1.1 The Problematique
Many debates have taken place after a failed expropriation attempt in Singur, West Bengal, India (Chandra et al. 2015; Ghatak et al. 2013; Nielsen and Majumder 2017). Singur triggered a socio-political upheaval from 2006, when the state of West Bengal decided to acquire approximately 997 acres of land to enable TATA Motors Limited to construct a car manufacturing factory. Citizens of the area led a movement against the land acquisition and forced TATA motors to leave the almost-finished factory. The incident has triggered a national and international awakening, which has no intention of dying down soon. The never answered question was, is, and (perhaps) always will be: âWhat is the value of land?â Answering this question may lead us towards unearthing the meaning of adequate compensation for land being expropriated by the state for industrialisation or infrastructure development. The failure to answer this question lies in broad theoretical and conceptual problems inherited within the valuation of land doctrine. This intuition is supported by the work of many scholars throughout history (discussed in Chaps. 2, 3 and 4). The issues concerning the valuation of land are discernible at three levels, from individual to social preferences.
First, valuation is a process of finding the value of a thing according to a socially acceptable standard; thus (the issue is that) it is difficult to include a broad range of individual standards (plural values; Anderson 1993/1995; Davy 2012) into a single socially acceptable and just standard. This issue is raised at the base level, where the individualsâ unique valuation standards are contested against a particular social standard.
Second, the modern valuation of land doctrine has more or less accepted that the exchange value also includes use (and plural) value of land. Therefore, the issue is that the monetary âpriceâ presents use value and exchange value of land. The question is in how far the existing literature and empirical evidence are equating plural values represented in the monetary price, and also whether they (literature and empirical evidence) are in fact equating at all. At the secondary level, the issue is whether monetary price represents plural values.
This takes us to the third issue at the highest levelâwhether all land should have a value represented in monetary price as per the existing valuation of land doctrine: should there be a price for the grave of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, Native American sacred sites in the United States? What would be the real estate value of the Vatican, Mecca, Jerusalem, Lumbini, and the Golden Temple of Amritsar? Critics might claim that if there is a value represented in monetary price, then this might not become an issue unless and until such property is transacted. Such an issue will not be solved when a follow-up question is raised, that is, is the value of the sacred places of Native Americans or Scheduled Tribes in India more or less valuable than others? These issues operating at different levels constitute âthe mysteries of valuationâ which this research wants to explore theoretically and empirically with the help of case studies located in India.
1.2 Introduction
The terms âeminent domainâ, âland acquisitionâ, âcompulsory purchaseâ, âcompulsory acquisitionâ, âexpropriationâ, and âresumptionâ all have a more or less similar legal meaning in the constitutions, case laws, and legislations of different countries of the world (Brown 1971; FAO 2012).1 A quick summary of these legal terms would be the power of a state and state-approved bodies to take private property and common property for public use in exchange for legally defined compensation packages for affected individuals (Black 2014).2 The compensation for the land is often based on the valuation of the land (Alterman and Balla 2010; Davy 2012; Evans 2004; Ghatak and Ghosh 2015; Holland 1970; Mahalingam and Vyas 2011; Singh 2012). Therefore, an educated guess would be that a more scientific valuation technique can take us closer to a just procedure and outcome (or an improvement3 on existing social reality, as claimed by Sen 2010a, b) during land acquisition, if not remedy the feeling of injustice among all (Davy 1997). The educated guess gains credence through the observations of various international and multilateral bodies (EU 2017; FAO 2012; ILO 1989; OHCHR 2015; UN-HABITAT 2012; World Bank 2017) and of independent research, which indicate that inaccuracy in valuation can lead to the violation of human rights and constitutional rights (Ambaye 2015; Cernea 2008; Chakravorty 2013; Cotula et al. 2014; Davis and Heathcote 2007; Pellissery and Dey Biswas 2012; Sarkar 2007).
Throughout the world, a large area of land has been acquired by the state and approved bodies and leased or bought by private enterprises. At a global level, according to the Land Matrix,4 recently acquired land deals in 63 low- and middle-income countries have been estimated at 44 million hectares (2016). More future acquisition is, in fact, possible as the World Bank identified a potential 445 million hectares for large-scale land investments (Deininger and Byerlee 2011). In the so-called developed world, the issue is defined not only by the size of the land in question but also by existing legal protections of the land owners and users in terms of land acquisition and compensation packages (Azuela and Herrera 2007), whereas in the Global South, large-scale land deals do not necessarily target âidleâ or âmarginalâ land (Messerli et al. 2015). This rapid and vast land acquisition can lead to conflicts.
India is one country of the Global South which has been witnessing such a land acquisition drive. The intensity and number of anti-land acquisition conflicts, where unwilling land owners/users and the state or other statutory bodies fight against each other during land acquisition attempts, is quite substantial, and a few estimates suggest that lower caste and indigenous populations are the worst affected (Chakravorty 2013; Fernandes 2004; Pellissery and Dey Biswas 2012; Singh 2002). Fernandes (2008) estimated that there were more than 60 million displaced citizens between 1947 and 2000, whereas more conservative estimates put the number at 50 million people, of which 90% of the cases are resulting from the stateâs use of land (Chakravorty 2016).
Detailed sectoral data are available on dams (Singh 2002), on mining (Fernandes 2004), and on steel plants and dams (Parasuraman 1999) that show how land acquisitions have often ended with violent protests (Pellissery and Dey Biswas 2012). Since the dominant valuation theories are also followed and applied meticulously by the Indian state (see GOI 2009; World Bank 2017), the Indian bureaucracy, and the Indian judiciary, land acquisition case studies in India may help to develop a theoretical generalisation (Yin 1984, 21) for further testing and may eventually indicate practical ways in which valuation of land should be conducted. Before indicating the methodological choices that I have made, I should briefly look at how the existing theories of value have shaped the present-day valuation practices. It is the existing theories of value and their applications that have contributed to the development of mysteries of valuation (as indicated in this chapter and later elaborated in Chaps. 2 and 3).
The dominant economic theories and practices believe that the monetary price adequately reflects the value of goods and services, including land. The Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP 2016, 10; bold and italics added) explicitly states:
âŚfair market value is the amount in cash, or in terms reasonably equi...