What Narendra Modi can learn from the land acquisition bill episode

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in his monthly radio talk, Mann ki Baat this Sunday that the ordinance regarding amendments to the Land Acquisition Bill will not be re-promulgated, and that it would be allowed to lapse, it brought to end a clumsy episode marring the record of the government. Modi also informed that the Land Acquisition Act of 2013 will no longer stand and rules will soon be framed to implement the 13 changes in the amendment which would benefit farmers. He, of course, tried to rationalise the government’s retreat on the issue by saying that the Opposition had spread misinformation about the amendments in order to create fear and panic among farmers. 

There is no doubt that over the last one year the Modi government was high-handed in trying to push through the amendments to the land bill. First, the government displayed unthinking and undignified haste in promulgating the ordinance in December 2014. The government’s blunder game began at that stage itself. Undue confidence was placed in the efficacy of managers in the government, in their ability to force the passage of any bill, primarily because of the BJP’s unassailable majority in the Lok Sabha. The government believed it would be able to browbeat the opposition in Rajya Sabha even though the government was in a minority in the upper house.

That optimism turned out to be a big miscalculation on the part of the government. 

The Opposition has already claimed victory, and they have interpreted the government’s backing off as a clear defeat for Modi and his colleagues. The opposition would indeed be justified in their claim to have forced the government’s hand. The unfortunate thing is that both the government and the opposition had caricatured the amendment bill in their speeches. The members, including the BJP ministers, claimed it to be the most beneficial legislation for the farmers which would boost industrial growth in the country. The BJP projected it as pro-economic reforms legislation. Some of the BJP ministers argued that the amended bill enabled the farmers to get out of farming if they chose to do so, and on generous terms. It was a bad argument at the best of times. But the BJP was deluded by its brute majority in Lok Sabha. The Opposition had, on the other hand, called it as a sell-out to the industrialists. Both sides dodged the important issues involved in the land bill and which had to be discussed dispassionately.

It is plausible to make the argument that Modi, keeping in mind the upcoming Bihar assembly elections, has chosen to step back on the land bill. Congress president Sonia Gandhi has already declared victory over the BJP-led government at the massive opposition rally held at Patna on Sunday. The BJP leaders would have a lot of explaining to do before farmers about its reasons for withdrawing the amendment bill. 

Whatever may be the motives, Modi has done the right thing by ending the shameful act of promulgating ordinance after ordinance even when it was clear that the land bill could not be pushed through in Parliament. It is to be hoped that the government has learnt the right lessons from this affair.

First: no government should aim at using its parliamentary majority to push through legislation whose usefulness to the very sections it aims to benefit is in doubt. Second, resorting to ordinance to smuggle in legislation is wrong and undemocratic — particularly in the case of an important matter like the land acquisition bill.