Behind the facade of voluntarism in Punjab’s land pooling policy
THE Punjab land pooling policy, 2025, has generated much debate, marked by gram sabha resolutions and protests by farmers and political parties. One would like to assume that despite disagreements on issues, such engagements do rest on a tacit trust in the overall working of a democratic system. But we need to watch out as democracies all over are increasingly succumbing to self-serving machinations. Political rhetoric and propaganda often tend to cloak the real agenda. So, we need to look at the triggers of the policy rather than just the adverse outcomes for the stakeholders, which the protests have made evident.
The scale of the policy, in comparison to other such moves, is bigger and the scope is almost statewide. Answering why the policy is needed, thus, assumes significance. Even the legal framework that guides such land takeovers calls for an explicit and prior statement of purpose and no deviations later.
The banner line of the official policy announcement in newspapers proclaims ‘affordable housing’. No rationale, however, positions this policy in the domain of affordable housing, which, incidentally, is covered under several government schemes, which have ample room for improvement in the case of Punjab.
Punjab’s performance with respect to schemes like Pradhan Mantri Gramin Awas Yojna is dismal. In urban areas, the government plans to auction the plots reserved for economically weaker sections in privately developed improved colonies (these were never given out). The plan to acquire 1,500 acres elsewhere in their lieu is likely to push the mirage of ‘affordable housing’ farther into the future. Meanwhile, housing needs are also being met by an estimated 14,000 unauthorised colonies, most of them in areas under the civic bodies.
As per a recent decision, the Punjab cabinet now sees no option but to ease the property registration norm for plots in the unauthorised colonies.
Well-planned urban estates for a ‘growing population’ is another objective of the policy, whose scale and intent does not sync with population projections of a state with low and rapidly falling reproductive rate, besides the migration of youth to other places for education and employment. In fact, a large number of plots and houses in the residential areas of towns such as Ludhiana and Mohali are lying vacant.
Thus, a proper cognisance of situations and housing needs does not seem to inform the policy. The plan to reserve areas for industrial estates also flies in the face of the Punjab Cabinet decision of June 2025. It allows conversion of previously allotted industrial plots for uses such as hotels, hospitals, banquet halls, rental housing and offices, etc. Why? The query remains largely unanswered.
Several apprehensions arise from the opaqueness. Will the shift of focus to new zones lead to further weakening of the already inadequate efforts for providing basic amenities in existing urban localities? Would the raw gutters of Ludhiana accelerate the ‘Buddha Nullah-Sutlej-Harike-irrigation canals-water works-cancer train’ circuit to a higher threshold of damage?
Disregarding any such considerations, the state government has notified large chunks of prime agricultural land of over 65,000 acres, across 27 cities and townships, with the potential of wiping more than 50 villages off the map.
One is inclined to call a policy that does not align with stated purposes as flawed. In this case, however, it would not be insightful. As you scratch the surface, a virtual masterstroke shows up. The voluntary aspect of the scheme is clearly meant to bypass all compensation norms, safeguards and social justice measures provisioned under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR, 2013).
The policy seems to have an apparently simple core: plots in exchange for land on a voluntary basis. For example, one acre (4,840 sq yards) offered by a landowner will get him two 500 sq yd residential plots and one 200 sq yd commercial plot. There are different compensatory regimes for land parcels of different sizes. Interestingly, larger land parcels are promised higher compensation (60 per cent of the land for 50 acres), but a sharing of developmental costs in a participatory mode.
The ‘voluntary takeovers’ would impact the delicate demand and supply balance and make short shrift of the projected prices of the plots returned to the landowners. They would be simply robbed of their present land value. In the absence of any upfront monetary compensation, landowners will have to depend entirely on in situ development, whose pace and extent, at best, can be said to be unpredictable. It would amount to putting the lives of participants on hold. Though larger landowners (or, rather, the aggregators) have been offered better terms in order to generate nuclei of ‘takeovers’ which can be made to grow, there is no way to consolidate the area without coercing the non-participants in one form or the other.
As the process advances, the fate of landless workers, service providers, traders and small businessmen would be sealed. The fate of the land in agro-ecological terms is no better. Substantial production of foodgrains, milk and agricultural commodities would be lost. The ecological functionality in terms of carbon capture, oxygen generation, water cycle and biodiversity, already constrained by cultivated area stretching from end to end, would go bust as fields get converted into residential, commercial, industrial and institutional plots.
The secret of the property scene in India is hidden in plain sight — the value escalation rests on the money cycle which uses real estate as the most important sink and multiplier of money, be it the accounted or the unaccounted variety. Governments and bureaucracies have not been keen to disrupt this system and one need not look very far to seek the reasons.
The question with regard to this policy, however, is that with so much else to do, why would a government roll up its pants and wade into these murky waters? It should make us sit up and think.
Views are personal
Navtej Singh Bains is Member, Sustainable Agriculture Development Academy, Punjab.
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