Theoretical arguments imply compensations should be at least as large as personal valuations, on efficiency grounds alone," he said, suggesting holding auctions from landowners in acquisition areas.
"We would extend their proposal to include multi-stage auctions: at the community level and then within communities at the householdlevel," Mookherjee said.
“It is a bottom-up procedure. It incorporates heterogeneity of land and is based on voluntary participation of landowners and communities."