The fight for land is far from over

The agitation by farmers in UP against forced acquisition of their land at throwaway prices for the Yamuna Expressway from Noida to Agra follows clashes over land for the same expressway last year. At both times they contended that the developers, Jaypee Corporation, stood to make profits by getting the land cheap from farmers.

It is not surprising that politicians of all persuasions jumped into the fray to score points against the Mayawati government in UP. But what they chose to forget or to obfuscate was that similar deals at the expense of cultivators and for the benefit of the rich have been pushed by many state governments recently. To name a few:
-Raigarh district of Maharashtra, the Congress approved that Reliance would be allowed to buy 10,000 hectares or 100 sq km for a special economic zone (SEZ), a part of which would be used to build offices and houses. The idea was dropped after objections from the local farmers.
-Nandigram, West Bengal, the previous CPI-M government plans for a 40-sq km chemical hub by the Indonesian Salim group had to be suspended after violent clashes between the police and local villagers.
-BJP-ruled Jharkhand, there is a proposal that the Mittal Steel be given 120 sq km of mainly forest land for a 12 million tonne per annum steel factory. According to observers in Ranchi, this is over four times the land a factory of that size needs. The project is not likely to go through and resistance by local tribals affected is expected to be strong.
-Orissa, Vedanta Resources plans for a $1.7 billion bauxite mine in the Niamgiri hills, considered sacred by the local tribals, were stalled after the proposal was rejected by the environment ministry.

The story is repeated in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Gujarat, and elsewhere, involving SEZs, mines, large industrial complexes, besides infrastructure like roads, power plants, and ports. For all of them, land seems to be a key ingredient, but in almost all the cases, the poor are being given a bad deal leading to opposition and violent agitation.
It is a  strategy of robbing the poor to help the rich. The poor are paid a pittance for land, the only asset they have. Neither are they given equity in the industries that will replace their agricultural life, nor is any attempt or promise made to give each family at least two well-paying jobs. Instead of being made willing partners in the enterprise that occupies their land, they are its unhappy victims. 

 This has been going on for well over a century, when the British enacted the Land Acquisition Act 1894 to take over vast tracts of land. It continued in the industrial expansion of the Nehruvian era, when the large dams, steel factories, power plants, etc, were paid for by the destitution of millions of people who made their livelihoods from the land. This has constituted “a huge effective subsidy of India’s development project”.

Opposition to the displacement was muted in the early days since many of those dispossessed believed that the state was providing a public good. The agitation led by Medha Patkar against the Narmada dam changed that as it brought into sharp public focus the inequities involved.  Later, in the 1990s, when several infrastructural projects were executed, opposition grew as affected villagers invariably felt they were being cheated.
These projects were often under public private partnerships, or PPP, by profit-making enterprises that would often borrow in the international financial markets, sometimes using land as collateral. As the land needs of private entrepreneurs became more aggressive, state governments began to act as land brokers to attract them. The demand for land also fuelled speculative gains, generally in non-productive assets such as real estate.

A new land acquisition act and a new resettlement policy were needed if dissent was not to get out of hand. Following consultations, the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill and Resettlement & Rehabilitation Bill were tabled by the UPA government just before the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
There are several objections raised by civil liberty activists to the bill before Parliament and that they do not address “the fundamental issues that have been raised by the protests that are raging across the country”.

One argument is that the proposed amendments “will only facilitate the State’s new role as the land broker-in-chief”. Another is that these bills “would seek to weaken avenues for challenging projects in court and limit opposition to the filing of individual administrative grievances over compensation”.
Clearly, the fight for land is far from over.

The writer is a commentator on political issues