Ahmedabad, 7 Dec 11 | Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi today thanked the voters of Gujarat for keeping faith in BJP in..

The traditional farmer wisdom that land alone protects the
family from starvation. Compensation disappears easily in fixing
the roof, paying engineering college fees, or getting a daughter
married is significant. Worse, as most village land is the joint
property of an extended family, the division of monetary
compensation leaves them with nothing, asserts Sandhya Jain.
Indian agriculture lost one of its most cogent voices at a time
when the farming community nationwide is facing the growing menace
of State-driven expropriation of land for crony capitalists. This
trend, which we may designate as the corporatisation of private
property, parallels the other disturbing tendency towards the
privatisation of public resources; both may jointly be said to
comprise the Indian face of Globalisation.
Mahendra Singh Tikait emerged in the public arena in October 1986,
to articulate a growing need for modern amenities to make farming
productive and remunerative. As founder of the Bharatiya Kisan
Union (BKU), he called a panchayat at his native village, Sisauli,
and led a movement against increased power tariff in April 1987.
Over three lakh farmers gathered at Karmukheri power station in
Muzaffarnagar district, UP, compelling chief minister Veer Bahadur
Singh (Congress) to roll back the hike.
Shunning politics, Tikait championed the genuine interests of
farmers in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. He cordoned the
office of the Meerut divisional commissioner for 25 days in January
1988, and subjugated the Rajiv Gandhi government with a stunning
seven-day dharna at Boat Club, Delhi, in October 1988, when five
lakh farmers swamped the area from Vijay Chowk to India Gate. The
Centre accepted his demands, which included higher prices for
sugarcane and waiving of electricity and water charges for
farmers.
Tikait’s approach of facing the Central or State leadership
head-on, and refusing to be drawn into political alignments that
could limit the spread and efficacy of his struggle, could have
served his people well in the current struggle against forced
acquisition of fertile farm land for corporate-driven development
projects. But the doughty warrior lost a painful battle to bone
cancer on 15 May 2011. The challenge before his heirs is to reverse
the policy of alienating agricultural land for non-agricultural
purposes.
What needs changing is the Land Acquisition Act of 1894,whereby
government (then the British Raj) can forcibly acquire private
property for what it calls a “public purpose”. This needs to be
clearly defined. We cannot allow state governments to wantonly
appropriate the land of farmers, first for Special Economic Zones
which gave favoured industrialists land banks to develop
mini-cities instead of merely adequate land for a specific
industry; and now for shopping malls; housing colonies, and
commercial complexes.
The core issue is protection of fertile land, particularly along
waterways. We must recognize that financial compensation, no matter
how adequate in terms of contemporary market prices, cannot offset
the loss of the most fertile lands along the Ganga & Yamuna rivers
to soil-killing concrete high rises. The mindlessness with which
the Centre & state governments have embraced this ‘development’
formula threatens national food security.
In the early decades of independence, government acquired land only
for projects undertaken by government. While affected groups could
have legitimate grievances regarding compensation – because
socialist rhetoric kept compensation packages low and civil society
activists and fair-minded judges were still in the future – there
was no malice in depriving the affected peoples of their land. Land
acquired for thermal or hydro- power projects; for satellite
launches; army firing ranges; roads and highways; fell in this
category.
Things changed with Liberalisation. Instead of a level playing
field where free market could get them the best prices for their
land if they wanted to sell, industrialists began to use friendly
politicians and state governments to forcefully acquire huge tracts
of land for profiteering at the cost of the ordinary citizen. Thus,
a businessman wanting to set up a steel plant did not want land
adequate for the steel mill, but huge surplus tracts that could be
‘developed’ to commercialadvantage by building shopping malls,
hotels, housing estates, office complexes, golf courses, and what
not.
Most of the Indian countryside has already been irreparably ruined
by this contractor-driven growth. Readers who have villages to
visit on holidays have only to recall the halcyon days when
farmlands and large trees dotted the roadside as one left the major
cities to realize the extent of industrial encroachment upon the
environment.
When Congress MLA Kuldip Bishnoi raised his voice against the
forced acquisition of farmers’ lands for a SEZ for a leading Mumbai
industrialist, the party high command swiftly cut him to size. But
protests spread in other parts of the country – even though the
Courts found it prudent to remain mute – until finally the then Goa
chief
minister decided that he would not permit any of the three SEZs
cleared for his state to take off.
But by then the crony capitalistshad tasted blood, and the malaise
of being ‘friendly’ to industry became endemic. The madness reached
its apogee in Singur, West Bengal, when the state government felt
it was its public duty to forcefully acquire farmers’ land for
aprivate company which felt aggrieved when the effort failed.
Regarding the current conflictin Uttar Pradesh, there is no justice
in forcing farmers to sell land at Rs 850/sq.m. and allowing a
private contractor to make Rs 30,000/ sq.m. This is outright loot –
another 2G in the making. The protesting farmers insist they had no
idea that their lands were being used to build townships – an
enterprise that could easily have been conducted in non-fertile,
degraded lands elsewhere, and not alongside the Yamuna.
Equally pertinent is the traditional farmer wisdom that land alone
protects the family from starvation. Compensation disappears easily
in fixing the roof, paying engineering college fees, or getting a
daughter married. Worse, as most village land is the joint property
of an extended family, the division of monetary compensation leaves
them with nothing.
The silver lining in the high drama at Bhatta Parsaul, Greater
Noida, was Ms Mayawati’s agility in disproving Amethi MP
Rahul Gandhi’s allegation before the Prime Minister that 74
persons had been burnt alive in 70-feet-wide ash mounds, women
raped, and houses set on fire by the UP Police. The UP chief
minister called the Central Forensic Science Laboratory to take
samples for testing; the media rushed to the affected village but
could not substantiate the story. Soon CFSL said the ash was burnt
cowdung – no bones, no explosives! A red-faced Congress had to deny
the scandal as a media ‘misquote’ two days later, but by then the
PM-in-waiting had nixed his claim to the august office. Dr Manmohan
Singh must be enjoying a quiet laugh.
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