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India has enormous public wealth. This is the wealth that is owned by the people and controlled by the government. The Union, State and local governments in India own massive amount of wealth directly or through various public-sector enterprises, ownership of mineral resources, control of airwaves, and ownership of marine resources within territorial waters of India.

Break up of Dhan Vapasi Fund

Resource	Value (₹ lakh crore)	Value per household (₹)
Surplus Public Land	340	13,60,000
Hydrocarbon	302	12,08,000
Mines & Minerals	678	27,12,000
Radioactive Substances	21	84,000
Total Natural Resources	1,001	40,04,000
Value of Dhan Vapasi Fund as on February 2018	1,341	53,64,000
Duration Dhan Vapasi can Last	53 Years

Only the mineral resources of India have been estimated to be worth more than ₹5000 lakh crores of wealth according to analysts. This sum is equivalent to over ₹40 lakh per person in India. Apart from that, there are thousands of acres of land parcels controlled by the government. By our estimates, the known public wealth of India is over ₹1590 lakh crore, which equals to over ₹50 lakh per Indian family. This figure is from a very conservative estimate of the wealth of the people. We have taken only 25% of the mineral wealth of the country to arrive at this figure. In addition, the undiscovered public wealth of India is yet to be categorised and valued. Except for Defense and Railways, most other ministries and departments of the Union Government do not even know how much of land and resources they own . While some of the public resources are being used to support essential government services, most of them are lying idle across the nation due to gross misuse and poor management.

All governments in India, be it central, state, or local, have contributed to the degradation of resources belonging to the people. When millions of our compatriots live in abject poverty, such a situation is unacceptable. It is important to note that even though public wealth includes common resources such as roads, government offices, airports, etc. we have not included those resources in the Public Wealth Wiki.

Background

Historically, the ownership of public wealth belonged to the kings in India and most other parts of the world by the invocation of the divine rights or through means of coercion. Presently, the rights over the public wealth belong to the democratically elected Indian government, which is obligated under the constitution to use this wealth for public good.

Ancient India

In ancient India, even though the Kings represented the State, the mineral wealth did not vest in them. They were only entitled to receive the taxes or revenue form the production or extraction of minerals. Simultaneously, the ownership of other public resources such as forests and water bodies were shared by the community which relied on them. However, the ownership of mineral resources gradually transferred to the state beginning with the empire of Chandragupta Maurya, particularly as Kautilya justified state monopoly over mineral resources in his seminal work Arthasastra. The ownership of resources other than minerals, such as forests and water bodies, continued to be with the kings or the community in one form or the other across India till the arrival of the British East India Company.

British India

The British East India Company started using the power of the state to acquire private property for public use as early as 1824 in Bengal and other parts of India. The Bengal Regulation I of 1824 allowed the Company to obtain private properties by paying a fair price for construction of “roads, canals, or other public purposes” when the Company only had limited rights related to taxation and trade as per the powers bestowed on it by the British Crown. Thus, all acquisitions conducted under the Bengal regulation and similar laws in other parts of India were patently illegal until 1857 when the British Crown took over control of India. Following that, the British acquired most of the natural and mineral resources of India; either by acquisition with meagre compensation or by coercion. Concurrently with the British rule, different princely states in India adopted similar policies with respect to the ownership of public wealth. While some states adopted the state’s ownership of public wealth, others bestowed the ownership to the community. Some states neglected the issue altogether and adopted a non-property attitude towards public wealth and kept it as commons, particularly in case of forests and water bodies.

Modern India

The Constitution of India bestows the ownership and control over using resources is in hands of the central and state governments under various articles. However, individuals and corporations can make use of the public resources under a license from the government. Since independence, there has been no concrete effort by the central or the state governments to define public wealth or regulate the same in a meaningful manner, instead the governments have chosen to deal with the issue on an ad-hoc basis. Noting the same, the Hon’ble Supreme Court, while announcing the judgment on 2G scam in 2012, observed – “no comprehensive legislation has been enacted to generally define natural resources and a framework for their protection.” Given the constitutional provisions, the Indian state is the trustee and legal owner of the public wealth of India under the doctrine of public trust, which "enjoins upon the Government to protect the resources for the enjoyment of the public rather than to permit their use for private ownership or commercial purposes". Natural resources belong to the people, but the State legally owns them on our behalf.

Public Wealth of India

Land

Land is an essential resource in the economic life of a nation. Without land, no economic activity can take place. Land is a limited resource, we cannot create more land. The term 'land' includes all physical elements in the wealth of a nation bestowed by nature; such as climate, environment, fields, forests, minerals, mountains, lakes, streams, seas, and animals.[14] Given the lack of clear titles and records, no one knows how much land is owned by the government and how much of it remains under encroachment. Only marginal progress has been made on that front in recent years by the Union Government. The Ministry of Defence is one of the biggest landholder in India. It holds of 17.31 lakh acres of land. Of this, approximately 2 lakh acres are inside the 62 Cantonments located in various parts of the country. 15.3 lakh acres of Defence land are occupied by Military Stations, Air Force Stations, Naval Bases, Defence Research and Development Organisation labs, firing ranges, camping grounds, etc. Among the three Services, Army occupies almost 80 per cent of the land. A lot of this land is vacant and unused. As per the CAG Report, the Ministry has 81,000 acres of surplus land nationwide.[15]

Surplus Public Land Under Central Government

#	Body Name	Value (₹ crore)
1	Air India	8,000
2	Railways	2,31,665
3	Defence	4,04,685
4	Department of Posts	366
5	DDA	1,00,000
6	Heavy Engineering Corporation	14,560
7	Directiorate General of Human Resource Development	2.2
8	Hindustan Machines and Tools Ltd.	INR
9	Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL)	INR
10	Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd	INR
11	National Textile Corporation	INR
12	Port Trusts	INR
Total		₹ 759,278.2 crore

Surplus Public Land Under State Governments

#	Body Name	Value (₹ crore)
1	Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board	48,480
2	Greater Ludhiana Area Development Authority	14,848
3	Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board	6,000
4	Gram Sabha Land	5,000
5	State Infrastructure and Industrial Development Corporation of Uttarakahnd Limited	3,988
6	Rajasthan State Industrial Investment and Corporation Limited	2,645
7	Assam Industrial Development Corporation	2,350
8	Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority	1,620
9	Haryana Revenue Department	1,414
10	Haldia Development Authority (West Bengal)	730
11	Ranchi Industrial Area Development Authority	630
12	Chattisgarh State Industrial Development Corporation	314
13	Bihar Industrial Area Development Auhtority	285
14	Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority	150
Total		₹ 88,454 crore

Minerals

Main Article: Minerals

The total value of the mineral resources of the country is estimated to be ₹5000 lakh crore. However, this number is highly conservative. The central or state governments do not have a dedicated database which lists all the resources under their control with the appropriate market values. The number also excludes the unexplored resources and spectrum under control of our governments. The number was calculated by using data available in the public domain by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, a public-policy think tank based in New Delhi. The calculation only includes – i. Stocks of hydrocarbons in the country such as coal, lignite, crude oil, natural gas, etc. and ii. Major mined and mineral resources stock in the country. According to an estimate by Schlumberger in 2015, India holds a minimum of 300 trillion cubic feet (Tfc) of gas and oil resources. An estimate of US Geological Survey reveals that India might be the world's second-largest holder of gas hydrate reserves. The total amount of reserves that India has can be between 300 and 2,100 (Tfc) as per the estimate by Schlumberger in 2015. According to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, the total 4.67 billion cubic meter (BCM) of natural gas was produced by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Oil India Company (OIC) and Private Joint Ventures in the year 2017-18. These companies have been producing natural gas from fields/blocks located in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura. The total balance recoverable reserve of natural gas is about 198 BCM in North-Eastern states.

Special Economic Zones

Main Article: Special Economic Zones

According to Report number 21 of 2014 of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on Performance of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), below are some instances of how the land allotted for SEZs was misused and diverted. This is especially important in the light of the discussion happening around the Land Acquisition Ordinance of the NDA government. Diversion of SEZ land for commercial purposes: 14% of land i.e., out of 39245.56 hectares of land notified in the six States10, 5402.22 hectares was diverted for commercial purposes after de-notification. Many tracts of these lands were acquired invoking the ‘public purpose’ clause. Thus, land acquired was not serving the objectives of the SEZ act. This is one of the fears with the new Land Acquisition Ordinance. How does the Government ensure that the land acquired is not misused by private parties? According to the CAG, out of the 392 notified zones, only 152 have become operational. In various states, the Developers had not commenced investments and the land had been lying idle in their custody for 2 to 7 years.

Methodology

Land values and Floor Space Index

The Floor Space Index (FSI) is the ratio between the area of a covered floor space (built-up area) to the area of that plot on which a building stands. An index of 1 implies that the total covered floor space is 1000 Sq. Ft. on a plot of 1000 Sq. Ft. The Floor Space Index in New Delhi ranges from 1.2 to 3.5 meaning that 1200 to 3500 Sq. Ft. of floor space is available for every 1000 Sq. Ft. plot there. All the value of unused public land is calculated based on the FSI value of 1. The rates for the land have been calculated according to the prevailing rates of rural, semi-urban, and urban land in the country.

Minerals

The estimated values of the mineral resources are based on a detailed study done by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, a think-tank based in New Delhi, in 2014. The author of the report has mentioned that he calculated the value of minerals based on the information from the public domain from various governmental and non-governmental agencies.

Land

The data on the unused public lands was collected by researchers at Free A Billion from authoritative governmental and non-governmental sources. These sources include Parliamentary Questions, data collected by various NGOs and think-tanks, government databases, information available from various Ministries and Departments of the Government of India.

References

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