Tilting at windmills

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Saturday , May 10, 2008 at 2101 hrs Land development, as wind turbine leader Suzlon is discovering in Maharashtra, is confronted with a peculiar problem. Once developed, land—any piece of land—begins to look a lot more valuable to people than it did when it was just a tract of soil. In Satara and Sangli, regions that make little news except when forced into ad campaigns featuring sportsmen from mofussil India, agitated villagers have forced dozens of wind turbines to shut down. This is part of a mass protest against what the villagers allege were unfair land acquisition transactions done with them in the past for the project to be commissioned. They are demanding what they think now, in retrospect, would be fair value for the property on which the turbines stand. As anyone who buys and sells assets can tell you, a sale deed executed between two parties by mutual consent at any given point in time, has legal sanctity. Sellers cannot turn up later and claim that they were “cheated” because the value is now higher. In this case, Suzlon does not own the land itself. By its business model for Maharashtra, it acquires land through middlemen, organises the relevant permits, sets up windmills (its core business), and sells them to clients who are in the power generation business. The law, most likely, is on Suzlon’s side.