New ground realities in land laws

Relaxation of rules to forest and coastal regulation laws enables the government to significantly expand the scope of corporate investment in these hitherto restricted zones

Over the past two months, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has proposed two substantial changes that could give investments and infrastructure development in India a big fillip. These changes could also unleash a fresh set of environmental and social challenges. The first change came in the form of a draft forest policy in March. Then, in April, the government proposed a revision of the environmental safety norms that protect the coasts.

Put together, the two sets of changes amount to a transformation in land-use policy for two classes of lands — India’s 7,000 km shoreline and 700,000 square km of forestlands.

Significantly, both sets of changes can be effected by executive fiat because they involve changes to rules and regulations appended to laws, which do not require Parliamentary approval. In contrast to the government’s unsuccessful attempts to amend the land acquisition and rehabilitation laws in 2015 in the face of strong opposition in the upper House, these two changes to land-use policy should see easy sailing.  

The draft forest policy reverses earlier policy, and now permits the private sector to get into government-protected forests and grow raw material for their industries, a demand the paper, pulp and other wood-based industries have been making for nearly two decades. Several governments have entertained the idea only to shelve it, and the NDA made one aborted attempt to do so in 2015. 
 

Large swaths of forests under government control have millions of tribals and other forest-dwellers directly or indirectly dependent on them for livelihood — a fact that Indian laws did not recognise until the Forest Rights Act was passed in 2006. The new policy will permit states to introduce rules which actively promote private investments under the Indian Forest Act, 1927. At the moment, the laws are silent on the subject.

The new draft regulations for coastal protection — called the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification — open up the shoreline to much greater infrastructure development and real estate development. 
 

Large chunks of land near the shore that real estate developers, hotel industry and infrastructure projects had to keep their hands off would now be accessible under zero or minimal restrictions.  

The Union government has planned investments upwards of Rs 6,500 billion by 2025 in port-related infrastructure under the Sagarmala Programme. The relaxed norms for port-related facilities under the new draft regulations will ease the path for such investments. For the government, it is a route to unlocking growth along the coast — a practice that has been witnessed around the world, with the concentration of investment and people along the globe intensifying at a higher pace in the developing world as well, as several large-scale studies and projections show. 

Predictably, environmentalists and tribal rights activists have opposed both sets of changes. The changes in forest policy, they contend, negates the progress made under the Forest Rights Act to recognise the historical rights of tribals and other forest-dwellers that were turned encroachers by colonial-era laws and regulations. 

The draft coastal regulations, on the other hand, dilute the idea of using a scientifically demarcated safety zone that protects communities and property from the rising threat of climate change. Increased infrastructure development along the coast marginalises artisanal fisheries on one hand and ignores a scientifically validated threat of increasing vulnerability along the Indian coastline, they contend.  

But the political opposition so far has been partial in its approach. Leaders from the political Left and the Congress have opposed the access the forest policy provides to the private sector over public forests. Ex-environment minister for Congress, Jairam Ramesh, in April said, “The new policy is only beneficial to private players. Everyone should oppose it.”

But the two political groups have stayed away from commenting on the easing of environmental regulations for the coastline.  A greater devolution of regulatory control by states over real estate and tourism projects on the coast has meant that the coastal states — regardless of the hue of the political party in power — have not complained.  Real-estate and tourism industry linkages with politicians cut across most party lines in the coastal states. In the past too, states with parties in power from across the spectrum have asked for easing the coastal norms and giving them more power to regulate.

The draft coastal regulations do so, linking the development of real-estate along the shores to city level development plans. In fact, the coastal regulations have been regularly diluted by different Union governments over the decades since the first norms were set in place. There have been more than 21 amendments to the original notification. Political discretion has also led to bending the regulations for specific projects along the coast. 

Such dilutions and political exceptions to the regulations have also been witnessed in regards to access to forestlands and forest resources. During the United Progressive Alliance regime, too, forest regulations were first imposed and then suspended, giving clearance to a host of coal mines. 

But, these two set of changes to the forest and coastal land regulations promise to redraw a new legal template of environmental protection and tribal rights in entirety, without needing to going through Parliament.