The Plunder of Land - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 114

able development of large houses on two- to five-acre plots, euphemistically called 'farm
houses', near Delhi airport, has increased a thousand times over a longer period of 30-35
years from Rs 9,000-12,000 an acre to Rs 10 crore.
There is nothing remarkable about the location of either of these two examples. 6 Both
are on land that, till the 1980s, was owned in small holdings by relatively poor farmers, and
both have been swallowed up by rich owners and real estate speculators. Outside Gurgaon,
where builders have been buying farmland speculatively at low prices for years, changes
to a master plan proposed in 2012 meant that plots bought in 2003 for Rs 25 lakh an acre
were worth Rs 6 to 7 crore, and more than twice that figure in some cases. 'Land dealers,
on condition of anonymity, talk discreetly about how the master plan acts as a gold mine
for the officials drafting it, the subject of strong lobbying by developers,' reported the Busi-
ness Standard in 2012. 7
Once land was commandeered, its value usually rose quickly, reaping profits for the
public authorities and private sector companies involved, while the previous, usually poor,
owners received relatively small amounts for what had been their livelihood for genera-
tions. That is often the main grievance, as has been shown in protests in Delhi and the states
of West Bengal and Odisha. People's anger was directed not so much at having to part with
their land, but having to do so under an ancient law that fixes compensation prices at cur-
rent low levels and does not allow those involved to benefit from rapid increases in price
once land use has been changed or developments started.
In 2009, using the 1894 law, the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority in UP
compulsorily acquired 5,000 acres of land from farmers in 16 villages at Rs 850 per sqm. A
month later, having changed the land use from industrial to residential, it resold to private
developers for about 13 times as much - Rs 10,000- 12,000 per sqm (the local high court
later cancelled the orders for some of the land transfers after appeals). The development
authority tried to stem criticism by saying that the higher price covered the cost of infra-
structure work, such as roads, water supply, sewage and electricity, in addition to public
facilities such as schools. 8 Two years earlier, the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Develop-
ment Authority had notified 256 villages for development along the Greater Noida- Agra
expressway and paid Rs 850 per sqm to the farmers. It sold at Rs 5,500 per sqm to private
builders who planned to sell it at Rs 18,000 per sqm. 'Our problem is not with the sale.
What is not acceptable are the exorbitant rates at which the private builders plan to sell our
land,' explained one villager to Tehelka magazine at a time when violent demonstrations
were breaking out against the land sales, halting some developments. 9
This illustrates the scant regard that the wealth-generating rich and politically powerful
- a relatively small minority - have had for the plight of the poor who make up two-thirds
of the population. Often politicians and their friends use insider knowledge to buy up land
cheaply in areas that they know will soon rise rapidly in value because of some big infra-