Who’s afraid of the bulldozer

If top leadership in Congress and BJP merely listed their legislators who either own unauthorised properties or are in the business, they will know what the current ruckus is all about.

Buildings in a state of semi-demolition (representational image) | Photo: Praveen Jain

So now we know what exactly it takes for our politicians to make common cause, sinking their differences, prejudices, competitive instinct, everything. No, it is not cricket (who’d say that after the Bengali revolt over Sourav Ganguly, anyway?) or war. It is real estate. In our two biggest cities, Mumbai and Delhi, politicians of all persuasions are now getting together to confront the judiciary on the issue of such vital national importance as clearing unauthorised constructions.

The state assembly in Maharashtra has been discussing ways to amend the law to let encroachers in the predominantly Sindhi refugee suburb of Ulhasnagar to carry on living in their unauthorised properties, overturning a high court verdict that these be demolished forthwith. The political effort to block these demolitions comes despite the fact that one of the government’s own committees (headed by Nand Lal, widely acknowledged to be an upright officer) has documented in detail how local land mafias, in cahoots with municipal officials, have broken every law in the book to build an almost entirely illegal colony. Never mind also that the leading light of this unholy alliance was none else than the strong man, Pappu Kalani.

But even this is small compared to what is going on in Delhi. For almost a week, as municipal bulldozers and hammers went about gingerly demolishing a few unauthorised properties under high court orders, legislators of the Congress and BJP got together to press for a new law to give amnesty for all such illegal buildings and for amendments to the new master plan that would presumably allow all our residential areas to be turned into bazaars. So desperate has the political class in Delhi become, it even passed a resolution (unanimously, of course) in the assembly, asking the Municipal Corporation to stop demolitions. And when they didn’t, they served a privilege notice on the municipal commissioner. Never mind the high court orders, never mind the fact that the MCD is an autonomous body functioning under an Act of Parliament and not subordinate to the state assembly.

You do not expect our political class to respect, or even understand, constitutional and moral issues in their business. The little hesitation they may have had in the past is also now gone, as exemplified so shockingly by the way they have all got together to pass the law providing for reservations in private, unaided institutions just to get around a Supreme Court judgment. Many of them, particularly in the BJP, but even some in the Congress, would tell you off the record that this wasn’t the right thing to do. That this sets a precedent that somebody will misuse in future. But what to do, it was a question of votes.

Once our legislators get over that old hesitation on using the force of brute numbers to counter the judiciary, there is no lakshman rekha left. That is why they feel bold enough to pass a resolution in Delhi assembly to ask another elected legislative body (MCD) to stop following the orders of the high court. How ridiculous, how preposterous, you might say. But this is entirely in conformity with their beliefs. They are not fighting for the poor, or for principles. They are doing all this to bestow on the Capital’s well-to-do the power to break every building and zoning law in the book. The truth is, this is not about votes. After all, the buildings on the demolition list now are just around 18,000 and even if you count, say, five votes on an average for each affected family it is no more than a lakh of votes in an electorate of nearly 90 lakh.

They are fighting, instead, to protect their own, very special, privilege to break the property laws at will. They need that privilege because property, and its misuse, has now become one of the main sources of income for our politicians. Not only do they break these laws merrily for their own properties (as an investigative series in this paper (The Indian Express) will soon show you) but also because so many of them are involved with the property mafias that enable you to get around these laws. If the top leadership of the Congress and the BJP in Delhi merely did a listing of their legislators who either own unauthorised properties, or are involved in the property business, they will know what this current ruckus, in the name of aam aadmi, is all about.

Have you sometimes wondered why reform in some areas of our infrastructure proceeds much faster than in others? You will see a clear pattern there. Anything that does not involve real estate, moves much faster. Telecom is a good example. Anything that involves land takes much longer. One of the greatest causes of delay in the national highway project is land acquisition. The Mumbai airport modernisation has run into the challenge of clearing the land – it desperately needs for expansion – of encroachments.

Work in Delhi’s Commonwealth Games village has not begun yet because the Uttar Pradesh government, which owns a small part of the land to be acquired on Delhi’s side of the Yamuna, is loath to part with it. You go around the country listing delayed or blocked infrastructure projects and you will find this one, common thread: property. In a reforming economy, licences, quotas, FDI clearances, phone connections, power allocations have all moved out of the realm of the politicians’ discretionary powers. Their clout is entirely intact in only two areas, property and policing. And they are loath to see it diminish.

That is why the two most difficult reforms in India – and for once the Left is not opposed to these – are to do with policing and property. One of the very few powers a politician can use unabashedly and without any accountability, is his police. He can jail his opponent, get journalists thrashed, and make sure his own go scot-free even for major crimes. The second is property. This is why Gowda hated the IT industry so much; IT firms did not have to go to politicians like him for anything. Then he figured there was one thing they had to come to him for: land. That is when he hit back at Narayana Murthy.

Now you know why our politicians will not reform our property laws, modernise the land records, cut stamp duties and do other simple things to bring the real estate business out of the grip of the black economy. Now you know why even a pro-reform Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra would not abolish the urban land ceiling law, which most other major states have done. It won’t, because politicians are desperate to hang on to the few discretionary powers that remain. They have exploited these powers to build massive personal fortunes – in cash and, of course, in properties. That is why it is so natural for them to close ranks when threatened by perfectly sensible high court orders in Mumbai and Delhi.

I cannot conclude this without telling you my favourite real estate-and-politics story. Nawaz Sharif once insisted I travel from Islamabad to Lahore on the eight-lane motorway he had built and was so proud of. He even sent me his newest Mercedes so I could really enjoy the ride. The motorway was wonderful, but it was surprising to see how empty it was. So, I asked the driver, from the prime minister’s retinue obviously, the reason why nobody seemed to be using such a wonderful highway. “Because,” he said, “it is nearly a hundred kilometres longer than the Grand Trunk Road built by Sher Shah Suri more than five centuries ago.” And the old driver explained why. He said the moment Mian saab (Nawaz Sharif) announced the plans to build his dream highway, all his key partymen from Punjab made sure it passed their villages. Meanwhile they went and bought large parcels of land en route. These then had to be acquired at exaggerated prices, fixed by themselves obviously, and so what should have been a brilliant idea actually became a white elephant. You would think our systems, institutions, checks and balances are good enough to ensure such scandals do not happen. But the current outcry by the political classes (irrespective of party affiliations) against high court’s orders to merely observe the established law of the land makes you wonder if anything will stop our politician, or whether he would stop at anything when it comes to the one thing he values most of all, real estate. It is time, senior leaders of the Congress and BJP intervened and put an end to this. This noise has nothing to do with the poor, or their votes. It is all about preserving stolen personal wealth.