Public Wealth Wiki
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.[1]
| Resource | Value (₹ lakh crore) | Value per household (₹) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surplus Public Land | 340 | 13,60,000 | |
| Natural Resources | 1,001 | 40,04,000 | |
| Hydrocarbon | 302 | 12,08,000 | |
| Mines & Minerals | 678 | 27,12,000 | |
| Radioactive Substances | 21 | 84,000 | |
| Value of Dhan Vapsi Fund as on February 2018 | ₹ 1,341 lakh crore | ₹ 53,64,000 | |
| Durtion Dhan Vapsi Fund 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.[2] 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[3]. 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 [4]. 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.
Contents
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.[5]
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.[6] 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[7] justified state monopoly over mineral resources in his seminal work Arthasastra.[8] 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[9] 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”[10] 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[11], 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.”[12] 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".[13] Natural resources belong to the people, but the State legally owns them on our behalf.
Public Wealth of India
Public wealth is the sum of the public assets collectively owned by all citizens of the country. The government is the manager of this public wealth. It comprises of public commercial assets under the government, such as various natural resources, public sector undertakings (PSUs) and commercial real estate. The term public consists of wealth owned by all the levels of government namely, central, state, and local levels. Public assets do not comprise public property, which refers to assets and resources that are available to the entire public for use, such as roads and bridges, public parks, protected wildlife sanctuaries. Public wealth consists of assets or operations generating an income that could be given some kind of market value if properly structured and used. Typical examples include:
- minerals
- real estate such as Lutyens Bungalow Zone (New Delhi), Navy Nagar (Mumbai)
- central and state public sector enterprises
- financial institutions
- land banks available with various state land development authorities and in special economic zones (SEZs)
- land and buildings under the government for provision of non-essential functions [14].
The total public wealth recorded from publicly available information is ₹ 1,341 lakh crore (₹ 53,64,000 per household [15]) as on October 2018.
Land
Land among capital, labour and entrepreneurial skills is one of the four fundamental resources that determines the size and productivity of an economy.
Land in India is suffering from an artificial scarcity created out of a high cost of acquisition from excessive regulations. Major urban land parcels are lying vacant and unused locking valuable land available in the market.
The following calculation points out there is ample land available in the country –
If one places 1.2 billion people in four-person homes of 1000 square feet each, and two workers of the family into office/factory space of 400 square feet, this requires roughly 1 per cent of India's land area assuming an FSI of 1. [16]
Yet the price of land in a city like Mumbai or Delhi is much more compared to cities like New Jersey.
The government owned land is part of the problem. An estimate holds that governments own as much as __ per cent of total available land in the country [IDF report pick the number/ idea]. This keeps away productive land from falling into private hands for generating revenue and employment. Government bodies like Bombay Port trust own as much as ___ acre of prime property in Mumbai. Bombay port Trust has no land records for ____ amount of property owned by them.
Table 2 and Table 3 point out the surplus land available with various governmnet bodies owned by central and state governments.
| # | Body Name | Area (acre) | Value (₹ crore) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Air India | NA[17] | 8,000 |
| 2 | Railways | 6,407 | 2,70,406 |
| 3 | Defence | 296,914 | 24,53,664 |
| 4 | Department of Posts | 1,146 | 366 |
| 5 | Delhi Development Authority | 5,675 | 1,00,000 |
- ↑ Article 297, Constitution of India, 1950
- ↑ Kundu, S. (2014). A Note on the Estimated Value of Government-Owned Natural Resources in India. New Delhi: Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability. Retrieved November 10, 2017, from http://www.cbgaindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Estimated-Value-of-Government-Owned-Natural-Resources-in-India.pdf
- ↑ Assuming that an average Indian family has 5 members. That is 20 percentage points above the average household size in India as per the 2011 Census.
- ↑ Debroy, Bibek. "All the Sarkar's Land." The Indian Express. November 13, 2015. Accessed March 22, 2018. http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/all-the-sarkars-land/.
- ↑ Article 39 (b) states – “The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing ... (b) that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good.”
- ↑ Indian Bureau of Mines. (2011). Mineral Royalties. Nagpur: Indian Bureau of Mines.
- ↑ Ancient Indian teacher, philosopher, economist, jurist, and royal advisor, 371-283 BC.
- ↑ Supra, Note 5.
- ↑ The power of “Eminent Domain” – Forceful acquisition or requisition of property by the government for public purpose.
- ↑ Bhattacharyya, D. (2015). History of Eminent Domain in Colonial Thought and Legal Practice. Economic & Political Weekly, L (50), 46.
- ↑ Cultural or natural resource accessible to all members of the society.
- ↑ Centre for Public Interest Litigation and others v. Union of India and others, (2012) 3 SCC 1
- ↑ M. C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath (1997)1 SCC 388
- ↑ Non-essential functions are those that are not directly connected with the maintenance of law and order, and national security.
- ↑ No. of households – 25 crore (125 crore population [Census 2011] / 5 [size of a household as per GoI])
- ↑ Shah A, Economic Times ‘’ Why real estate is a bad long term investment’’
- ↑ Information on the total land held by Air India is not known, however its approximate value is made available in the financial reports
