Faced with endless opposition filibuster on the Land Acquisition Bill, the Narendra Modi government is shifting strategy to back Plan B: allowing states to legislate their own land laws.

Faced with endless opposition filibuster on the Land Acquisition Bill, the Narendra Modi government is shifting strategy to back Plan B: allowing states to legislate their own land laws. At the Niti Aayog meeting yesterday (15 July), Finance Minister Arun Jaitley indicated that the centre will approve laws enacted by "states which want to develop fast.".

He and his boss should take this battle to its logical conclusion: let the BJP states enact versions of the centre's Land Acquisition Bill and let Congress states live with the UPA's version. Since Sonia Gandhi and her son want to make the Land Bill and ego-cum-ideological issue, Modi should take the battle to their camp by doing exactly what Jaitley hinted at.

Under article 254(2) of the constitution the centre has the power to allow states to over-ride central legislation on subjects in the concurrent list within their own territories. This means Rajasthan can legislate its own land laws if the president okays it. The central law, though, will remain active where states do not legislate a law of their own and/or fail to get the centre's nod.

Actually, Plan B should really have been Plan A for the Modi government, which professes faith in competitive federalism. The only purpose its own Land Bill served was to provide a way out of the UPA's regressive land bill that distorts the land market and makes land acquisitions prohibitively painful and prolonged. However, even assuming its own bill had been passed, it should still give states the right to pass their own bills.

The Congress will be smirking over the Modi government's likely defeat or retreat over the Land Bill. It has allowed politics to defeat a development agenda but now it should ponder over the Modi government's political response. What if the Modi government clears all land bills passed by BJP states and blocks those brought by Congress-ruled states? Under article 254(2) this is entirely possible.

At 15 June's Niti Aayog session, the Congress party enforced a boycott. It is now entirely fair for the BJP-ruled states to meet separately and enact their own laws and give development a head start. It is worth noting that all industrial states, especially those that will play host to the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), are ruled by the BJP (Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra). Only Delhi itself is out of BJP control but the rest of the corridor can be completed quickly. The corridor can end just outside Arvind Kejriwal's door.

Once the BJP-ruled states kick off their plans, the chances are Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Punjab, and Odisha may be willing to change their own laws. Modi should help them. The issue is not uniformity of laws, but whether states can find their own equilibrium and balance between protecting farmers' property rights, the need for fair compensation, and the inevitable need for land, especially for infrastructure and new urban projects.

It is time for Modi to turn the political tables on the Congress by empowering and goading BJP states to lead the growth pack. He should challenge the Congress to make the UPA's land laws work in Congress-ruled states, and may the best policies win.

It would be a fair battle of ideologies and it is worth having this fight. Modi should get his flock of BJP chief ministers together and get them to act new land laws. Possibly labour laws too. It is time for Delhi to make competitive federalism a reality.