• What was their grouse?

The main problem is: we are talking about the majority and no nation can progress which excludes the majority. Whether you are left or right, democrat or dictator, exclusion will sooner or later destabilise you.

• Have you studied India?

Not really.

• Much of the current economic debate here is tied to land acquisition for development through special economic zones, industrial belts and so on. A lot of ideas and critiques are being thrown up and policies are being drafted and redrafted. What has been your experience in other countries?

The question is that if you have a decent system of property rights that are fungible, where people can freely decide what they are going to do with their assets, the price mechanism will define whether that land will be bought or not bought depending on various things, including the price. The whole principle behind a market economy that works is that you do a transaction because it allows you to pass a resource or an asset from its lower to higher value.

So the first thing is that land would be purchased only when you have got something better to do with it, in which case it is good because you will do something more productive and it will help generate more employment. On the other hand, the person who is sitting on that land or owns it would also have made a gain.

... contd.