Source: IDEAS AND INSTITUTIONS | ISSUE #36
Analysis
Comparing Different Approaches to Using Land for Urban Development
State policies in land markets show considerable evidence of both replication and experimentation. In my last essay in this newsletter, I analyzed Delhi’s land pooling scheme. In this essay, I continue my examination of land pooling by looking at how different states are using it for urban development. In my previous essay, I highlighted the features of Delhi’s land pooling scheme and its issues. There are, however, many other examples of land pooling schemes and policies in India, many of which have been designed in the past decade. In this essay, I look beyond Delhi to examine the design and deployment of land pooling in two other states, Haryana and Maharashtra. While both states have land pooling mechanisms, there are differences in their designs. Understanding these differences will also highlight the degree to which Indian states experiment with land policies.
Land pooling is the consensual acquisition of land for development by the state. In a land pooling project, landowners surrender their plots of undeveloped land to the government and receive a developed but smaller plot of land from the government. The balance land is used by the government to provide public amenities like roads, utilities, and community facilities. Within this broad framework, it is possible to design incentives for landowners in many different ways. It is also possible to design the role of the state in different ways. As the designs of the land pooling schemes in Haryana and Maharashtra show, both are rooted in local necessities.
Land Pooling Schemes in Haryana
In 2012, the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation, or HSIIDC, introduced a land pooling (LP) scheme for industrial development projects. This LP scheme was part of the land acquisition process for developing industrial infrastructure, where landowners were given the option of either having their land acquired and receiving compensation or surrendering their land under the LP scheme and receiving 1200 square yards of developed land for each acre of pooled land. This was a limited scheme applicable only in cases where land acquisition proceedings had been initiated under the land acquisition law for HSIIDC projects.
In the same year, the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) also introduced an LP policy for the development of residential sectors. Again, the LP scheme was used only in areas where land acquisition proceedings had commenced, and the design of the scheme was very similar to the one notified by HSIIDC.
After a decade of these two LP schemes—one under HSIIDC and another under HUDA—the Haryana Government in 2022 announced an LP policy, the Haryana Land Pooling Policy, 2022, or HLPP. This made pooling a state-wide mechanism for “planned development including development of infrastructure and for the purpose obtain land through voluntary participation of land owners, interested to become partners in the said development.”
Compared to the policies introduced in 2012, the HLPP is simultaneously more expansive and more refined. It is expansive because it permits landowners to voluntarily come forward and offer their land to the government for development, even if the government has not initiated a development project. It is more refined because, compared to the 2012 LP schemes, it clearly lays down that the allotment of the developed land to the landowner will be based on the market value of the undeveloped land that the owner surrendered and that this value will be calculated by a government-empaneled valuer based on established government policies. This stands out in contrast to many other LP schemes where the owner is returned a fixed percentage of the surrendered land. In the HLPP, the emphasis is on returning land with equivalent economic value. The HLPP states that development projects ought to be completed within three years, and landowners will be entitled to interim support of Rs. 1 lakh per annum per acre of land surrendered.
The design of the HLPP, the guarantees made in the policy regarding the value of the developed plot, the provision for interim payments, and so on show a high degree of commitment to avoid conflict and litigation and to ensure the continued participation of the landowners in the development project. This is also apparent from other initiatives taken by the Haryana government to reduce disruptions and conflicts related to land. One such initiative is the Haryana Land Partnership Policy, 2022. While the partnership policy also focuses on the consensual use of land for development, it is different from the HLPP in two significant ways. First, any landowner who surrenders land that comprises more than 10 percent of the project area will become a director on the board of the company set up to implement the project. Second, there is a well-laid-out mechanism for cost and profit sharing, implying that the nature of this arrangement is entrepreneurial rather than just benefiting from the value of developed land.
The state of Haryana has therefore clearly prioritized the consensual acquisition of land for development and is willing to expend considerable fiscal resources to achieve this objective. The state’s policy documents repeatedly discuss landowners as partners, and the land partnership policy actually proposes that the participating landowner’s land be treated as equity for the development project. This in turn highlights the degree to which state-led development is becoming increasingly participatory in many cases and the increasing difficulty in persisting with the old mechanisms of compulsory land acquisition for urban development in all cases. If land pooling through the use of such fiscal incentives is the preferred alternative for urban development, we must consider that the alternative of compulsory land acquisition must be even more expensive.
The Case of NAINA, Maharashtra
The Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area, or NAINA, is a project to develop the region around the proposed new international airport in Navi Mumbai. The new international airport is expected to cater to the rising demand for air transport services, which the existing international airport in Mumbai is unable to satisfy. The area intended for development under the project is larger than the existing city of Mumbai.
While the Haryana HLPP is a policy designed to apply to all development projects within the state, the NAINA scheme is a specific development project for which land pooling was proposed as the tool for land assembly/acquisition.
According to the draft development plan for the NAINA project, it was felt that the local area close to the new airport would see a significant increase in economic activity due to the presence of the airport. The NAINA project was conceived in order to prevent “unplanned and haphazard development” in the region.
One of the key features of the NAINA LP scheme is the degree of preparation that the draft development plan records prior to the scheme’s execution. The planners conducted a detailed topographical and socioeconomic survey of the area under the scheme, which mapped land use patterns, housing infrastructure, road and transport networks, water and electricity usage, and so on. The proposed development plan was based on these detailed assessments of the economic potential of the NAINA region, and the plan for using land for development was in service of this proposed plan. The land use plan provided for flexible zoning regulations, in line with an approach toward transit-oriented zoning, and an assessment that it was necessary to develop the core areas of NAINA in the near future while developing other areas over a longer span of time.
Based on these, the NAINA draft plan proposes land pooling and land readjustment for provisioning land for public purposes. The plan notes that while land pooling allows for land value capture and lower fiscal costs to the exchequer, it also has the potential to create holdouts since pooling is consensual. They note that land values in the NAINA area have already been increasing in anticipation of development there and will increase further, providing an avenue for the presiding government agency, the City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO), to use the gains from increases to fund further development. The NAINA scheme therefore proposes pooling but does it through incentivizing aggregation by private individuals. That is, if individuals aggregate and surrender land above a certain threshold, they will be provided incentives, such as an additional floor space index. In addition, the owner will retain 60 percent of the surrendered land, while CIDCO will use the remaining 40 percent to build public infrastructure and amenities.
These proposals, however, have turned out to be inadequate for convincing landowners in the long run. In 2018, CIDCO approached the Maharashtra government to change course and use the compulsory town planning instrument in the NAINA area due to nonparticipation in the voluntary LP scheme by landowners. Maharashtra has a long history of using town planning schemes for urban development and redevelopment. Town planning schemes (TPS) are consultative and participatory, but they are not voluntary. Local landowners do not have the option of nonparticipation in the scheme. Except for the aspect of voluntary participation, the TPS process works on the same principles as LP: a portion of the landowner’s plot is surrendered for public amenities and infrastructure, and the landowner receives an upgraded plot with better amenities and an increase in property value. TPS is the dominant method of urban development and redevelopment in Gujarat and Maharashtra.
The use of TPS was invoked in NAINA within a year of the LP proposal being made. This quick reversion to TPS as opposed to the initial plan of using land pooling indicates that all LP schemes suffer from a potential problem of delays unless sufficient incentives are provided. Haryana’s HLPP and other policies are arguably more favorable to landholders than the NAINA LP proposal was.
Conclusion: Contrasting Experiences and Policy Outcomes
In Haryana, the success of land pooling schemes by state development agencies eventually led to the wider adoption of land pooling within the state. By contrast, in NAINA, though land pooling was proposed, CIDCO reverted to the use of town planning schemes within a year of its draft development plan. This highlights the contextual variations and learnings that development agencies in India are employing to develop strategies for using land for development. Since both Maharashtra and Haryana fare relatively well on using land for development, it is difficult, normatively, to claim whether their experiences highlight the success of one instrument over another. Instead, this comparison reveals that successful use of policy instruments is dependent on contextual factors, the imperative of the development project among the priorities of the state government, the availability of fiscal resources, and the specific design of the policy instrument. As India transitions from a period of compulsory land acquisition under land acquisition laws, careful attention will need to be paid to how different states are developing different strategies to provision land for urban development.
—By Anirudh Burman
Review
Five Perspectives on the State of India’s Democracy
The July 2023 issue of the Journal of Democracy includes a symposium with five essays on the following question: Is India still a democracy? That such a question is being raised is not surprising if we consider recent writings about India’s democracy in the academic literature, journalistic accounts in Western media, and the reports of democracy watchdogs. The general narrative that has emerged is that India’s democracy is in decline, albeit there are disagreements about the extent of the decline. For instance, The Economist’s Democracy Index suggests that even though there has been some backsliding, the Indian democracy remains in the same band as it was earlier, what they call “a flawed democracy,” which is better than hybrid regimes but worse than full democracies. But the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute now places the state of Indian democracy at about the same level as it was during the emergency.
Three of the five authors, Sumit Ganguly, Maya Tudor, and Vineeta Yadav, argue that India has seen a decline in its democracy. The other two authors, Tripurdaman Singh and Rahul Verma, offer a different perspective.
Yadav makes her arguments in three parts. First, she argues that India’s political elites have designed and used certain democratic institutions, such as the Parliament, the courts, and the election commission, and state agencies such as the tax department and the police, in a manner that undermines democracy. She suggests that the problems with the Parliament and the election commission predate the Modi government but sees a significant escalation in interference with courts and the misuse of state agencies since 2014. Second, citing the V-Dem data and some qualitative sources regarding attacks on and harassment of journalists, internet censorship, suppression of protestors and critics, restrictions on freedom of religion, and political violence, she argues that in recent years, political elites have eroded democratic rights and liberties. Third, based on a survey of election candidates she conducted just before the 2019 election, she suggests that the BJP leaders are more to blame for these trends than leaders of other parties. Her survey found that fewer BJP candidates consider free elections as essential, oppose interference with the judiciary, support strong opposition parties in the Parliament, and support gender rights. Further, her survey found that more BJP candidates support a constitution based on Hindu beliefs and practices. Yadav concludes on a very pessimistic note, arguing that since political culture among elites and citizens has become “more coarse, more violent, and less democratic,” backsliding seems to be India’s future for now.
Tudor defines democracy in terms of five pillars: elections for the chief executive and legislature; the presence of genuine political competition; governmental autonomy from forces such as military elites; civil liberties (both de jure and de facto); and executive checks. She also emphasizes the importance of norms such as opposition tolerance, whereby political opponents are not treated as enemies but simply as political rivals, and forbearance, which refers to the limited use of legal methods to steamroll opposition, such as executive orders, vetoes, and filibusters. Citing data from Freedom House, she argues that while the formal institutions of India’s democracy have remained relatively stable, civil liberties have eroded since 2019. Tudor then cites several international rankings and news reports to support her assertion. She also argues that the role of Parliament and the judiciary in horizontal accountability has declined. However, Tudor ends with mild optimism, suggesting that the decline in India’s democracy is not irreversible and that the surest way to reverse the trend is through “the emergence of a genuine opposition party with well-developed organizational roots.”
Ganguly offers two sets of arguments to conclude that India is undergoing an “undeclared emergency.” First, he sees the use of non-democratic practices by governments under Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi as qualitatively different from that by the present government. The main difference, he argues, lies in the present government trying to “reconfigure the contours of India’s democracy,” while the earlier instances were “mostly tactical moves.” The present-day BJP, he writes, has “a long-term vision that seeks to challenge the ideological moorings of the Indian state.” Second, he recounts several anecdotes to argue that the BJP-led government has launched an attack on civil society, the press, and certain minorities. Ganguly concludes on a note of cautious optimism, seeing hope in recent electoral setbacks for the BJP and in certain recent acts of the judiciary in which it seemed to challenge the union government.
Singh suggests that recent years present more a story of continuity than one of change. He lists several constitutional provisions and laws to show that, driven by an overriding concern for national unity and socioeconomic reform, India’s constitutional settlement has established a state based on the centralization of political power and executive supremacy. Singh shows that the constitution empowers the center vis-à-vis the states (by empowering the former to create and divide states and to impose president’s rule), the executive vis-à-vis the legislature (by allowing the former to issues ordinances and to dictate when the legislature is summoned or prorogued), the state vis-à-vis the citizen (by “hedging in and qualifying the fundamental rights”), and the party vis-à-vis individual legislators (through the anti-defection law). Therefore, whenever a party was able to achieve a substantive majority in the legislature, it “ruthlessly used state power to push its agenda.” Singh’s second argument is that even during the coalition era between 1989 and 2014, when no such majority existed at the center, a centralized and authoritarian style of leadership was being exercised in many states. This suggests that even during that era, the tendencies of Indian polity had not changed.
Verma makes three arguments to suggest that the narratives of the death of India’s democracy are exaggerated. First, looking at the present state of India’s democracy through a historical lens, he suggests that in many of the arguments that the BJP has precipitated a decline in India’s democracy, there is a recency bias because such arguments are colored by the experience of the coalition era and a neglect of undemocratic actions in states that are not ruled by the BJP. Verma suggests that even the political marginalization of minorities is not a recent phenomenon. Second, Verma writes that the systemic changes associated with the rise of a new dominant-party system that is marked by “the decline of an old elite compact” and a high level of political polarization are being conflated with democratic backsliding. The BJP’s electoral dominance gives it more freedom to exercise power, and the high level of polarization makes it easier for the party to “adopt maximalist positions to counter oppositions’ maximalist stance.” Third, Verma reviews public-opinion surveys on how Indian citizens perceive the functioning of their democracy. He writes, “Indian citizens by and large support political tolerance of religious minorities, call out government actions they believe are wrong, criticize the BJP government for its rather average performance on improving economic conditions, and routinely vote out incumbents in state elections for poor performance.” Verma cites surveys that show that a majority of respondents are “satisfied with the state of Indian democracy” and that trust in institutions remains quite high. He shows that in the concern for democracy, there are clear partisan differences, with “opposition voters more likely to believe that India’s democratic norms are under duress.” Finally, he shows that the support for autocracy is mainly among strong partisans, regardless of the party they support.
The five essays included in the symposium show considerable diversity of viewpoints. Irrespective of one’s prior position on the topic, these essays will offer something new to learn and understand. But, having read these essays, I think the debate needs to deepen and expand further in a variety of ways.
There is a need to bring the conceptual and the empirical together in this debate. Only one author offered anything close to a definition of democracy before going on to discuss the question animating the symposium. This leaves a critical reader somewhat puzzled about the concept of democracy being considered in the essays. The fact that the authors did not feel the need to offer a definition and the fact that one author offered a definition but without considering the contestations around it shows that there is a particular conception of democracy in each author’s mind (and in one author’s essay), which they consider uncontested or even incontestable. Even though democracy is an "essentially contested concept," none of the essays engage with this contested nature of what is being debated. While a medium-length essay does not allow a detailed discussion of such conceptual issues, the authors should have at least mentioned these issues. The very act of trying to assess the state of a democracy makes one settle for a conception to proceed from, but it is important to acknowledge that there can be different conceptions of democracy, and one’s assessment of the state of a democracy depends on what conception is chosen. The implied conceptions of democracy seem to affect the way the authors interpret information. For instance, Yadav and Tudor uncritically accept the subjective assessments made by V-Dem Institute and Freedom House, which have been critiqued by several political scientists.
Implied meanings of democracy for each author can be seen in the emphases laid in each essay. For instance, in the three essays critical of the present state of Indian democracy, there seems to be a strong tilt toward a liberal conception of democracy, which is a legitimate perspective on what a democracy should be but is hardly incontestable. This can be seen in some of the facts cited. For instance, Yadav cites the fact that cow slaughter has been restricted as evidence of democratic decline. While such decisions can be critiqued on grounds of certain civil liberties, if the right to cow slaughter is assumed to be an essential aspect of democracy itself and restrictions on it therefore imply a decline of democracy, this would mean that such issues cannot be politicized in a democracy at all. Different citizens may disagree on what should be politicized in a democracy. Further, such one-sided and idealized conceptions of democracy also paper over the challenges inherent to democracy—for instance, majoritarianism is being presented as a symptom of democratic decline, but a tendency toward majoritarianism is inherent to democracy.
It is also implied in most of these essays that democracy is only a feature of the government and the ruling party. The three authors who conclude that India’s democracy is in decline mainly cite certain actions and opinions of the government and the ruling party leaders to arrive at that conclusion. Singh also focuses almost entirely on the government. However, democracy is also a quality of the larger polity within which the state operates. If we take a broader view, some of the facts marshaled to make the argument for democratic decline can be interpreted differently. For instance, both Ganguly and Yadav give the example of farm laws to show that the deliberative aspects of India’s democracy have declined. But, since the farm laws had to be withdrawn following protests, one can argue that those who felt excluded by the lawmaking for those laws were able to exert sufficient pressure on the government to withdraw them, indicating that they were able to have their say in the process, albeit at a high cost. To the extent one example can show anything, this might show the limits of the government’s power to sidestep the deliberative process.
A similar argument can be made about the electoral aspects of democracy; for instance, some of the authors argue that the BJP had used its state power to constrain the opposing parties’ ability to fight elections. However, the fact that the BJP has still been losing important elections should point to the resilience of India’s electoral democracy.
Further, if we consider the participatory aspects of democracy, we can see that voter turnouts have increased and that mobilization of the groups that felt excluded from certain policymaking processes—farmers in certain states when the farm laws were passed, Muslims against the Citizenship Amendment Act—has increased. Also, consider the fact that the principal opposition party, the Congress Party, held elections for its president for only the sixth time in its 137-year history. It shows that, faced with the BJP’s well-institutionalized machinery, the Congress Party is seeing the need for internal democracy. This is a positive for the participatory aspect of democracy.
While Singh and Verma bring forth an important and, in the present intellectual context, contrarian perspective to this debate, neither of them properly take on the following question: what, if anything, is different about the state of India’s democracy at this moment? Singh’s argument that authoritarianism is built into the Constitution of India can cut both ways—it can historize the present moment, which is instructive, but it can also make us lose sight of what is distinct about this moment. He does not specifically address this. Similarly, while one can see Verma’s argument that a dominant party can get away with more strident exercise of power, especially in a context of deep polarization, this does not necessarily mean that such exercise of power is not leading to democratic backsliding.
Much more work needs to be done to help us understand the present state of India’s complex and ever-evolving democracy. However, all said, the symposium is an important contribution to the ongoing debate on democratic backsliding in India and the world. By bringing together different voices, it gives the readers an opportunity to compare different perspectives to develop a more nuanced view of the state of India’s democracy.
—By Suyash Rai