The Third Schedule: Infrastructural Amenities in Resettlement Areas

A house without a village is not resettlement, and the Third Schedule exists to prevent exactly that: it lists twenty-five infrastructural amenities every resettlement area must provide, from roads and drinking water to schools, health care and burial grounds, the village rebuilt as a system, not as a row of houses. This note organises the Schedule's list, its standards, and its enforcement.

1. The Amenities, Organised

Cluster	What the Schedule requires
Access and services	Roads within the resettlement area and links to the main road, with culverts and bridges as needed; proper drainage and sanitation; electricity connections to each household and street lighting; public transport access and postal facilities as provided
Water	Assured safe drinking water for each family on a sustainable basis; drinking water for cattle
Land-based needs	Grazing land as per village norms; basic irrigation facilities to the agricultural land allotted; seed-cum-fertilizer storage; fair price shop
Institutions	Panchayat ghar; anganwadi providing supplementary nutrition for children and mothers; schools as per the right-to-education norms; health centre within the prescribed reach; veterinary service centre; community centre and playground
Community and faith	Places of worship and land for traditional and tribal institutions, as chosen by the displaced community; separate land for community gatherings; burial and cremation grounds
Security and dignity	Appropriate arrangements for safety, and the amenities provided so that the resettlement area functions as a living village from the day the families arrive

The clusters above cover the Schedule's twenty-five items; the point of the enumeration is completeness: a resettlement area is compliant when the displaced family's ordinary day, water, school, ration, worship, work and, at the end, cremation, can be lived inside it.

2. The Standards

Norm-referenced, not token: the items carry their own benchmarks, schools per the education norms, grazing per village norms, health care within reach, so compliance is measured against the standard, not the signboard: a one-room structure labelled school does not retire the obligation.
Community choice where it matters: places of worship and community institutions follow the displaced community's own patterns, and for tribal families the Schedule's provisions join Section 41's requirement that resettlement preserve the community's identity in compact blocks (Topic 52).
For whom: the amenities serve the resettlement area as such, every displaced family takes them collectively, which is why they travel through the scheme and Section 32's duty rather than through individual awards.
Who pays: the amenities are part of the cost of acquisition the Requiring Body bears, priced into the project like the compensation itself.

3. Enforcement

The Schedule binds through three mechanisms. Section 32 makes provision of the Schedule's facilities in every resettlement area the acquisition's own duty (Topic 50). The scheme and the declaration carry the amenities: the draft R&R scheme plans them, the declaration's resettlement area is designated with them in view, and the Commissioner's approval and social audit measure them. The timing rule closes the oldest escape, resettle now, build later: the infrastructural entitlements are to be completed within the Act's window from the award, and the monitoring machinery, the project R&R Committee, the Commissioner, the national committee, exists mostly for this: amenities are where rehabilitation performance is actually read. On the ground the Schedule is the displaced village's checklist, and for the practitioner each missing item is a specific, pleadable default rather than a general grievance.

⚠ Key point

The Third Schedule: twenty-five amenities every resettlement area must provide, roads, drainage and sanitation, assured drinking water for families and cattle, grazing land, irrigation, fair price shop, seed and fertilizer storage, panchayat ghar, anganwadi, schools, health and veterinary centres, community centre and playground, electricity and street lighting, places of worship and tribal institutions by community choice, burial and cremation grounds, postal and transport access, norm-referenced and paid for by the Requiring Body as part of the cost of acquisition, enforced through Section 32, the scheme, the Commissioner's audit and the Act's completion window.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

Section 32 (Topic 50): the duty that carries the Schedule
The R&R scheme (Topic 28): where the amenities are planned
SC and ST safeguards (Topic 52): identity-preserving resettlement
Monitoring (Topic 59): who checks the village got built