Caught between a government project and expanding real estate market for the past decade, Shivangaon village have taken to a novel method of protest.
Nagpur village shows its angst at the prospect of being thrown out of their homes by SEZ plan
NAGPUR: Shivangaon is a village of tonsured heads. Caught between a government project and expanding real estate market for the past decade, the villagers have taken to this novel method of protest against the government’s acquisition of their land in pieces for one or the other project. This time though, it’s displacing the villagers out of their homes.
“Please ask the government to drop a bomb on our village. It’ll be cost-effective and save us from the hardships. The government can keep our land then,” says an angry Bahinabai Khobragade. At sixty, Khobragade can’t do anything but farming, which has been her occupation all her life. And now, the state government has decided to take her land for a project that it says would change the face of Vidarbha.
But when the government dithered on the compensation package, she was forced to question its intentions. “But where’s our rehabilitation package,” the residents of Shivangaon, a village on the outskirts of Nagpur asked. When they still did not get any answers from the state government till last month, Khobragade, like the 65-year-old Tulsabai Gaikwad and others decided to go under the barber’s blade. “It was painful for us to see our women shaving their heads,” says a village veteran.
Joining in the protest, Shiv Sena MP from Ramtek, Prakash Jadhav, too, tonsured his head, pledging support to the intensifying agitation. Two days ago, during his city visit CPI general secretary A B Bardhan also supported the protests.
A local barber worked for free on nearly a hundred heads a day and almost made it to the record books, says Bahinabai with a chuckle. That was to protest the way government is displacing them for the multi-modal international hub and airport at Nagpur (MIHAN), an ambitious project yet to get any central clearance even in principle.
“When nothing is concrete the government wants to acquire our premium land at a throw-away price,” charge the protesting Shivangaon villagers. “This is our land, and we will decide its price,” avers Tulsabai, whose six acres of land was attached by the government last year.
Two months ago, 40 acres of land, bordering Shivangaon but outside the proposed project area, was sold at a hefty Rs2.5 crore an acre. That land belonged to Justice J N Patel, Judge of Mumbai High Court. Even otherwise, land prices in and around the City of Oranges are touching the roof, farmers say. “But we are getting Rs80,000 to Rs2 lakh an acre. What can we buy out of that money - we can’t even buy a 400 square-feet plot today.”
And after distributing the compensation money among our heirs, what are we left with? Peanuts,” says Vithoba Bode. At 80, he is set to lose 20 acres of highly fertile land that has sustained his family for over five decades. “We have only shed our hair now; we’ll sacrifice our lives if this government doesn’t wake up to our plight,” he warns.
Meanwhile, the government has said the village would not get benefits of the Maharashtra Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act and hence may not get alternative farmland. The compensation package, on the other hand, isn’t enough to buy farmland in the entire Nagpur district. “So, we are doomed,” says Baba Dawre, a local leader who is steering the protests.
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