Land Bill: 2015 can be watershed or Waterloo for the Modi sarkar

This year will make or mar Narendra Modi’s prime ministerial tenure. This means whatever he does, he will have to weigh the pros and cons carefully before taking the plunge, as his political rivals are flexing their muscles. With 20/20 hindsight, one can question the wisdom of some of his decisions (or non-decisions). For example, the ordinances on insurance and land were a serious political miscalculation, but not the coal mines one. Reason: the coal auctions were running against a Supreme Court deadline of 31 March, but not the other ordinances. [caption id=“attachment_2115325” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Reuters[/caption] The mistake is not in the issue of ordinances themselves, but in their timing. By pushing the land and insurance ordinances through last December – probably intended to show Modi as a man of action – he had inadvertently given the opposition two whole months to regroup and attack. When it was obvious that the bills would anyway have to come to Parliament, the best course for Modi would have been to open discussions, smoke out the real opposition from potential friends, and then spring it on the Lok Sabha in the budget session for legislating it. This is actually a repeat of the BJP’s mistake in leaving a nine-month gap between the Lok Sabha results and the Delhi assembly elections. This gave Arvind Kejriwal a long time to recover from his lows; similarly, the two-month gap between the end of the winter session and the budget session has given the opposition time to build its ammo against Namo. This is what we are seeing in parliament and outside it right now. Clearly, Modi’s political strategic think-tank is either weak or non-existent. This, of course, raises the more important issue: what now, since the entire opposition has smelt blood on the land bill in particular? Despite Arun Jaitley’s spirited defence of it, the chances are the opposition will still be able to scuttle it in its present form. There are three options before the Modi government – none of them mutually exclusive. One is to retreat and withdraw the land bill and live to fight another day. This will at least give the insurance and coal bills some space to be passed through the normal route. The second option is to make a virtue of necessity and constitute a joint select committee of Parliament to suggest improvements on the UPA version of the land bill (or even the NDA ordinance). The third, and final, option is to fight it out till the bitter end - politically, of course. Some parts of each option can be deployed together. One can withdraw the land bill and reintroduce it in, say, the monsoon session, once Modi has marshalled the numbers by propitiating or arm-twisting allies and non-enemies. Or he could accept changes for now and bring amendments a year or two later saying the existing Act is not good enough. The third option needs strong nerves and a politically astute strategy medium-term – something that has not been visible in the BJP of late. Let’s be clear. The opposition to the Land Bill is largely political and not really about protecting farmers. Even if all infrastructure, manufacturing and health and education projects acquire land under the law prescribed in the NDA ordinance, not even 1 percent of available land in India will ever be acquired. But still, the alleged potential travails of this 1 percent have united the entire opposition. Modi must note the numbers below and figure out his battle-plan if he wants to take the fight to the enemy camp. #1: Thirty-two percent of Indians live in urban areas. They need land for housing and infrastructure. They will have no problems with the land ordinance. In fact, they should be seen as a potential constituency in favour of the NDA’s land ordinance. That’s one-third of India that will be convinced if Modi addresses them. #2: Less than half of Indians derive a livelihood from agriculture, according to the 68th round of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). The 70th round (relating to 2013), showed that 75 percent of rural India’s 90 million agricultural households were marginal farmers, that is those who had less than one hectare of land (one hectare equals 2.47 acres). The average landholding of each agricultural household is less than 1.5 acres (read some of the NSSO data from the Mospi website, or a summary from here ). Seven percent of rural households are absolutely landless. This means more than 82 percent of so-called farmers do not earn much of a living from farming. They are sitting on a good asset (land) and do not know the opportunity cost of not selling it. About 44 percent of India’s agricultural households also held NREGA job cards – this means a lot of them are marginal agriculturists who also do wage jobs to make ends meet. Selling land to derive an annuity and also earn labour incomes will improve their overall annual incomes. Modi has to see how the Land Bill is seen as a way out of poverty for the 82 percent rural constituency of marginal farmer households who cannot have a long-term interest in farming. #3: In any case, the Land Bill as it now stands will not affect more than 90 percent of landed farmers – whether large, marginal or small. This is because the bulk of the land requirement will be near urban centres, which is where it makes sense to build factories or infrastructure. So what we are effectively talking about is 9-10 million households who may feel directly threatened – and that too over a long period of time – by the ordinance’s features. Modi needs to assess the numbers carefully to evolve an effective strategy to counter his enemies. First, he could fight fire with fire. The opposition is frightening the daylights out of farmers by claiming Modi will snatch their land. Modi should turn the tables on them by frightening the daylights out of urban India that if no land is available, they will never be able to afford a home. Let Arvind Kejriwal try and figure out how his Delhi voters will like that. Or Uddhav Thackeray’s Mumbai constituency. To the rural landless, Modi should tell them in clear terms that if land is too pricey, there will be no investment in factories and rural infrastructure, where they would have got jobs. The combo of urban middle and lower middle classes and the rural landless will be strong enough to counter the scare-mongering among farmers in rural areas. The long-term trend in India is urbanisation, and this is not a constituency to ignore. Second, the government needs to develop a simple but effective communications strategy for marginal farmers, by working out not only compensation, but how an annuity based on land sale proceeds will be significantly higher than uncertain incomes from farming. This, together with a share of future profits from land development and the ability to earn a wage, will improve their lot. Skill development plans – anyway a part of the government’s vision – can be added to the compensation mix to show the possibility of even higher household incomes from skilled work. A politically astute strategy will have to use these facts and wage covert class war. Just as the opposition is firing its guns from the shoulders of frightened farmers, Modi can choose to fire his cannons from urban middle class strongholds and by buying the support of marginal farmers and the landless. But this needs a 12-18 month political gameplan, not a debate or two in Parliament. The land bill can be a landmine if handled badly. 2015 can be Modi’s watershed year - or Waterloo.