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The Government of Bangladesh gazetted on September 21, 2017 a new land acquisition law titled The Acquisition and Requisition of Immovable Property Act (2017) replacing the 1982 Ordinance II. It was done, as per the Gazette notification, to meet the changing needs and requirements of the day.
Government policymakers, academics and development practitioners all were aware that the 1982 Ordinance was totally inadequate to deal with the consequences of development projects and to safeguard those affected by this draconian 1982 Ordinance. People forced from their lands and homes without adequate, timely and fair compensation were made vulnerable to impoverishment. The compensation paid under the Ordinance was less than replacement value for assets acquired for project construction. There was no provision for relocation and resettlement of the affected and displaced people. The extreme hardships of relocation were not recognized. There was no provision for income or livelihood support in it despite the loss of some and/or all of their sources of income and livelihood.
Unfortunately, the Act of 2017 also fails to focus on project-affected persons and repeats the same old flaws. Rather than learning from the past and the very rich experiences from the Jamuna Bridge project and other major infrastructure projects such as the Bhairab Bridge project, and the Padma Bridge project currently under construction, the newly adopted law is tilted against the landowners and other affected people and clearly omits any reference to resettlement needs and income and livelihood support and restoration. Indeed, the Act of 2017 amply demonstrates an example of "lessons not learned" from past experiences.
The Jamuna Bridge Project was the first major infrastructure project with a large resettlement management programme. The resettlement programme, built on additional compensation support, resettlement of the affected people at project costs, and other social development activities as per the project co-financiers' involuntary resettlement guidelines, was successfully implemented with many innovations and examples of "good practices" in resettlement. As such, the Jamuna project remains to date a "model" and a source of reference for policy and practices for projects funded by all international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the Asian Development Bank, European Investment Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency and the World Bank.
Since the 1982 Ordinance fell short of the requirements of IFIs involuntary resettlement safeguard policies, the Bangladesh government and project proponent agencies - for example, Bangladesh Bridge Authority, Bangladesh Railways, Bangladesh Water Development Board, and Roads and Highways Department - have in the past adopted project-specific ad-hoc measures to "bridge" the policy gaps for project financing. This was a very standard response to policy gaps. The overall goal of adopting these additional project-specific measures was to ensure that the project-affected persons could regain and/or improve their standard of living in post-resettlement period. This has worked by and large well in all IFIs-funded projects.
But projects funded domestically by Bangladesh government used the 1982 Ordinance creating a "double-standard" in the country - one for IFIs with provisions for replacement value for land and assets, and resettlement and livelihood support, and the other, with meagre compensation for lost assets and finally, forced out without alternative provisions for housing and resettlement. In IFIs-funded projects, the additional support and project benefits helped ease to a large extent the trauma in the transition to resettlement and reconstruction of homes and communities, including support to the poor and vulnerable groups, gender equity and social development.
In this backdrop, it was expected that any new land law would positively draw on the experiences and thus respect the rights of all affected persons and ensure that they are treated with dignity and assisted in a fair and equitable manner irrespective of titles, gender and ethnicity.
For the Ministry of Land, the enactment of the Act of 2017 marks a huge "missed" opportunity for correcting the old flaws. Given the importance of land and resettlement in the development context in Bangladesh, it is a big surprise that the ministry moved with the draft law without adequate inputs from the stakeholders, including resettlement practitioners in the country. There was no consultation or meetings with the cross-section of people or the members of the civil society. The only information dissemination was a web posting comparing the 1982 Ordinance and changes proposed in the 2017 Act.
A careful review of the comparison shows simple "tweaking" rather than any serious efforts at bringing changes to address the development needs of the day. The only major policy change is the enhanced rates for acquired lands from 50 to 200 per cent over and above the market value (defined as average value of sales in the area of the same type of land over the last 12 months) in case of public purpose projects, and 300 per cent for land acquired for private sector projects.
The new law could have benefited from the draft National Policy on Involuntary Resettlement and Rehabilitation, which was prepared in 2010 under ADB Technical Assistance to remove the double standard and minimise the risks of impoverishment of those displaced by development projects. The land ministry could integrate the recommended resettlement policies and principles in the new law to make it more acceptable to all stakeholders, including IFIs.
It is vitally important to recognise that land and resettlement are two sides of the same coin. Thus, it is not possible to de-link resettlement from land acquisition. The Act of 2017 focuses on expropriation only and does not at all address resettlement needs of people displaced by acquisition for domestically-funded development projects.
For Bangladesh today, a combined or integrated land and resettlement law is very urgently required. Many countries in the region, such as India and Indonesia have already adopted similar land and resettlement laws to reduce adverse impacts on landowners and inhabitants, as well as to ensure sustainable resettlement and development.
The writer is an international development specialist and Advisory Professor at the National Research Centre for Resettlement, Hohai University, Nanjing, China.