A Perspective on Land-Use Planning for Eastern India

Of all the natural resources endowed upon mankind, soil-cover on Mother Earth has been one of the most important basic resources, which plays a strategic role in determining the living standards of human beings. Given the multitude of possible uses of land and the fact that often there are possibilities of emergence of a new use out-competing the existing uses and consequent conflicts, land-use planning is to be considered an important exercise. The present paper is an attempt to provide a perspective on the multitude of uses land is put to in the eastern states of India, i.e., West Bengal, Orissa and Bihar. It tries to argue that plans should involve minimum reliance on centralised decision-making bodies and their budgetary provisions, on the one hand, and nothing should be left to be decided by the unconstrained functioning of the existing market forces, on the other. Self-governing and self-sustaining decentralised user group institutions at local levels with appropriate higher tier organisations should perform the land-use planning exercise and look into its implementation as part of their regular business.