IN our country, development projects often require large areas, which cause dislocation of human settlements and disturb livelihoods of the displaced people. Compulsory acquisition of land and homesteads for public purposes forces their occupants to give up their homes, assets and means of livelihood and vocation. They have to live elsewhere and start life anew.

Rural communities are major victims of such developments. Moreover, people from semi-rural and urban areas also suffer the negative impacts of development. Such projects are related to construction of airports, seaports, military installations, industrial units, housing schemes, canals, highways, roads, and large dams.

Concerns for the rehabilitation of uprooted communities have always been a matter of secondary importance in project plans, and experience shows that implementation of resettlement plans are faulty and poor. For long there has been no clear-cut national policy on this issue. regarding compensation, resettlement and rehabilitation of the displaced persons.

Without a comprehensive rehabilitation and resettlement plan, the government launched the ambitious hydropower project ‘Vision 2025’, which is likely to add to the number of displaced in the country. Various dams, water reservoirs, improvement of existing dams, among others, have been planned in the proposed ‘Vision 2025’. Numerous other developmental projects are also in the planning phase, like expressways, highways, roads, canals and water reservoirs which will accentuate the problem. Our country’s record on forced eviction of people, proper compensation, delayed payments, relocations and integration of dislocated communities is already quite dismal.

Couple of weeks ago Sindh and the NWFP opposed the finalisation of land acquisition and resettlement plans for the Kalabagh and the Akhori dams, till Wapda convinced people of their benefits on the basis of facts and figures. It has been observed that owing to donors’ pressure and mandatory guidelines to deal with resettlement issues, the resettlement action plans for dams have incorporated general guidelines in the overall design of development projects. But specific guidelines relating to community participation, consensus building, timely compensations, integrated approach towards resettlement have largely been ignored.

For example, victims of the Terbela Dam are still awaiting compensation, while a substantial number of families settled in Punjab and Sindh after the construction of Mangla Dam in 1967 have not been able to get possession of their allotted lands so far and numerous cases are lying pending in courts as their lands have been grabbed by local influential people.

The resettlement plan of the Ghazi Barotha Hydropower Project (declared a model project) awaits implementation in an integrated manner. In 2002 the National Accountability Bureau and the Regional Accountability Bureau launched an inquiry into the irregularities and malpractices in awarding compensations to the affected people of the Ghazi Barotha project and termed it the biggest ‘land acquisition scam’ in South Asia.

The Land Acquisition Act, 1894, is the principal general statute, laying down the framework for exercise of the right to eminent domain of the state. The right of eminent domain has its constitutional foundations in Article 24 of the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The LAA is 113 years old and continued to be the general land acquisition law in Pakistan since 1947. It comprises 55 sections pertaining to area notification and surveys, acquisition, compensation and appointment, awards and disputes resolution, penalties and exemptions.

The 1894 Act is the basic law; however, in the absence of a national resettlement policy, it has been amended and updated differently in the four provinces. The nature of differences is primarily procedural but the overall spirit of the act remains intact. The LAA has been the de facto policy regarding resettlement and compensation to the project affected people. It lays down procedure for acquisition of private properties for public purposes and their compensation. Resettlement needs in today’s perspective are not addressed by the act.

Need for a fundamental change in the LAA has been felt for quite some time as it has left both the requisitioning authority and the owners of the land dissatisfied. At times there have been objections to land acquisition as the purpose of acquisition is accused of being other than ‘public purpose’. The acquisition takes long time due to prolonged process and subsequent litigation causing time-overrun of the projects and increase in their cost.

The LAA provides for payment of cash compensation to those who have a direct interest in the title to such land and other property so acquired. The system of paying cash compensation alone does not, in most cases, enable the affected families to get cultivable agricultural land, homestead and other resources which they are compelled to surrender to the State and many of such families fail to acquire new means of livelihood out of the compensation awarded or/ and on their own resources. The problem is even more acute for persons who are critically dependent on the acquired assets for their subsistence livelihoods, but have no legal title to them, such as land-less agricultural workers, forest dwellers dependent on gathering, encroachers, tenants and artisans. Along this, the act does not differentiate between different projects in terms of:

* Land acquisition for developmental or non-developmental purpose

* Whether land acquisition involved forced displacement or not,

* Scale and nature of different projects.

The major inadequacies of Land Acquisition Act are: Section 3(b) relating to Persons Interested: The LAA does not recognise any adverse affect on APs for purposes of compensation. The APs cannot claim compensation as “persons interested”, because as per Section 3(b), an “interested person” is a person claiming an interest in compensation to be made on account of the acquisition of land and a person shall be deemed to be interested in land if he is interested in an easement affecting the land. It does not cover the categories of “affected persons” for compensation purposes.

Sections 5(a) and 24 relating to compensation and objections: in determining compensation, the Act leaves discretion in the hand of decision-making authority, which is contrary to the interests of APs including “preference of their informed choice”. The LAA only allows payment of compensation valued on the date of the notification and not on the value at the time of actual acquisition.

Sections 6-10 relating to Acquisition, Valuation, Entitlements and Compensation: these are inconsistence to meet resettlement principles and requirements of foreign donors and international agencies, emphasising on community involvement and consultation, taking into account adverse socio-cultural losses; and rehabilitation of vulnerable affected groups. To ensure compliance of resettlement principles, the mechanism for making valuation an applying various measures to ensure its fairness, has to be there, based on the principle of compensating the APs at replacement cost and rehabilitation of the lost incomes and livelihoods up to the pre-project level.

Section 11 relating to Persons Entitled to Compensation: The award should mention the compensation for “persons in knowledge or believed to be interested in the land”, and the collector can make payment of the compensation to the “persons interested” entitle thereto. This does not cater for the “affected persons”.

Section 16 and 17 are pertaining to Land Acquired: These do not differentiate between lands acquired for developmental or non-developmental purposes and also between two types of land acquisition: which causes involuntary displacement and other does not.

Section 28 relating to Valuation of Compound Interest: For determining compensation values and interest/premium for land acquisition, the Land Valuation Committees (LVCs) are necessary but recommendations made by the LVCs are not binding on the Collector, as these Committees have no legal basis under the Act. In order to facilitate the APs to decide about agreeable entitlements, the role of LVCs need to be strengthened.

Over the years the Act has undergone numerous modifications by the federal and provincial governments as well as the respective court. All four provincial revenue departments have their own versions. Since the act does not address the resettlement issues, recourse has to be taken by ad hoc arrangements in unavoidable circumstances.

However, the key issue in development–induced-displacement is the absence of national resettlement policy and laws that can address the problems of fair and timely compensation, rehabilitation, restoration of livelihood and participation of affected communities in the decision making at all stages of the project. For a comprehensive resettlement policy, Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) had initiated a consultation process in 1999 with the collaboration of ADB’s Regional Technical Assistance Project.

The process was meant to review the current status of resettlement policies, practices, review of land acquisition laws and discussion with stakeholders and study of relevant literature so that a framework for a resettlement policy could be formulated. A draft report on “Resettlement Policy and Practice: Review and Recommendations’ was prepared. On the basis of the findings of the study, a draft National Resettlement Policy was prepared. However the formal endorsement / comments of provincial governments are still awaited for making this policy into Resettlement Ordinance.

Apart from the lack of commitment of government towards the implementation of resettlement guidelines, there are other factors that negatively impact IDP’s. These include the absence of community participation and inadequate funding for compensation or purchase of land for displaced people. Furthermore, it also includes incompatibility of ethnic background, clash of interest between the host community and resettled families and lack of support services as well as social organisation processes to integrate the resulted population in the local communities. All these inadequacies exist across all projects.

In order to achieve a balance between development for the people and the cost they have to pay for it, efforts have to be made at technical, social and legislative levels. The social engineering of development has to be redrafted to include both beneficiaries as well as adversely affected people into the process of planning. Herein society at large that gets direct and indirect benefits from the development process has also a social and rural obligation towards these victims of development to not only restore their living standards and earning capacities but also make them partners in the accrued benefits.