Land Governance and Development in India
The development transformation of many states in India has intimately relied on the state’s capacity to deploy laws of land governance effectively. Since the nature of land governance has historically produced negative consequences for people’s lives and livelihoods and subsequently impacted the state’s development aspirations, the Indian state has transformed the normative conditions of land governance in response to the demands posed by social movements. Especially after the liberalisation of the economy, the state democratised the process of land governance by enacting new ‘rights-based’ laws such as the Land Acquisition Act of 2013 (LARR 2013) and the Forest Rights Act of 2006. The new laws (particularly LARR, 2013) intend to expand the limits of liberal democratic citizenship and further enable development transitions in a ‘just’ way.
However, India’s central and regional governments encouraged several ‘legal alternatives’ to such ‘rights-based’ laws to bypass the crucial provisions, particularly LARR 2013. The central government’s failed attempt to amend the LARR 2013 in parliament and the temporary institution of an ordinance directly supported such alternatives[i]. Most of these alternative legal initiatives aimed to facilitate market-based ‘voluntary’ negotiation to transfer land for development projects. The land Pooling policy (LP) of the state government of Andhra Pradesh and ‘G.O-123’ [ii] of Telangana are examples of such alternatives. Such legal initiatives invoked opposition from activists and landowners who tend to rely on the ‘rights’ guaranteed in the process of land acquisition through LARR, 2013. Notably, the legal alternative Land Pooling policy has taken the form of a government order in the state of AP and was used to transfer 33,000 acres of private land to construct the newly proposed capital city of Andhra Pradesh. While the state strategic deployment of LP and LARR in 2013 succeeded in procuring the required land for city construction, the subsequent government’s non-abidance to the LP agreement due to the lack of consensus over development resulted in conditions of ‘rightlessness’. Drawing on the legal struggles in Andhra Pradesh over land procurement for Amaravati city, this blog article sheds light on the implications of the state violations of laws of Land Pooling (LP) policy and LARR 2013 for people’s rights. This article argues that the legal struggles in AP indicate the ‘law struggles’(Sundar, 2011)—in which people struggle to make the laws are observed—of LP and LARR 2013. The article draws on the variation in the claims of ‘air of legality’ (Lund, 2023) in legal struggles, where claims of the presumed legality of the laws drive the ‘law struggles’, to highlight the limits of ‘rights-based’ mobilisation to contest the conditions of ‘rightlessness’.
Legal Struggles in Andhra Pradesh
The ongoing legal struggles over the Amaravati city construction are crucial to the development politics in Andhra Pradesh (AP). These struggles are visible through the cases filed in the apex courts at India’s sub-national and national levels. The legal struggles highlight the ‘crisis’ of rights of landowners whose lands were procured for the Amaravati city construction. Since Amaravati was proposed as the new capital city of AP (after state bifurcation on 2nd June 2014) when the land acquisition was initiated, these struggles attained prominence and are intimately tied to realising ‘city-centred’ development with Amaravati as the capital city. Though these legal struggles were strategically positioned by resisting landowners against the current government’s policy (which came to power in 2019) of scaling-down of the status of the Amaravati city project, they simultaneously stand in congruence and contrast with the legal struggles against the previous government that initiated the Amaravati city project. These struggles contrast in their orientation towards the Amaravati city project and coincide in the legal fight against the ‘violations’ in the implementation of laws of land governance.
The judicialisation of landowners’ resistance through legal struggles primarily represents the ‘law struggles’ (Sunder, 2011) of land laws that mediated the land governance for Amaravati. As Sundar (2011) pointed out, these ‘law struggles’ are struggles against the state violations over individual ‘right to property’ and are reflective of the people’s struggles for maintain rule of law in post-liberalisation India. In keeping with Sundar’s observation, the legal struggles in AP are against ‘violations’ of the rights protected by LARR 2013 and Land Pooling (LP) laws. These struggles engage with the laws that guide the normative frame of land governance in post-liberalisation India and indicate the implication of state violations of such laws. While the impetus for such a strategic usage of law through legal struggles can be traced back to the change in the role of courts through judicial activism (Ruparelia, 2013), the enactment of progressive laws of land expropriation such as LARR 2013 that recognised the people’s rights further provided the push to increased judicialisation of resistance. Thus, the transformation in the laws of land acquisition and the significant role of courts have provided a broader scope for deeper democratic engagement of the population and their capacity to judicialise the resistance through legal mobilisation. Therefore, the rights-based discourse has become the dominant frame of these struggles. The landowners in AP deployed rights discourse to build solidarity in their movement against respective state governments’ ‘violations’. The discourse was strategically used for negotiating their claims by invoking the ‘presumed legality’ of the rights protected by the laws LARR 2013 and LP, thus giving the rights-based claims in ‘law struggles’ what Lund (2023) referred to as ‘air of legality.’
Initially, landowners who refused to surrender their agricultural land initiated legal struggles against the previous government that initiated the Amaravati project. The cases filed in the courts challenged the introduction of the Land Pooling (LP) policy to procure the land. Since the LARR, 2013 frames the normative frame of land governance in India, the struggles pointed to the introduction of LP as a state’s attempt to bypass the ‘rights-based’ legal provisions instituted to navigate the land acquisition process [iii]. The target of these struggles was to prevent the strategic deployment of LP and LARR 2013 to procure land by stressing the rights guaranteed in LARR 2013. Despite the legal struggles, the state procured 33000 acres of land for city construction. Initially, these struggles relied on the ‘presumed legality’ of crucial provisions of LARR, 2013 due to the state exemption of the same crucial provisions taking leverage from the ordinance instituted by the central government[i]. The discourse of protection of the ‘legal right to land’ was deployed to consolidate resistance against the state government’s ‘exemptions’ of provisions to procure land through LP. The rights invoked in legal struggles include
- the right to informed consent,
- the right to transparency in the process of land acquisition,
- the right to social and environmental impact assessment, and
- the right to a democratic consultation process through local governance bodies.
The exemption of the provisions was considered a violation of the ‘legal right to property’ and a threat to their ‘right to livelihood and life.’ In addition, the landowners also questioned the ‘presumption’ of the ‘legality’ and ‘legal sanctity’ of LP and the ‘legal assurance’ of rights guaranteed by it. The struggles evaluated the state claims of LP as better legislation than LARR 2013 regarding the legal assurance of ‘rights’ in the development. This question of the ‘legality’ of LP became crucial when the subsequent government modified the development project, evading the LP development agreement.
Currently, the legal struggles against the current government include the legal mobilisation of landowners who have surrendered their agrarian lands for city construction. Unlike the landowners who resisted the first government and opposed surrendering land, most of these landowners highlighted their willingness and strategic inclusion through LP to be part of the development as the reason to sign the agreement. Firstly, they demand that the current state government fulfil the conditions of the development agreement of LP, executed between the previous government and landowners. Secondly, further stressing the development agreement, they contest the current government’s policy to scale down the Amaravati project from being ‘the capital of the state’ to being ‘one among the three capitals’ AP. The legal struggles relied on the ‘presumed legality’ of the LP, and argued that the state government has no ‘legislative competence’ to pass a law or change of development policy, violating the LP agreement. They deployed law to strategically counter the government’s actions of deviating and scaling down the city project and demanded the state be bound to the agreement. Since the LP agreement assured them plots of land in the proposed capital city in return for their agricultural land, the landowners demanded the state to implement the project. The landowner’s struggles indicated a ‘lack of intent’ on the part of the state and its change in policies as a violation of law. The struggles highlighted the state violation of their ‘right to development’ or ‘right to the city’ and relied on the claims of ‘air of legality’ of such rights as the dominant frame of the legal struggles. Moreover, the legal struggles also pointed to threats to their right to life and livelihood as their lands are neither used for cultivation nor development.
While the motivations and interests of these struggles were contrasting when looked at how they stand with respective state government development agenda, they coincide in the direction of the political forces‑the emphasis on the protection of rights. Moreover, the common thread that underlies ‘law struggles’ is the state’s violation of rights and the reliance on the claims of ‘air of legality’ of the same rights to judicialise the resistance against new laws. Therefore, in two cases that illustrate struggles against two governments, the legal struggles questioned the state’s enactment of new alternatives as a violation of rights. This challenge to new laws was posed in two ways. Firstly, the legal struggles invoked the presumed legality of provisions of LARR, 2013, despite the state reliance on the institution of the ordinance by the central government. Secondly, legal struggles relied on the presumed legality of LP despite the state amendment to the development project that overrides its conditions. This presumption of legality became the base of these legal struggles since the amendments to the laws (LARR, 2013 and LP) placed the crucial provision of rights under suspension, creating the conditions of air of legality of rights as the prolonged condition. The ‘air of legality’ has created unjust governance, as the ‘law struggles’ of landowners, whether ‘legal right to land’ or ‘right to development’, have kept them in the condition of ‘rightlessness’. Despite the struggles, the people can neither use the land for cultivation nor development and are further made dependent on the state government’s compensation for their survival. Their agrarian livelihoods, which existed before the city’s construction have been destroyed, and the promise of alternative livelihoods in the city remains unfulfilled. This further contradicts the promise of development, the intent of the LARR, 2013 and the state claims of LP as a better alternative.
Though rights-based law LARR, 2013 was considered to create balance to further the development driven by neoliberal impulse (Nielsen & Nilsen, 2015), state governments found it difficult to procure the land and deployed alternatives to navigate the development. When the cases filed in the court compelled the respective governments to abide by the rights in the land procurement process and forced them to withdraw the amendments to crucial statutory laws that backed the development[iv], the legal struggle achieved partial success in limiting the state’s power. However, across the subsequent state governments, the state’s continuous efforts to implement alternative legal initiatives against rights-based laws and reiteration to enact stringent legislation to change development policy against current legal struggles hints at the strength of political force behind the state. Essentially, the state emerges as a dominant political force in these struggles that can use the ‘air of legality’ in its favour to extend its chances of pushing its agenda further. This was done by deploying new laws to territorialise the state by extending its development apparatus beyond what could be realised and reformulating and reversing the same policy decisions. The conditions of ‘rightlessness’ became permanent when legal struggles met with the dominant political force behind the state.
The conditions of ‘rightlessness’ in legal struggles in AP hint at the limits to the liberal notions of rights and their radical potential against marginalising consequences of state actions. Despite laws that could provide the radical potential for people to mobilise on the rights discourse, the development aspirations supported by alternative legal instruments and the lack of political consensus over development in AP created a crisis for people’s rights. Only a few landowners who could withstand the pressure of the state government took part in these legal struggles. Mostly, solidarities formed around social formations of caste and political party-based dominance framed these struggles, rather than the consciousness of rights. Consequently, the progressive ‘rights-based’ legislation LARR, 2013 became a self-defeating instrument-without an active civil society unaffected by dominance of caste and party politics. Moreover, most of the landowner’s reliance on a history of failed struggles against the state’s eminent domain over ‘development meeting public purpose’ further impacted their participation in mobilising the law.
I end this blog, by drawing attention to two aspects of law struggles in AP. Firstly, the law struggles in AP indicate state’s sovereign character/potent political force and capacity to deploy legal and governmental mechanisms as an instrument of governance in the larger practice of development politics. Secondly, they hint at the challenges to the subaltern capacity to mobilise the law against the state through consolidating rights-based solidarities under the conditions of ‘air of legality.’ While the struggles for rights seem the only way to resolve the conditions of ‘rightlessness’, it is contingent upon the state’s intent and the interests of dominant sections whose politics drive the legal struggles. In conclusion, though the article asserts that people’s capacity for legal consciousness to create solidarities for effective legal mobilisation becomes crucial to counter the political force of the state, it further argues for a critical reading of ‘law struggles’ in congruence with the development politics in post-liberalisation India.
[i]https://www.oxfamindia.org/featuredstories/new-land-acquisition-ordinance-dismissing-democracy-displacing-safeguards
[iii]https://crda.ap.gov.in/APCRDADOCS/GOSACTSRULES/LPS%20Amendments/01~16412015REV_MS166.pdf
[iv]https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/hyderabad/andhra-pradesh-three-capital-bill-withdrawn-7635183/lite/
References
Lund, C. (2023). An air of legality–legalisation under conditions of rightlessness in Indonesia. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 50(4), 1295-1316.
Nielsen, K. B., & Nilsen, A. G. (2015). Law struggles and hegemonic processes in neoliberal India: Gramscian reflections on land acquisition legislation. Globalisations, 12(2), 203-216.
Ruparelia, S. (2013). India’s new rights agenda: genesis, promises, risks. Pacific Affairs, 86(3), 569-590.
Sundar, N. (2011). The rule of law and the rule of property: Law struggles and the neo-liberal state in India. In A. Gupta & K. Sivaramakrishnan (Eds.), The state in India after Liberalisation: Interdisciplinary perspectives. London: Routledge
Acknowledgments
This blog article has greatly benefited from the comments and edits from Dr. Monika Lindbekk and an initial reading from Dr. Vincenzo Pietrogiovanni.
About the author
Siddardha Darla teaches sociology at GITAM University, India.
email: darlasiddhartha@gmail.com