EDITORIAL : THE HINDU, INDIA

Mayawati lands in trouble

Land acquisition for development entails striking a tough balance between accommodating the galloping demands of urbanisation and assuaging the often acute sense of deprivation that loss of land engenders. Land acquisition has tended to be particularly problematic in States with large tracts of fertile agricultural land — as in the case of Uttar Pradesh where the abundantly yielding Yamuna-Ganga plains have repeatedly erupted in protest. In the vortex of the current storm are two ambitious projects of Chief Minister Mayawati. When completed, the 1,047 km long, access-controlled, eight-lane Ganga Expressway will connect Noida in the National Capital Region with Ballia in the eastern end of U.P. On the other hand, the 165-km, six-lane, Yamuna Expressway between Greater Noida and Agra is a re-incarnation of the Taj Expressway originally conceived as an adjunct to the infamous Taj corridor project. Both projects require the acquisition of tens of thousands of hectares of fertile land along the meandering courses of the two mighty rivers. No government can embark on construction on this gargantuan scale without expecting to encounter opposition. Fair and just compensation is one aspect of the problem. There are also serious environmental concerns arising from the threatened degradation of the ecology of river basins.

The injection of politics compounds issues around land acquisition. The Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Samajwadi Party, and the Rashtriya Lok Dal have ganged up against the U.P. Chief Minister with a political opportunism that is impossible to miss. Not surprisingly, truth has become the biggest casualty in the war of words between the State government and the opposition. The Mayawati government's case is that acquisition is not an issue at all and that compensation amounting to Rs.300 crore for 450 hectares of land has already been paid and accepted. The all-in opposition insists that land has been forcibly acquired from unwilling farmers. The agitating farmers seem not so much against acquisition as they are against inadequate sums paid as compensation; they point, for example, to the exceptionally high prices at which the acquired land has been sold to builders and developers. That there is a government-builder nexus profiting from such sales has been proven over and over. With just a year left for the Assembly election, the opposition obviously wants to trip up Chief Minister Mayawati on the farmers' issue, denting her image as a champion of social justice. The Chief Minister, who dramatically seized power four years ago, has her job cut out.

A problematic verdict is stayed

The Supreme Court of India's decision to stay the majority judgment of the Allahabad High Court in the Ayodhya dispute will be welcomed widely. The High Court verdict discomfited not just jurists and constitutional experts but also a broad swath of citizenry who had reason to question the prioritisation of faith over fact. Indeed, the Supreme Court has described the September 2010 judgment as “strange” — a term that will resonate widely, given the extra-legal liberties seen to have been taken by the High Court judges. Broadly, there are two problematical aspects to the Ayodhya judgment. First, the three-way division of property among the Hindu litigants, the Sunni Central Wakf Board, and the Nirmohi Akhara. And, more troublingly, the use of faith as a legitimate argument for awarding the space under the central dome of the Babri Masjid (where the idols of Ram Lalla are placed) to the Hindu plaintiffs. As Justice R.M. Lodha tellingly observed: “A new dimension has been given by the High Court as the decree of partition was not sought by the parties. It [the judgment] has to be stayed.”

It was admittedly a difficult judgment to pronounce for High Court judges S.U. Khan, Sudhir Agarwal, and D.V. Sharma. They had to decide the title suit in a volatile case with an antiquity dating back to 1885 and marked by do-or-die conflicts between two highly emotive religious groups. The three judges gave separate judgments, with Justice Sharma entirely upholding the Hindu claim and the other two striving to be more even-handed. The partition ordered by Mr. Khan and Mr. Agarwal appears to have stemmed from a desire to avoid communal ill-feelings and tensions should the award be seen as one-sided — and indeed the judgment seemed to have a fortuitous calming effect. Unfortunately, the two judges achieved the balance not by resort to reason and constitutional law but by placing “faith” and “belief” over and above the constitutional principle. This ignored the overtly political, and at times the incendiary, nature of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The 1949 placement of idols of Ram Lalla under the central dome and the 1992 demolition of the Babri structure were both diabolical political acts. The majority judgment accepted that the idols had been placed by human hands. Nonetheless, Justice Agarwal held this fact to be of no material significance, ruling that Lord Ram's birthplace was itself a deity with all juridical rights. To be fair, the judge did take note of the “abominable manner” of the 1992 demolition. Yet in an unbeatable irony, he delivered a judgment that had the effect of legitimising the cataclysmic climax.