meIt was mid-May. It was a time when the hot midsummer sun dried up all the springs of generosity. It was then that the Bhagwant Mann-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab launched the Land Pooling Policy (LPP) 2025. This was a remarkable idea: to tie together 65,533 acres for industrial and residential projects. However, in retrospect, someone should have foreseen that in a country where land is scarce and where land is of high symbolic and material value, this measure would have such a big impact that it would lead to criticism of the government. The inevitable twist was only a few months away.