Rahul Mehta Gandhinagar LsCandidate
Reducing corruption in agriculture to non-agriculture (NA) conversion
In order to do construction on a piece of land, several clearances need to be obtained. One is conversion to "non-agricultural" land, if land is not already non-agricultural. This clearance is full of corruption across India. And also, decision to expand city limit is mired with corruption. It is often the case that Ministers, IAS, IPS , judges etc will purchase or get power of attorney over huge plots outside city limit just before city is to be expanded, and then they expand the city limits and seel same land at 10 times the price. The prices becomes burden on the second buyer and loss for the existing buyer. And it also creates speculation
I propose following law-draft to reduce corruption in NA-conversion.
1. All private plots under existing municipal limits should be given NA and taxed at NA rates
2. Increase area of every existing urban are by 20%, and make every plot inside the area as non agricultural
3. And then increase the area of each urban center at rate of 1% a year, OR increase in its population, whichever is higher.
4. Now how to take away discretionary power of officers\Ministers in decide which areas around city should be made non-agricultural and which areas should be kept agricultural? Use step-5 to step-8
5. Using voter list of dec-2013, take the persons who are living in urban area. And calculate center of city based on their addresses.
6. Make a square aligned with North-South-East-West around that center equal to existing area of city
7. Do not remove any area outside square.
8. Now say if city area has to be increased by x%, then add areas not in city but in square so that new city is closer to becoming a square. The new area added should be of size 200 meters * 200 meters , and should be started from North-West-most available block going Eastward and Southward. Add exactly as many blocks as needed so that area increases by x%. The last block will be odd size.
9. If there is any river, then city may or need not skip the block and take next available block
10. All blocks added in the city will have NA permission without asking
Now pls see my previous status at facebook . com / mehtarahulc/posts/10151875578341922 and facebook . com /mehtarahulc/posts/10151875448926922 ,. They explain that the shortage of urban land in India is artificial. We have only 2.65% of total land as urban , while UK has some 12% of its total land as urban land. The biggest reason why industries are now growing fast is because of shortage of urban land. So on ASAP basis, size of all urban centers should be doubled by adding land around them using above method I mentioned. And each year, their area should be increased by 2% of existing urban area. Now wealth tax of 1% on land value above 250 sqft will be must to avert artificial shortage. I have explained that in above two links and also in chap-25 of my book at tinyurl . com / rahulmehta2 . (pls download that book)