What is Land Acquisition

Land acquisition in the process of acquiring land for industrialization, development of infrastructural facilities or urbanization of the private land by Government or private organizations. 

The Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (“1894 Act”) was replaced in 2013 by The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (“2013 Act”). The amendment bill – Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill was passed in 2015 (“2015 Law”).

What is Rehabilitation & Resettlement

Land acquisition and displacement alter the social, economic, cultural and environmental status of the affected population. The Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2007 provides for benefits and compensation to people displaced by land acquisition purchases or any other involuntary displacement. 

Procedure of R & R Management  

Special attention is required for the population affected by land acquisition for protecting their rights, minimize losses and helping restore a secure means of livelihood. A Rehabilitation Policy is formulated by organizations for handling the same:

• Classification of project affected families. Eg., fully affected or partially affected depending upon the percentage of land acquired from them.
• Categorizing R & R Plans for separate group of affected families. Eg., fully affected to be displaced with basic infrastructure, amenities and partially affected would be paid cash compensation.
• Settling rehabilitation packages defining eligibility and modes of ex-gratia payments
• Initial social assessment are needed to understand the extend of families to be affected as a result of an upcoming acquisition
• Baseline Surveys to be done to collect owner details of corresponding plots and identification of zones to rehabilitate the families
• Relevant ownership documents of the areas of interest are to be procured from respective land departments

Why is R & R difficult to Manage

Proper R & R management requires maintaining owner details, kinship & marriage documents of the people to be displaced. Also, understanding the needs and requirements of the Project affected families, repeated consultations are necessary with the affected communities. To comply the activities with the policy certain hindrances can be noticed:

• Limited provision for visualization of relocation plots
• Collection of Record of Rights (RoR), names of owners, property details etc. from the land departments and tagging against each plot becomes a hassle
• Often difficult to identify the family tree and kinship resulting in duplicate compensations
• Documents against each plot are haphazard to maintain
• It is tiresome to maintain Excel Sheets/ Hardcopy documents of Awardee details with resettlement / compensation/ training package
• Tracking employments created one by one gives way to erroneous data  
• Manually generating reports is tedious

How R & R Proceedings can be Eased

A centralized software acts as a decision support system for granting rehabilitation, resettlement and fair compensation to the families that have been unsettled due to projects executed in their land.

• The automation results in displaying of all relevant information on click, along with  graphics, maps and other integrated features
• GIS map displays digitized R&R colony map for relocation of the displaced families for easy visualization
• Village wise analysis of number of Project Affected Families (PAF)/ Project Displaced Families (PDF) 
• Document Management System helps in storage of all relevant documents against each PAF/PDF
• Tracking of tasks and activities related to all procedural milestones of R & R becoming easier
• Integration with finance systems helps in easy disbursement of payments for compensation / relocation assistance 
• Dynamic reports on Rehabilitation details (occupation, training, income) details of the PAF
• Handling of pending, assigned, resolved grievances along with details and actions becomes easier

Modern technologies like GIS and MIS plays a major role in carrying out cost effective and accurate data collection, integration, analysis, planning, management and maintenance. It can ease the management of rehabilitation and resettlement to ensure that the affected community regains its standard of living.