*Govt float a 30 year bond in market. (Insurance companies will be interested buying big share of these bonds).
*Buy land from this money with a premium to market price and allocate a part of bonds to land owners.
*Give land to companies to build township and office complex on BOT concept (Build Operate Transfer concept). Let them use it for 25 - 30 years and then transfer it to Govt in phases. That time this property can be auctioned/rented to pay for bonds.

This scheme ensure:
development not land grabbing as 25 year time start when land is allocated.
opportunity to all.

[...]

Of course this is not a phenomenon restricted to Vidarbha. This has been happening a lot, especially in growing cities like Pune. Government decides they need to build a road. They will just grab some land to do that.

Anytime you invest in a property in India, you have to make a judgement whether some piece or the entire lot will be taken by the govt. This is like a bond you own gets called at way below maturity price. Not fair to you as an investor.

Its almost as if the Govt owns the land and you are the perpetual leaseholder of the land. Government has the final rights on the land. (Is it indeed like that?)

Aniket, if you dont call this socialism, then what is it? The patriot act, however heinous, is an exception and not the rule in a free market. There are always elements in power who would want such a thing given the power they get with such laws. But this would not have been possible without the 9/11 attacks. Also I believe it wouldnt have passed if it had such liberties like in Indian laws for socialistic tendencies.

Umesh, in the taxation system, govt doesnt target one individual or a group of individuals unfairly. The burden is shared by the entire society. Why make the poor landowners bear the entire burden in this case? The high current market price should be spread out over the entire population.

Disclosure: My family has personal experience in losing a prime property to government whims. Karad decided to build MIT college in Pune. No problemo. Ask the government to grab acres and acres of land for educational purposes. Mr. Karad here’s your land for free! After 2 decades of litigation they gave us some land a distance away on a hillslope. Later the govt decided to not allow construction on that particular hillslope. So poof, the entire piece of land is gone. If you know Pune, you would know how expensive that land would be.

Consider this - If I am Infosys or TCS and I need land in Bangalore to expand my operations, I would be a complete idiot to negotiate with farmers in free market for $100. Just call the home minister and arrange for GoI to buy from farmer for $10, sell it to me for $20, and I would have saved $80, GoI gets $10, poor farmer loses $90, but who asked that sucker to get into farming in the first place? He should also open one call center & he can do the same thing I am doing. Now let us blame socialism for this, otherwise how can we continue to write blogs ? Atleast honest blogger like Kiruba is doing marathon running and boating to burn calories on the side, but this anarcap attention seeking intellectual masturbation burns only bandwidth, not a single calorie.

Well you may furthur argue then that why should a salaried person pay Income Tax… it’s HIS hard earned income…
or you may similarly argue…. why a Businessman should pay Sales Tax… he is selling the goods he owns to person B… why the govt shoould make the killing…

dude you are into redefining the whole taxation system :)

I don’t know how the govt will then have money to run the system??

a) Did the land belong to the farmers in the first place? As per my limited knowledge of the law, a certain amount of land around highways and rail tracks belongs to the govt. .. if these farms fall in that zone, then those farmers don’t even have to be paid to make them leave as per my knowledge of the law.

b) Why do you assume that this is socialism at play? While I agree that “bahujan sukhaye bahujan hitaye” type of arguments have been quoted to hoodwink large sections of public in socialist regimes, they have also been utilised in capitalist regimes. I think Bush’s Patriot Act in capitalist USA for one, entails suspension of individual rights for the sake of the ‘larger’ good of society. Nowhere did Marx or Engels write anything that wud justify such behavior on the part of a socialist govt.
My point is that such a dastardly act of duping poor farmers is just that, a dastardly act of duping .. I see neither reason for nor evidence to give this act a capitalist or socialist hue.