The farmers' agitation in Uttar Pradesh brings into focus the indiscriminate acquisition of land by the state for corporate-led development.
in New DelhiON May 19, three days before the formal observation of the second anniversary of the United Progressive Alliance government, Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi made a categorical announcement that in the monsoon session of Parliament scheduled to begin in July the ruling coalition would bring in legislation that would address comprehensively issues relating to land acquisition.
Various questions relating to the use of land have come up in different parts of the country throughout the seven-year tenure of the UPA and resulted in promises from the leadership of the coalition, including one on a comprehensive piece of legislation to amend the existing law that dates back to 1894. But Sonia Gandhi's promise this time, unlike the earlier declarations, had a sense of urgency and resoluteness. The reasons were obvious. Barely a week earlier, the Congress leadership, especially general secretary Rahul Gandhi, had created a political sensation of sorts by declaring his support to the farmers' agitation in western Uttar Pradesh over the issue of land acquisition by the State government for an express highway.
The agitation was seen as the crux around which the Congress sought to build its political and organisational strength to face the Assembly elections that are due in the State next year. Naturally, the question of land use had to be seen to be addressed in a concrete manner, and initiating moves to bring in legislation quickly was one way of doing it.
In a sense, the sequence of events in the Congress, leading up to Sonia Gandhi's May 19 promise, is symbolic of the manner in which issues relating to land have been addressed by the ruling political class in the post-independence period of nearly six and a half decades. Whether it is the use of land as an instrument to improve the lives of people, particularly the poor and the deprived, or its channelling for agricultural, industrial, economic and social development, the actions of governments at the Centre and in most of the States have been marked by an ad hocism that satisfied immediate political needs rather than indicated a long-term vision for nation-building.
According to P.V. Rajagopal, president of Ekta Parishad, a social movement that fights for the rights of landless and economically marginalised people, the political leadership has forgotten the constitutional commitment to use land reforms as an instrument to eradicate or at least reduce poverty in the agrarian economy.
The commitment to carry out land reforms has been increasingly replaced, especially after the advent of economic liberalisation in the 1990s, by a fervid urge to acquire land to facilitate multidimensional ventures of national and international business corporations whose basic motive is maximising profit.
In the process, what we have witnessed across the country is unjust acquisition of agricultural and forest land, displacement of local communities, especially tribal people, economic and social marginalisation of farming communities and rampant growth of environmental hazards. This ultimately self-defeating pro-corporate process is linked to the immediate personal and sometimes political gains the political leadership accrues from those who are advancing industrial and other ventures, Rajagopal told Frontline.
A close look at the voices that have emerged within the ruling coalition, in the context of the recent developments, underscores the element of ad hocism and the lack of clarity on issues surrounding the land question. Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily stated that the government had drafted a new Bill with provisions for better compensation, rehabilitation and other measures. As for a political consensus on the law, here is what Chidambaram told mediapersons on the eve of Sonia Gandhi's announcement: Now we are at a point when there is a fair degree of certainty that there is a consensus on the law with some amendments.
But recent statements of two top leaders of the UPA belie expectations of a consensus. One of them, Sonia Gandhi, had stated some time ago that new industries and infrastructure cannot be built without acquiring land, but land acquisition must be done in a manner that it does not result in the loss of large tracts of fertile and productive agriculture land. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was blunt in his comment, at another venue, on the land acquisition issue. We cannot protect the environment of this country by perpetuating poverty, he said.
In this background, there is a view within the ruling establishment, especially among those considered close to the Prime Minister, that the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill would have the principal objective of facilitating supply of land for industrial and infrastructural development. This section argues that agitations and disputes over land acquisition have held up over $100 billion worth of projects across India. They also hold that the Bill should help clear this logjam.
On the other side, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has asserted that the new legislation should not allow State governments to buy land at rock-bottom prices on behalf of private developers. The NAC has sought guidelines for valuation of land as also measures to ensure that social impact studies are conducted before land is acquired.
Sections of the NAC, including the social activist Aruna Roy, have stated that all land over a stipulated number of acres has to be acquired by the government. Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, now Chief Minister of West Bengal and formerly Railway Minister in the UPA government, held the view that land acquisition ought to be put on hold even if there was one objection against it.
Clearly, it is a babel of voices within the ruling coalition on the proposed legislation. Naturally, this raises doubts about the effectiveness of the new legislation and how it unravels politically in Parliament during the monsoon session.
Doubts about the political course of the Bill are accentuated by the track record of all the political parties, particularly the Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on issues concerning land. The leaderships of all parties do take up positions against unjust acquisition, displacement of local communities and environmental hazards in States where their party is in power. All of them also express solidarity with farmers who face the prospect of losing their land. However, when it comes to actual work on the ground, governments led by these parties compete with one another in handing over land, whatever the means, to corporate entities.
The Congress' track record at the Centre and in States such as Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Haryana, where it has been in power for long periods, consistently underscores the party leadership's preference for facilitating corporate players and their interests. Significantly, the party has failed to take up and complete land reforms aggressively either at the national level or in any of the States it has been in power.
Congress governments, as also the Planning Commission, had from time to time taken the services of expert committees to analyse the land question. Many of these committees, such as the most recent Working Group on Land Relations for Formulation of the 11th Five-Year Plan and the expert committee on State Agrarian Reforms and the Unfinished Task in Land Reforms had given concrete recommendations. But none of these recommendations, which included taking forward land reforms initiatives through the distribution of homesteads and the protection of tribal land rights, was followed up seriously.
The track record of the BJP is no better. The Raman Singh-led BJP government in Chhattisgarh, shown up as a model government by the saffron party, is a case in point. It has even gone to the extent changing rules for increasing the quantum of agricultural land that can be diverted for non-agricultural purposes. The move is obviously aimed at facilitating a corporate takeover of agricultural land, but the reasoning behind it is that the State's developmental vision needs to be advanced thus because of the Maoist problem in parts of the State. Incidentally, the diversion of agricultural land in Chhattisgarh is mainly for mining. According to the estimates of government agencies themselves, a total of 1.71 lakh hectares of agricultural land have been diverted for non-agricultural purposes, of which 67.22 per cent is for mining.
In Madhya Pradesh, where too the government is led by the BJP, nearly 150 companies have been allowed to acquire land totalling 2.44 lakh ha. Approximately 1.94 lakh ha out of this is private land, acquired from farmers and other communities, while about 12,500 ha is forest land.
Seven of the eight governments that came to power in mineral-rich Jharkhand since the formation of the State in 2000 were either led by the BJP or had its participation. These governments have cumulatively signed 133 memorandums of understanding with major corporations, including the Arcelor Mittal group, the Jindals and the Tatas. Informal estimates put the total of the quantum of land acquired or being acquired to implement these MoUs at approximately two lakh acres. Here, too, successive governments have shown little regard for the protection of tribal land rights and agricultural land. This, in turn, has led to scores of agitations across the State.
LAND REFORM INITIATIVESThe Left parties, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), can take credit for having advanced land reform initiatives successfully in all the States it had been in power West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura during the past five and a half decades. However, the CPI(M)-led Left Front government's initiatives in West Bengal between 2006 and 2011 to advance industrialisation through a number of projects witnessed land acquisition through controversial means. This, in turn, led to a strong popular reaction and violence and loss of political appeal of the government. Even in the midst of these controversies, the West Bengal government initiated steps for the allocation of homestead plots of sizes ranging from 10 to 16 cents to landless poor families. This showed a commitment to land reforms and land distribution but could not undo the political reverses already suffered.
Other regional parties, too, including the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Orissa, have adopted stances similar to the two mainstream parties when it comes to addressing land reforms and land acquisition issues. While the BSP government has taken some measures to authenticate distribution and possession of tribal and Dalit lands in some parts of the State, it has also embarked on huge infrastructure projects such as the Ganga and Yamuna expressways, which are expected cumulatively to displace people in approximately 15,000 villages.
In Orissa, the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD government is on an industrialisation overdrive, allotting land to international giants such as POSCO and Vedanta, overlooking tribal land rights and livelihood concerns. According to informal estimates, 331 square kilometres of forest land has been diverted in the State to facilitate approximately 300 industrial infrastructure projects.
This overall situation, in terms of the priorities of the various political parties, does not promise a people-oriented approach to the land question. In this context, suggestions have emanated from a section of the corporate lobby that the process of land acquisition should essentially be left to the vagaries of the market and that the government should not get involved in it. Obviously, this section too completely overlooks the use of land as an instrument to reduce poverty.
According to Sudhir Panwar of the Kisan Jagriti Manch, a collective of activists and academics striving to influence policy on agrarian issues keeping in view the socio-political situation in various States, there is not much scope for redistributive land reform through enforcement of ceilings. He said: While ceiling on land holding has its own importance in preventing the concentration of land in a few hands, the development and distribution of government land as well as purchase of land from the open market and their distribution among the landless poor would form the core of any non-ceiling land reform measures in future. There should be a special drive to allocate at least 10 to 15 cents of homestead plot to each of the 17 million rural landless families with a sense of urgency, as landlessness is one of the important causes of rural poverty and conflicts.
According to D. Bandopadhyay, former Secretary to the Government of India and one of the foremost experts on the land question in the country, the issue cannot be addressed without first addressing the issue of inequalities in society. Bandopadhyay played a major role in the land reforms in West Bengal and headed the Land Reforms Commission in Bihar. He told Frontline: Most studies on the use of land indicate that inequalities have increased rather than decreased. The number of landless labourers has gone up and the top 10 per cent of the population monopolises more land now than in 1951. Meanwhile, the issue of land reforms has over the years either unconsciously faded from public consciousness or deliberately been glossed over. Vested interests of the landed elite and their powerful nexus with the political-bureaucratic system have blocked this process. Hence, problems relating to land, such as concentration, tenancy rights, access to the landless, etc., still continue to challenge India. The criticality of the issue has to be seen in this larger perspective as one advances legislation.
As the political authorities fail to match their public projections with actual implementation, doubts remain about the proposed legislation heralding a new, positive beginning in terms of land rights and the balanced use of land.
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