A novel idea for land acquisition

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM/KOZHIKDE: Prof Abhilash Nair from the Finance faculty at IIMK, who presented the concept of  development bond-linked scheme for land acquisition to the council of ministers  at the workshop on Thursday, said: “At present, we are working on a sample data in association with the state government. We will be interacting with the secretaries of the relevant departments regarding the data on land acquisition required by the state.”  Nair  is  working along with Prof Saji Gopinath, Operations Research and QuantitativeMethods, on the project.“It is a novel idea. It can only be treated as a  preliminary step to address a vexed issue. The government has to think it over in detail,” said Rural Development Minister K C Joseph. “The inhibition of land owners to surrender their holding  for development projects now is mainly due to the ever-escalating land price. Details such as the cut-off period for allotting additional bonds commensurate with future appreciation on land acquired have to be looked into,”  he said.