Public Wealth Wiki

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Public Wealth Wiki

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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. 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 ₹1340 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 only taken 20% of the mineral wealth of the country in the account for arriving at the number. In addition, the undiscovered public wealth of India is yet to be categorised and valued. Except for defence 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.

1.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.