Inscrutable Land Laws And Non-Existent Property Rights

Inscrutable Land Laws And Non-Existent Property Rights

 There was a news report in the paper yesterday about people in Manali (a suburb of North Chennai) waking up to find that the water supplied by the Chennai Corporation's Metrowater department having a dark oily smell and being unfit to drink. On further investigation by intrepid journalists, it was confirmed that the drinking water line was contaminated from a leaking oil pipeline carrying fuel - crude oil- from the madras port to the refinery at Ennore. So in effect what those people that day in Manali had received through their taps was diesel and petrol.

This immediately brought to mind another story i had heard from a friend of mine about an uncle of his who lived in Perambur in the heart of Chennai and who having found that the erratic water supply by Corporation's Metrowater department was insufficient for daily needs had dug a bore well in his backyard to get extra groundwater. But not finding water at shallower levels -(the groundwater levels in Chennai having gone down because of competitive deep well digging from all those apartment complexes being constructed by breaking down individual residences)the poor man had dug deeper and deeper and had at last to his astonishment found his well shaft spouting crude oil, like something from Saudi Arabia.

The uncle being a prudent man had immediately instructed the work men to close up the well secretly and proceeded to dig a new well for the water. The explanation that he gave for closing that well was that if news had leaked out about petrol being found in his land he would be a beggar in two days for the government would turn him out of his house mercilessly and take over his property and break it down for the oil. This might have been a true story or this might be just an apocryphal story, i cant say, but it touches the crux of what I am going to discuss in this post - namely the Right to property for an Indian citizen.

There is a concept in law called Eminent Domain. The law of eminent domain means everything is the property of the state and the people are allowed to use it only under the indulgence of the government. This law has been with us since the time of kings and feudalism when people held lands because the king permitted them to do so in his discretion. If the king or the government required that particular land for their own use - say to construct a new road or a flyover through that land- they have first call on the land. They can take over the property from the owner and the individual cannot refuse to give it up.

When the British came to India and stated writing our laws for us poor ignorant Indians, they not only retained the law of eminent domain but even expanded it to make sure that when the government acquired any private property, the owner of the land had no say in it but to accept the compensation given- often meager amounts and leave silently. This law - the Land Acquisition Act was first passed by the British in the 1890's to make sure that the Indians followed their rules as per British law. As time passed the British Law was changed in Britain itself and the English people acquired rights over their property. But in India the same law was there till independence - in fact that same Land Acquisition Act is even now in existence in India - even after 140 years after it was first enacted.

During our freedom struggle there were lots of struggles for land all over India- even Mahatma Gandhi participated in one of them called Champaran- so when we at last got our freedom, our constitution drafting committee decided to include the Right to Property as a Fundamental Right under the twin Articles 19(1-F)and 31. But the intelligence of the Constitution drafting committee headed by Dr.Ambedkar was often negated by the stupidity of Nehruvian Socialism. The Socialists inside the Congress Government used the Land Acquisition Act/Land Ceiling Act to take over private property for public use by targeting the Zamindars and others who had excess land. This was the origin of the Benami problems as the large land owners often split their property into small bits and gave them to their benamis - like distant relatives- to escape their lands being taken over.

Meanwhile some of the religious trusts and swamijis who owned large temple lands in the name of trusts filed cases in Supreme Court against the government forcibly taking over their lands. The most famous of these cases was Swami Kesavananda Bharati's case where the Supreme Court had to interfere to control the government’s destruction of our original constitution with new amendments- especially in land cases. Because the governments started taking away private lands for more and more reasons there were a lot of cases being filed in the courts by the landowners who were affected. The courts often gave judgment for the landowners because under the constitution- individuals had a right to their own property as a fundamental right.

This irritated the then prime minister Indira Gandhi and in her autocratic way she used the Emergency to remove the Right to property as a fundamental right and included it as a legal right under Art.300-A - the difference being under the old law- right to property was inviolable- no one can take over your land without your consent but under the new law if someone takes over your land you can file a case in the court and ask  for compensation for your lost land and wait till the courts decide if you are eligible for compensation and how much to give you- a process which might take decades in Indian courts.

In addition to removing the constitutional right under Articles 19 and Articles 31 guaranteeing protection to private property the left leaning (commie-loving) Congress government proceeded to do a lot of damage to other Constitution and fundamental rights - some of which were set right by the Supreme Court subsequently after the emergency period was over and Indira Gandhi's Congress party was defeated in the next elections in 1977 and a new government under the Janata Party came to power. But like all politicians they too saw the advantages of having control over other peoples lands and opted to retain the same illogical laws changed during the emergency period.

So what it all comes down to in the end is that as per law of the land, your land belongs not to you but to the government. The government out of its good heart allows you to temporarily own and use the land- the land all its appurtenances - or ground and all its belongings- above the ground or below the ground. So if you happen to dig into your land and find diamonds or petrol don’t start imagining that you can soon become a South African diamond king or a Texas oil millionaire like they show on movies.

For that to happen, you have to live in a real democracy like the United States of America where individual rights are respected. Here in India, some nameless clerk in a office somewhere will make the decision to take over your land for a paltry compensation- say for example if the land in your area goes for around Rs.10,000 a square foot then the government will gave you a standard rate of compensation of rs100 a square foot for your land. If you had just bought a 1000 square feet flat/apartment in a posh area for Rs.One Crore and for your misfortune you happen to be sitting on an oil well, you will been given Rs.Ten Thousand and asked to get out of there. 

That’s what you get for living in a land where individual rights are sacrificed in the name of socialist ideals and community good. But all this idealism is only when you are the land owner, try being on the other side - being a land buyer and you will see that the same land rules will work differently again - as i will explain in my next post. So if you find an oil well on your land- close it. If you dig up diamonds in your land- bury it. If you find old pottery and bits of archaeological stuff- plant a garden over it and forget it all. That’s the only way to retain ownership of your land for yourself till you die.

To conclude, the law of Eminent domain is supreme in our land. If the king wants something- the king gets it. But the tragedy is that the king is no longer a single person- oh no, for we are far more advanced and we have now a democracy. Which means that every Politician and every bureaucrat is now a king in our great democracy and if they want your land - they will take it- legally, lawfully and fully as per rules and there is nothing you or anyone else can do about it. This is the stark reality of life in India under our land laws.

The Things I Say

The Things I Say

And so do I.....

So this morning I was standing at the bus stop all spruced up and waiting for that 24-A bus which rolls to my office. Almost obsessively I kept checking my watch to see if it was time for the bus to come even though knew I was almost ten minutes early. As anxious I was not to miss this particular bus, I had taken special care to look my best today - for I had a mission today, a mission critical to the point of explosion. Before I share the rest of the explosive events of the day, let me take you on a brief flashback to the day before, to share the back-story to what was about to take place today. Yesterday travelling by the same bus at the same time, I had chanced upon, serendipitously, on a girl seated just in front of me on the bus and reading a novel by Guy de Maupassant, one of my favorite authors and which of course showed her fine taste in literature. I thanked my lucky stars for making the usual boring bus journey interesting and changed seats three times (despite the conductors frowns) just to get a proper view of her face underneath all her hair. As soon as I saw her, there was an ominous electrical discharge in the air, lightning struck between us and I was in love. Unfortunately, I had to get down at the very next stop and I didn’t have the time to speak with her properly then.

So here I was, the very next day, ready to propose to her without wasting any more time in sundry preliminaries. The bus was on time for once and thankfully nearly empty, which suited my mission. I hopped on anxious to confirm her presence and there she was, on her favorite seat in the front of the bus. After getting the ticket from the conductor, the same one who had given dirty looks at me yesterday, I moved on to the front of the bus and again took the seat right behind her, just to play it safe by vastu/feng shui rules. She had a notebook today on her lap and was going through some handwritten notes which I couldn’t decipher much, though I peered with all my might. Maybe she had a semester exam coming up or something and I hated to disturb her study but as I had just ten minutes or so before I had to get down at my stop and timing was everything in such things, I knew that without much ado I had to start proposing to her, if I was going to do it at all today.  To tell the truth, last night I had had a slight pang of doubt that she might be a bit young for me, given that she seemed to be a college student and for a minute or so I worried she might take my proposal amiss. But on further reflection I had decided that it didn’t matter, at least not to me, which was the main point and I was going to go through with it after all.

As was my habit when proposing, I had to pick and choose the role I was going to play to impress her. As I very well couldn’t show her my inner Batman right then, I had decided to play the older but more successful, my debonair Bruce Wayne persona to convince her. So I leaned forward and said a "hi". She shut her book and turned halfway back in her seat to look back at me and I went on recklessly "Do you believe in love at first sight? No? But I do. Ever since I saw you yesterday morning in this same seat, I am in love with you. Well, to tell the truth, I don’t know how to convince you all of a sudden but, you see, I may be older than you, I may be uglier than you.." and I stopped abruptly at that point when i saw the shock on her face. And then I realized that I had gone and done it again- Called a Girl Ugly to Her Face in the midst of proposing to her. Thankfully the bus had nearly reached my stop by then and I smartly skipped out opting to escape for the time being.

I guess my tongue has a way of running away with itself. And I guess I have to change my bus route tomorrow. Damn, I just want to bang my head on the desk -again and again. For wasn’t this the lousiest proposal you ever heard? I think I should board the next flight to the Sahara desert and hide myself there for the next thirty years or so. The things I say, aren’t they the weirdest?   

Mentally Retarded Children – Lifelong Burden?

Mentally Retarded Children – Lifelong Burden?

Mondays are usually extra busy morning in a hospital. It’s as if patients store up all their illnesses over the weekend just to get to the doctor on a Monday morning. As such it becomes fairly difficult to concentrate too much on individual patients on Monday mornings. At the end of the day all you remember is a blur of patients collectively and it takes a rare kind of patient or a rare disease to stay in your memory. I met such a one this morning- a young girl, accompanied by her mother and complaining of vague and unspecified pains.

The girl looked to be around 19-20 years although the registration slip had her age as 23 and she looked quite normal seen from afar. But the moment she was seated in front of me, her mother pulled out a big folder of her old case notes and passed them to me with the explanation that the daughter was mentally deficient. This spared me the trouble of going through my well rehearsed Monday morning routine of asking   questions in a rapid fire series and I prepared to spend more time with this one patient despite the long lines standing behind and getting impatient at the delay caused  by a single patient.

Before I get into their story, I am sure everyone has heard about how people are classified by their IQ levels into genius, normal, idiot, moron and retard etc. As the patients mother explained and I soon found out myself, though she looked to be a well gown young woman, the mental age of the patient before me was somewhere around 5 or 6 years, she talked and behaved in a child like manner and I had to deal with her like I usually do with children- explore their symptoms without them helping as you cannot always get clear cut answers. After I had diagnosed her problems and gave her the necessary prescriptions, the mother made the patient sit in one corner of the consult room and in turn sat down before me and started crying.

In the midst of her tears she told me "please give her something to put her out of her misery permanently". Shocked, I was thinking over how to respond to such a statement when she went on to say "or give me something too, so i too can go away from this miserable life". As my nurses immediately got up from their seats and approached near us to try and rescue me, i waved them away with a sign that I wanted to talk further with her. I asked her gently what made her want to commit a double suicide. She was more than willing to share her troubles.

What she said was primarily about the trouble it took to take care of a mentally retarded child and a female child at that. She explained about how the child had looked normally initially but had only been diagnosed as retarded as she grew up and missed all her milestones- like crawling, walking talking etc. How her husband had spent all his savings on the child to take care of her special needs and had finally disappeared one day leaving the mother to bear all the financial burdens in addition to caring for the child.

She explained about her running from pillar to post to get someone to take her of her while the mother went out to work. She explained about her helpless condition of a full grown woman who is unable to understand that her clothes are sodden with her menstrual blood and runs around the street in full view of everyone. She went on and on about the practical difficulties of bringing up a retarded child and how it had destroyed her family life- both economically and personally. At last when she had got everything off her chest, she accepted the prescription I handed over and went away.

After the last patient of the day had left, there was an impromptu discussion about this case among all the staff members. The consensus was that it was a curse to bear a child who is mentally retarded. I am sure that many of you will disagree with the above statement. But I ask you to temper your criticism on the grounds that only people who have been through it will be able to understand the full extent of the tragedy of bringing up such a child.

Despite the cutesy pie kid showed in the Tamil movie Anjali directed by Mani Ratnam, taking care, lifelong, of a not-normal kid is really practically tough. A lot of social activists, including celebrities who advise people about how "special needs children" are well, special don’t understand all the ramifications of what it takes to be the parent or guardian of a child like that. Many families have broken up unable to bear the burden of taking care of such children. Remember that they have to not only make allowance for the child during their lifetime but also to make sure that there is someone else to take over on their deaths.

And this is the reason why genetic testing becomes crucial during pregnancy. Currently there are many tests available to accurately diagnose genetic anomalies in early pregnancy stage itself. With the easy availability of genetic tests like amniocentesis- drawing amniotic fluid directly from the fetus to check for chromosomal abnormalities- the parents have access to earlier and better information on what they are going to face in future and they can then make a clear cut decision on whether they are willing to go ahead with the conception in case of any genetic diseases being diagnosed in the early stages itself. If they decide to abort the fetus in the early stages of conception itself then there are no medical or legal issues involved - only moral.

Some religions like Roman Catholicism is strictly against abortion- even early term -when the fetus is just a bunch of cells and doesn’t have any individualism- remember the Savita Hallapa death in Ireland? Others like Hinduism are far more accommodating when it comes to abortion- with the theory that it’s all destiny or fate and the soul will be reincarnated somewhere else. Meanwhile the law is ambiguous on this - medical termination of pregnancy is legal under the law as long as the mother’s health is not affected in any way. So the decision is left purely to individuals.

Obviously, there is no one size fits all solution to this dilemma. Each family has to make its own decision- based on their religious, economic and social conditions. In the end the only people who are compulsorily made caregivers for the rest of their lives are the mother and father and they alone have a right to decide whether they are willing to make a lifelong commitment or not. No one else- including doctors, bleeding heart social activists or dominating grandparents have the right to decide for the woman whether she wants to keep the child or not. In this the final choice is the mothers decision and anyone else who presumes to advise would be better told to shut up and get lost. If they so decide the parents can try for a healthier child on their next pregnancy for there is no scientific evidence that the next child may have the same condition too.

And on a related note, i wish more people would realize how lucky they are to have a healthy, normal child. All those who abandon or abuse their kids don’t understand the many things which have to go right during conception and labor for a child to be born normal - mentally and physically. If you think it’s easy you should check out the crowds waiting outside the infertility treatment centers. So people should   know that having a normal child is indeed a genetic miracle. Ask any doctor who works with kids and he would tell you the same.

So what do you think? Do you feel that it is wise to abort a fetus with genetic diseases? To avoid future complications? Or do you think it’s better to accept it as fate? Care to comment?