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Land Resources - Manish Jain - 08-06-2016

Land is a fundamental resource for urban / rural development. The availability of urban/developed land is finite at any given point of time and it faces competing demand for its multiple uses. Every land parcel is also unique with inherent topographic, natural features, and man-made facilities in or around it. Such uniqueness delivers an inherent local monopoly power to the landowner.

The definition of land used to be: "a physical entity in terms of its topography and spatial nature"; this is often associated with an economic value, expressed in price per hectare at ownership transfer.
According to The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, the expression “land” includes benefits to arise out of land, and things attached to the earth or permanently fastened to anything attached to the earth.
Land is the medium on which the entire superstructure of human settlement is created and under which a lot of infrastructure find their place. Planning of the use of land leads to socio-economic and physical development of urban and rural areas. However it is a scarce commodity as its supply is limited and it cannot be mass created.
The (Draft) National Land Utilisation Policy of India, 2013
·         Land, a valuable and finite resource
·         Development is inevitable, it demands land
·         Use of land must be judicious
NLUP mentions that land is required for development of essential infrastructure and for urbanisation, while at the same time there is also a need to protect land under environmental sensitive zones and land which provides ecosystem services. Farmers and food security makes it imperative to protect land for agriculture. Further, the need to preserve natural, cultural and historical areas requires land protection.
It is, therefore, most essential to ensure that utilisation of the available land is judicious and in the best interest of the community through the instrument of development plans. Thus, there is requirement for cohesive land use planning for development and well-judged allocation of land.
Land, being a scare resource particularly in urban areas, plays a key role in shaping the physical infrastructure in any society. Limited availability of land in urban areas is typically a constraint (constraint indicates binding) in designing any new infrastructure. The high premium associated with land and the related rehabilitation and resettlement issues, together with the fact that use of a piece of land for an urban infrastructure project prevent opportunities for future use of the land for any other use, further strengthens the case for efficient land use in the design of infrastructure projects.
Raising capital to finance urban infrastructure is a challenge. One solution is to ‘unlock’ urban land values—such as by selling public lands to capture the gains in value created by investment in infrastructure projects. Landbased financing techniques are playing an increasingly important role in financing urban infrastructure in developing countries. They complement other capital financing  approaches such as local government borrowing, and can provide price signals that make the urban land market more efficient.
Urban land can be broadly distinguished into public and private land. While public land caters to common uses such as roads, transport, and open spaces for community recreation, private land is exclusively for the use of its owner/lessee. Inadequacy of land in public domain, or congestion, therein reduces the value of land in private domain, while land put to public use (such as roads, parks, and waterfronts) to remove congestion or improve amenities can increase the value of private land.
 Urban land in India is largely owned by private landowners. Such land, if required for public purposes, has to be acquired by paying monetary compensation. There are various ways in which land/land-based instruments could be used for achieving public infrastructure development. Some of the options are

1.     Land Acquisition-based Options
                                    i.      LAND EXPROPRIATION
                                  ii.      LARGE SCALE/BULK LAND ACQUISITION (LAND BANKING)
2.      Master Plan-based Options
                              i.            INCENTIVE ZONING
                            ii.            TRANSFERABLE DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS
3.       Land Assembly-based Approach
                              i.            PLOT RECONSTITUTION
                            ii.            LAND POOLING/READJUSTMENT
4.       Public–Private Partnership Models
                           i.      GUIDED LAND DEVELOPMENT (GLD)
                         ii.      JOINT LAND DEVELOPMENT
While communist economies dogmatically believe in common ownership of land, in the market-based economies it is widely believed that the market value of land belonging to an individual increases primarily because of the efforts and investments by others, particularly in the urban context. This happens when the urban infrastructure is put in place or improves by the choice of others to urbanize an area. The gains in the value are considered as ‘unearned income’ or ‘windfall benefits’. It has been argued that such unearned income should come back to the community.
 The alternatives for raising financial resources from land can be classified into four main categories:
1.       Impact fee or development charge,
2.       Area-linked development charge,
3.       Betterment levy or land value increase tax (LVIT), and
4.       Sale of development rights


Land has many functions

• It is the basis for many life support systems, through the production of biomass that provides food, fodder, fibre, fuel. timber and other biotic materials for human use, either directly or through animal husbandry including aquaculture and inland and coastal fishery (the production function).
• Land is the basis of terrestrial biodiversity by providing the biological habitats and gene reserves for plants, animals and micro-organisms, above and below ground (the biotic environmental function).
• Land and its use are a source and sink of greenhouse gases and form a co-determinant of the global energy balance - reflection, absorption and transformation of radiative energy of the sun, and of the global hydrological cycle (the climate regulative function).
• Land regulates the storage and flow of surface and groundwater resources, and influences their quality (the hydrologic function)
• Land is a storehouse of raw materials and minerals for human use (the storage function).
• Land has a receptive, filtering, buffering and transforming function of hazardous compounds (the waste and pollution control function).
  • Land provides the physical basis for human settlements, industrial plants and social activities such as sports and recreation (the living space function).
• Land is a medium to store and protect the evidence of the cultural history of mankind, and a source of information on past climatic conditions and past land uses (the archive or heritage function).
• Land provides space for the transport of people, inputs and produce, and for the movement of plants and animals between discrete areas of natural ecosystems (the connective space function).