Indian Land Reforms Ordinance

On April 9 2014, I had written the article on Land Reforms and had raised a questions on the overall land reforms being pushed by the then government. Words From Thoughts: Land Reforms - My Thoughts

Late last year, the new Government elect under Mr. Narendra Modi passed and Ordinance in this aspect and then they tabled the Land Bill this year in the Parliament.  The Ordinance and the Bill both are being pegged to be anti-farmer and anti agriculture.  Well that is actually least to say.  The Ordinance and the Bill both are actually taking us at least 100+ years back to the Raj era when government could annex a land at will.  

The government is trying to defend the bill stating that it would generate more jobs. But is that the truth? Hell, no!!! The truth is today's land owners would become may be Gardner, Office Boy, Security Guard or something similar at the same set of facilities that would stand where they were the Owners.  It will also impact the agriculture base of India with conversion of the Agricultural Land into residential / commercial land. 

The flip side of the ordinance or the bill is it is going to impact the economy negatively as the agricultural output to GDP would be negatively impacted.  This will also impact the sociological and ecological balance. For this following points need to be understood - 

1. Sociological Balance
1. The Logic that the owners would get good amount of money for the land they would sell is in itself not a sustainable logic.  We have already witnessed in the past that those who were once owners of the Land could not balance the huge amount of influx on money and went on to extravagant expenditure to lose the amount in few years.  They then were working as Security Guards or something similar or were Driving Cabs etc 
2. The failure of above point would also mean that the farmers / land owners would end up creating that divide between rich and poor to be more impacting
3. The failure of above point 1 would also mean that there would be from resentment among the erstwhile landowners when they would see the skyrocketing prices for the land that belonged to them once
2. Ecological Balance
1. The Agricultural land and the adjoining areas may be actually the habitat of several migratory birds / animals / species.   If that would get converted to residential / commercial, we may see a fall in the numbers of those visiting that area
2. More sewage to be planned and with more industrial waste, more issues to environment
3. Higher degree of green house effect
3. Economical Balance
1. With change in the agricultural output from the reduced agricultural land, the overall portion of Agro-output to GDP would go down. This may impact GDP in short as well as Long term
2. With lesser agricultural output, the self reliance on certain crops may go down and may require us to import food grains. This would increase Trade deficit further with more imports coming into fact than what we actually export
3. Self Reliant Farmer may become a daily wage earner or low income earner for the change in income scheme from self employed to employed with other.  The per capita fall can be seen in this case

We may argue that above may be a short term deficit from the way they have been mentioned. However, when you would conduct a long term study to understand the slow down, somewhere you would find it written on the wall - Land Bill shouldn't have been passed in current form.  It needs an open debate on the form of the Bill itself.

To conclude I would just say - I am seriously disheartened that the man who ones said that he would repeal one draconian law / act each day, has failed us on this front.  Rather than repealing the Draconian Law, his government has thrown us almost 100 years back 

Delhi Elections 2015 - Some Facts Some Speculations

Delhi election results have surprised a lot of people in the political circles including the politicians, the observers, the journalists and the various party supporters.  Every one of us must be thinking what is it that made BJP lose a vital seat of power and from where did the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) came to register the landslide victory?  It is certainly intriguing. Let us start with reviewing certain facts that would be needed to understand what the word politics is all about.

1. BJP bags 2.9 million votes winning 3 seats in State Assembly against 2.6 in 2014 General Elections when it won 7 Loksabha seats. An Increase of vote base by 300,000+
2. The percentile votes for BJP more or less hovered at the same as 2014 General Elections - 33%
3. AAP made a landslide of vote share with almost 54% votes bagging some 15% from Congress and another around 9% from Others
4. Congress was reduced to 0 with around 9.7% votes and 62 of its candidates had to surrender their Security Deposits. Only 8 could save it.
5. BSP and other parties were also reduced to 0 

Now looking at vote share patterns above, one can't say that BJP could not secure its vote bank.  They very well did that. If anyone has to understand the intent of BJP and Amit Shah in particular, they want a Congress Free India and they started that from Delhi.

So, now coming to the loss of Delhi as a state, how is BJP going to take it? Well, to that I hold the perspective that if BJP would have ever wanted Delhi, they would have simply gone for elections in Delhi before October 2014.  They would not have waited for so long, almost 8 months to say that.  Also, if they would have been serious about Delhi elections, they would have come out with a manifesto and declared the list of Candidate much before they actually did.  Moreover, they brought an all-together new face of Kiran Bedi as the CM candidate.  Would you all call these developments as Management Mistakes?  I wouldn't, i would rather call these as the Master Stroke from the Brilliant Strategist in Amit Shah.

Let's have a look at certain aspects to why Amit Shah would ever do that? Why would BJP not want Delhi - 

1. Delhi does not have the 100% status of state. It hangs there in between State and Union Territory
2. Delhi is impatient and the impatience of Delhi is unruly.  They want quick turnaround of the promises made.  The discontent and the unruly patience of Delhi can be well attributed to the 15 years of Congress regime (that's a separate topic and not something I want to elaborate here)
3. If it were BJP in center and BJP in Delhi as a "State", it would have been difficult for BJP to stand the pressure of Local Masses to fulfill the promises made
4. Delhi would have wanted more governance initiatives with involvement of Center and BJPs focus could have been distracted from the nation-wide campaign they want to run - "Congress Free India"
5. BJP state functionary is one of the most disobedient in Delhi

The gains for BJP and the future that they are carving out for themselves - 

1. BJP would be more focused on the destabilized Bihar where they would want better standing
2. BJP would be more concerned with securing more seats in the Upper House - Rajya Sabha from the Northern states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (UP) and eastern state of West bengal
3. BJP would want to utilize Delhi as a case study to shore up AAP as the main rival than Congress, thus eliminating Congress from the National level
4. BJP would let AAP die its own death for not being able to fulfill the promises of Ample Water (there is a dependency on Haryana to that effect and Haryana has BJP Government. We may see Karnataka v/s Tamil Nadu case replicating sooner or later)
5. Law and Order in Delhi is controlled by Central Government, another area where AAP may get frustrated
6. Any Legislative Bill that needs to be presented in Delhi has to be routed through Home Ministry (the one card that BJP played last time with Jan Lokpal), another point where AAP may get frustrated

So a more indepth review of the scenario of Delhi would certainly provide the required parameters that would have been evaluated by BJP Think Tank before deciding to surrender Delhi.

However, BJP must not close their eye on their presumptions as the AAP 2.0 (as media coined the term) is quite smarter and sharper than before.  They may bend the rules of the game and may diplomatically arm twist to ensure that they are not blamed for the failure where they didn't have direct control on things.  Center from that perspective would have to be supportive to AAP in Delhi as AAP has done a better study of Delhi issues this time around. 

The time would be of Caution for BJP as AAP may  charge them with more vigor and zeal in Bihar, UP and Bengal for that matter. And am sure AAP is going to focus on Punjab too for that matter as that's where both Congress and BJP have faltered big time.

Time for Indian Politics to see a new era where it would be between BJP and AAP the conventional v/s Youth Politics and if AAP survives Delhi for full five years, the nation may be in for BIG surprises in coming time....