Land, Rights, and Reform in India

India’s legal regime governing the compulsory acquisition of private land by the state for “public purposes” – centered on the Land Acquisition Act 1894 (LAA) – has long been criticized for breeding corruption and insufficiently protecting landowners and local communities. Attempts to overhaul the LAA have faced stiff resistance from powerful interests within and outside the state. When the United Progressive Alliance government took power in 2004, few would have guessed that it would seek to replace the LAA with legislation that imposes more rigorous standards for the compulsory acquisition of land and detailed rules for rehabilitating displaced people. Yet, in 2011 the government introduced the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill (LARRB). This article argues (1) that the LARRB displays certain distinctive characteristics shared by other rights-related statutes enacted under the UPA government; (2) that the emergence of this distinctive – and unforeseen – piece of legislation was driven largely by India’s approach to creating Special Economic Zones; and (3) that both the LARRB’s content and the process by which it was introduced have implications for debates of wider theoretical significance, including the increasingly hybrid nature of rights, and the desirability of combining insights from the literatures on “policy feedback” and “policy entrepreneurs.”

印度的土地權利及其改革

印度基於1894土地徵用法（LAA）而准許國家為“公共目的”強制徵收私人土地的法律制度一直受到批評，被指為不僅沒有充分保護土地所有者和當地社區， 而且還滋生了腐敗。改革LAA的各種嘗試都曾遭受到來自國內外的強大利益集團的強烈抵制。當聯合進步聯盟政府在2004年上台時，很少有人猜測它會試圖通 過立法取代LAA，即對強制性的土地徵用施加更嚴格的標準，以及要求及對失去土地者的安置措施的作出詳細規定 。然而，在2011年，政府出台了土地徵用和移民安置補償條例草案（LARRB）。本文認為（1）LARRB具有UPA政府制定的其它與權利有關的法規的 某些共同特徵;（2）這一意外而獨特的立法的出現在很大程度上是為印度創建經濟特區的的做法所驅動,（3）LARRB的內容及立法的引入過程有更廣泛的理 論意義，其中包括權利性質的日益混合化，以及將關於“政策反饋”與“政策企業家”的文獻相結合的益處。

Translated from English by Xin Huang