As per leading real estate experts the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill which has been introduced in Parliament is a luddite proposal which could impede all economic development.

The Bill implicitly assumes, that every type and kind of development is harmful as it displaces people and eradicate traditional jobs instead of perceiving or at the least balancing the notion of development as a path to improved incomes and opportunities. The aspect pertaining to the high compensation norms of the bill have been the subject of interest of numerous critics.

The provisions provided for Social Impact Assessment (SIA) reports as well as Mandatory Rehabilitation and Resettlement (R&R) have been the cause of much discontentment. As each piece of land acquired, regardless of its size would require an SIA, which an expert committee would later review, this would be then followed by a survey conducted by the government, followed by actual acquisition proceedings.

Further, any of these decisions would be challengeable within the courts. Procedures such as these would increase the amount of red tape and could take years, in turn delaying all urbanization along with industrialization. Even privately negotiated land purchases which exceed 50 acres within urban and 100 acres within rural areas would mandatorily have R&R. This would adversely affect small scale projects. R&R would not be applicable to projects covered by the existing laws, including national highways, atomic energy and Special Economic Zones. However, majority of the projects would still be covered.

In accordance with history, living standards of European nations increased tenfold due to the industrial revolution. Such economic rise cannot be fathomed by any SIA due to its very nature which primarily focuses on the immediate problems instead of the positive dynamic consequences of development in the future.

For illustration, if the SIA was to be conducted during the auto revolution of the 20th century, auto mobiles might not have existed today, as it would have had displaced multitude of people associated with earlier forms of transport as well as global warming and the hundreds of pedestrians and other animals which are regularly killed by said auto mobiles.

Since the Industrial Revolution, modern technology has transformed social indicators and incomes within the past two centuries. These transformations and gradual evolution occurred due to the constant uprooting of existing forms of occupations, social as well as industrial organisation.

Governments should encourage change, while subsidizing new technologies, and providing safety nets and retraining those hurt by such ‘creative destruction’. Increased tax revenues can easily be used by the Government to finance safety nets for those displaced in order to help them adjust to creative destruction.

Howbeit, in the case of projects such as dam which can displace dozens of villages and entire towns R&R is an essential and definite in advance. But demanding an SIA to be conducted for every land acquisition is absurd. And so is the fact that the financial burden of adjustment have to be paid upfront not by the government but by the agents of change. The financial burden to provide safety nets should typically be borne by the government and not by new companies with exciting new technologies. This might just increase corruption in real estate than facilitate growth and development.