Rahul Mehta Gandhinagar LsCandidate

Be Mumbai or Delhi or Ahmedabad or ANY city in India (and may be whole world), the land prices are artificially kept high by banking-political using zoning laws, and keeping FSI low and using so called environmentalists to create a false hue and cry each time an acre of land is used for mining, industrial , residential or commercial area.

In India, less than 0.2% land is used for mining !!! And less than 2.7% land is used by some 8000 urban areas, and less than 1% are used for industries. So if all residential, commercial, industrial and mining land is added, it is less than 5% of total land used in India !!! (pls see page-6 of dolr.nic . in/dolr/downloads/PDFs/Draft%20National%20Land%20Utilisation%20Policy%20%28July%202013%29.pdf ) . Further, India has population of 120 crore , and say India has 40 crore families. And even if each family is to be given 1 house of 1000 sqft land , then also land needed will be 40 crore * 1000 sqft = 40,000 crore sqft = 40,000 sqkm = just 1.2% of total Indian land !! IOW, by converting just 1% of existing agricultural land into non-agricultural land, the land supply urban areas can be doubled and land prices across cities in India can be brought to a very low values.

But this doesnt happen. Because the land owning mafia --- Ministers, IAS, elitemen etc do NOT remove so called green belt restrictions from areas around city.

Solution I propose is to impose wealth tax of 1% of land value above market value of 250 sqft . This will reduce hoarding. And next step should be to convert double the area of every city by adding the land adjacent to it and converting this land into non-agricultural land. Less than 4% of agricultural land will go. But this will bring down land prices in urban area to an extent that over 60% of Indian family will be able to afford a small flat in city in India at mere construction cost. The only persons who would lose are land hoarders.