1.

Discuss the significance of the land acquisition and rehabilitation and resettlement act of
2013 and its implications for development and social justice?

Due to the scarcity of land in a country as populous as India, the government has enacted
certain provisions, regulations, and guidelines to encourage infrastructure growth in areas
where land is privately owned or used for agricultural purposes. Known as the Right to Equal
Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, and Resettlement Act of
2013, this legislation repealed the archaic Land Acquisition Act of 1894 and established a new
mechanism for compensating impacted parties.

The Land Acquisition Act, alternatively referred to as the Right to Fair Compensation and
Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, and Resettlement Act of 2013, controls and
governs the entire land acquisition process. The Act establishes a framework for compensating
landowners fairly, adding accountability to the system, and directing the government to
rehabilitate those who have been disproportionately harmed as a result of their property being
stripped away.

The Act regulates the process of land acquisition and establishes the regulations and
procedures for providing rehabilitation, resettlement, and compensation to those who
surrender their land to the government for infrastructure development. According to the Act's
provisions, the government compensates impacted landowners (four times the market value of
land in rural areas and twice the market value of land in urban areas), ensuring that the whole
process of procuring land for factories, buildings, or infrastructure projects is fair and clear.
Additionally, the Act provides for the rehabilitation of impacted families.

However, the Act has remained a source of contention due to an unclear concept of 'public
interest', which has been interpreted to include the establishment of facilities for leisure and
tourism purposes such as golf courses, villas, hotels, and banquet halls.
At the dawn of the modern era, everything was seen through the lens of human dignity; yet,
the landmark Act of 1894 disregarded individual rights in several ways. The Act did not
recognise the method for relocating venture-influenced families, and thus uprooting venture-
influenced families was not recognised by others. There is no arrangement in place to assess
the social impact of undertakings; apart from monetary compensation, there is no additional
guarantee for land squatters and marginalised persons such as SCs and STs; and, most
emphatically, the act of 1894 did not provide for government-managed savings apart from fiscal
compensation to land squatters. As a result, it is extracted as persuasive of the Act; in this
manner, the administration consolidated the plan for handling security, rehabilitation, and
resettlement structures prior to enactment. Additionally, the state has failed to advance social
justice, owing to the Act of 1894, which authorised the acquisition of private property for public
purposes. The primary impediment to enactment was the absence of provisions for the
rehabilitation and reorganisation of undertaking-influenced families or automatically uprooted
individuals. The Act of 1894 made no provision for the rearrangement of acquired vast land and
provided only for fiscal remuneration of land washouts. Thus, constitutional provision did not
succeed in obtaining land without opposition.

Subsequently, on 1 January 2014, the Act of 2013 took effect, supplanting the 1894 Frontier
Act. Thus, the legal executive's function is to decipher the legal arrangements relating to
acceptable property and exceptional adjustments enacted by the Constitution in order to
strengthen libertarian culture while preserving social equity. The Act of 1894 was authorised
during the frontier era and was periodically amended to ensure social justice. However, it did
not adequately represent and define the issues of recovery and resettlement, rearrangement,
social impact assessment of planned extends, and procured vast land, and thus was revoked.
The current Act ensures that, in accordance with the supreme law's principles of "self-
government" and "Gram Sabhas," a humane, participatory, informed, and clear procedure for
land securing is followed with the least amount of disruption to landowners and other impacted
families. It provides just and fair compensation to influenced families who receive land, and
rehabilitation and relocation benefits should be given to undertaking influenced families.
The critical requirement is that parity be established between the requirements of the
corporate sector, which needs land for their operations, and those of landowners and ranchers.
The government should consider the possibility that the country will develop solely through
industrialization and job creation. Commerce and agriculture are critical components of our
economy and cannot be overlooked in the pursuit of development. Both components should be
joined at the hip, but not at the detriment of our ranchers, who have encouraged us. As a
result, the Government enacted the 2013 Act, which includes provisions for fair and equitable
remuneration, restoration, and relocation of impacted families. The effect of land acquisition on
impacted families was to be determined via a social impact assessment prior to relying on
ashore acquiring. There are numerous additional arrangements that are beneficial to
landowners and ensure that errors are eliminated, which makes the Act all the more just and
satisfactory.

3. Is the Inter-linking of rivers project a viable solution to India’s water crisis? Critically
evaluate.

India is the world's second largest nation, with a diverse population three times the size of the
United States but just one-third the physical size. According to the World Bank, India has made
great strides toward poverty reduction, but the number of poor people remains extremely
disproportionate to the number of middle-income people, with a combined rate of over 52% of
rural and urban poor.

India's water crisis is often blamed on a lack of government planning, increased corporate
privatisation, industrial and human waste, and public corruption. Additionally, India's water
shortage is projected to worsen as the country's population grows to 1.6 billion by 2050. To
that end, global water scarcity is expected to become a major source of inter-state political
conflict in the future, and India is no exception.

The Indian Rivers Interconnection (ILR) Project In India, the proposed Inter-Linking of Rivers
(ILR) project envisions connecting 37 rivers from 20 major basins through 30 links and canals
(Figure 1). It intends to move water from surplus to water-scarce areas in order to rid the
nation of droughts and floods and to repurpose waters that would otherwise go to waste in the
sea . Previously, this project was adopted by the Ministry of Water Resources (MOWR),
Government of India (GOI), pursuant to a 2002 Supreme Court order. The proposed scheme is
divided into two sections: a Himalayan section with 14 links and a Peninsular section with 16
links.

Concentrating on water infrastructure could also result in the so-called "reservoir effect," in
which the building of reservoirs reduces the incentive to take other water security-related
actions. Critics of the interlinking scheme argue that such large-scale infrastructure projects are
not India's only choice. Other options that could have an equivalent or greater impact on water
security include increasing irrigation efficiency; growing crops that are suitable for the climatic
conditions of the area in which they are grown; controlling water demand; increasing rainwater
harvesting; and maintaining and running existing infrastructure effectively.

Changes in the hydrological profile of Indian rivers, whether caused by climate change or
changes in the amount of water drained from them, could result in the depletion of current
surplus rivers. For example, the amount of water in many Himalayan rivers is determined by the
amount of glacial melt present in the system. It is expected that water-scarce areas and rivers
will continue to have sufficient water resources. However, if the condition shifts and those
rivers no longer have excess water to divert, the whole interlinking idea can be jeopardised.
The river interlinking scheme was launched as a response to India's persistent hunger and
water scarcity. It is hoped that by transferring water from surplus areas to areas with a water
shortage, India's food production will increase and food insecurity will decrease. However, India
produces sufficient food to feed its population, and although Indian farmers do not achieve the
same crop yields per hectare as farmers in other countries, this is generally not due to a lack of
water. The interconnection of rivers is a grand infrastructure project aimed at impressing and
enthralling Indian voters rather than significantly improving food and water security.