Innovative and inclusive land pooling scheme for developing a sustainable new capital city in Andhra Pradesh (AMARAVATI), India
Sreedhar Cherukuri, Raghu Kesavan, John Kher Kaw, I.U.B. Reddy, Fen Wei
Land pooling is a form of land assembly instrument that is being implemented in cities around the world, wherein the land parcels owned by individuals or group of owners are assembled by transfer of ownership rights according to a designated land pooling policy, which later transfers the ownership of the part of land back to the landowners for undertaking development for such areas. In India, the Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) undertook one of the largest land pooling exercises for developing the state’s greenfield capital city. The overall extent of the city is 217 km2 (about 54,000 acres) including about 15,000 acres of public land. The GoAP took the approach of assembling the private land through an innovative and inclusive Land Pooling Scheme (LPS), the largest of its scale in India and introduced through a formal legislation. The LPS is designed to ensure that affected people are not just passive recipients of compensation, but rather that they become direct beneficiaries of the increased value of their land as it is incorporated into the urban landscape. The Go AP is leveraging on the land value capture potential in Amaravati to benefit landowners from the potential increase in the land value that will result from the development of the capital city. Moreover, in what is the most innovative part of the scheme, landowners contributing land under the LPS become stakeholders in the future development of the City by being able to reside there. Through the allotment of returnable plots, rural landowners remain as owners of land in the new city and continue to benefit from the potential increase of their plot values. The aggregated expected value of the urbanized returnable plots, annuities, as well as other social development benefits that participants receive under the LPS, exceeds the replacement value of agricultural land assets contributed under the scheme. In return for contributing their land, landowners participating in the LPS are entitled to a combination of benefits: (i) returnable plots of urban land within the Amaravati City perimeter as per table below (up to about 30% of original land contributed); (ii) annuity payments for a period of ten years; and other benefits extended (including landless families) including pensions, loan waivers, education, health, subsidized canteens, wage employment, skill development and so on (iii) other benefits extended to those dependent on the agricultural lands like labourers, artisans, etc. Given the significant urban development challenges facing India, the application of land pooling in Amaravati Capital City and the Bank’s support for the project will serve as a valuable learning experience on how this innovative land use planning instrument can be explored in the Bank’s engagement in other countries in the region and beyond.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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