We at Development Dialogues are constantly trying to expose what lies beneath the glitzy exterior of 'development' the world over. The blog was started as an archive for the articles and reports pertaining to the land acquisitions in West Bengal and India. The scope of the blog has since been expanded to include resistance movements against state and corporate repressions from around the world.
By paving the way for land acquisition, the Centre has made a disastrous move
Observers have noted similarities between the insatiable land appetite of some industries in early 21st century India and in 19th century Great Britain. In Britain it was called the great enclosure movement. The textile, woollen, and some other industries enclosed large chunks of land, pushed the farmers out, devastating their lives. Thousands consequently perished in hunger while many more left the land for the New World. The economic historians today, however, refuse to certify that this unbelievable acquisition of land was a pre-condition for the growth of the first industrial nation. Yet, in the wake of the NDA government’s land ordinance some intellectuals and policymakers are trying to establish the same dubious correlation for India’s economic growth.
On the other hand, it may be said that conflict over land acquisition has engulfed India, unsettled her democracy, and hampered her development. Over 250 land-acquisition-related conflicts were recorded in the country in only two years — 2013-14. Most conflicts are due to government takeover of land on behalf of private business, and at times for setting up fast corridors. Given the history of India’s complex land tenure, including forest tenure, the government is always inclined towards making non-transparent decisions that affect people’s lives. Only land acquisition prices increase to show that compensation rules are guided by social justice. The basic result is an uncontrollable financialisation of land which ruins small farmers.
The Xaxa Committee on the status of indigenous people has made observations on forced displacements triggered by large-scale land acquisitions: nearly 60 million people have been displaced and affected by projects between 1947 and 2000. During this period, people were displaced from 25 million hectares, including seven million hectares of forests and six million hectares of other common property resources. The government now proposes dilution of rights of the indigenous people. The tribal affairs ministry has drafted revised rules on tribal consent which are now being reviewed by the ministry of environment, forests, and climate change. This goal is to facilitate the process of handing over forest and semi-forest land to industry by altering existing regulations that require consent of tribal village councils before forest land is given to industries.
As far as policy goes, there is not much difference between the previous UPA government and the current NDA government. During the earlier regime, attempts to dilute the requirement had often failed, though there was persistent pressure from finance, home, industries, trade, mining, and other ministries to tamper with the norms and requirements. Today NDA makes a similar claim that the process of seeking the consent of gram sabhas delays projects, and the stipulation should be done away with. In these ministerial shenanigans the environment ministry is posited against the tribal affairs ministry. The former apparently is alert to developmental needs, the latter is conservative and resistant to changes.
But of course, the main question: why the ordinance? Commentators have already noted the undemocratic way in which the NDA government wants to move. That observation is correct. But more interesting is the fact that the President readily gave his consent, which shows the wide support among the members of the political class for neo-liberal reforms.
The land ordinance reportedly makes several changes to the law. In the original 2013 law, if compensation had not been paid for over five years to landowners or the land had not been taken over by the government in that time, the owners had the right to reclaim it. Now, if the possession of land has been taken by the government agency within five years, this retrospective clause would not apply as long as the government agency acquiring the land has deposited the compensation amount in court or any account maintained for the purpose. Likewise the ordinance has done away with the strict provisions that required action being taken against government officials for violating the law. Now, courts cannot take cognisance of any misdeed committed by officials under the Land Acquisition Act, without the prior approval of the state concerned or the central government. The government has also slackened the provision of returning unused acquired lands to the original owners.
Some states object to the ordinance. The Union government’s position is that the ordinance is not being imposed on the former. If they wish, they are free not to implement the supposedly objectionable parts. Then why make the ordinance at all? Why not leave it to the states and see in this competitive game which state yields to please the industrial barons. The central ordinance sets a protocol. Once the standards are set, the Union government knows that the recalcitrant states will have to — sooner or later — follow suit. If in the process large-scale peasant disturbances break out, the paramilitary forces will able to sort out the troubles. With so much of a risk, one may ask, why the hurry, why the necessity for a measure that brooks no delay? This is where we must see things plainly without the blinkered glasses of an economist.
The mad spree to acquire land more than what the stated purpose requires in a given case shows the return of land as the most crucial asset as capital in the beginning decades of the twenty first century. Amid inflation, land is often the most insured asset, whose value is least likely to corrode. Likewise, land control is the route to make wealth through rent, whose difference with profit is now barely recognisable. Land as capital is a special thing. Its nature as hereditary fortune ensures the longevity of wealth. Commodity trading requires land for special purpose. New towns require land. Special Economic Zones require land. Transit corridors, roads, airfields need lands. Logistics make sense only when land is available. All require extra land to be held as an asset. Asset management is essentially land management.
In this age of aggressive land acquisition, all sorts of 19th century characters are dabbling in its murky waters: land sharks, contractors, labour-recruiting agencies, estate managers and holders, and, of course, government officials to help the shady characters. Not to forget the thousands of wandering labourers in search of construction jobs. Do not ask, if through all these India will industrialise or only real estate owners and developers will boom. Do not ask, what will happen to large chunks of population deprived of land. Make your own visit to this futuristic India.
"The work of chief ministers of Gujarat and Bihar in their states should be adopted by other chief ministers," 73-year-old Hazare, who successfully led the agitation on Lokpal Bill issue, told reporters here on Sunday.
Hazare, though, was quick to add that he was not viewing their performance from any partisan angle but only highlighting the focus of development work at the grassroots level.
When a reporter referred to the 2002 riots in Gujarat when Modi was in power, the Gandhian said that he was only talking about the work of a chief minister and does not want to get into politics.
"I do not support communal politics, riots or any such thing. I am only talking about decentralisation of power," Hazare said.
When pointed out that Modi has not appointed a Lokayukta for the past nine years in Gujarat, he said, "I will accept Modi as 100 per cent ideal when he brings Lokayukta in his state."
Congress MP Rashid Alvi reacted sharply to Hazare's comments saying "no secular person in the country can support Modi.
"If you support Modi, you are supporting the massacre of 2002," he said,
BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain, however, praised Hazare for appreciating the work done in the party-ruled state.
"These are NDA-ruled states. Concrete steps are being taken there against corruption. This is good that he cited both the states as examples.
"There are many other NDA-ruled states where good work is being done against corruption. We appreciate that he has praised us," he said.
At the press conference, Hazare also denied any "personal" animosity with agriculture minister Sharad Pawar.
"There is no rift with Pawar. Six Ministers had to go on corruption charges. Why only name Pawar. My fight is against the trend and not against one Pawar. It is the deed not the person that I object to and fight against," he said.
Activist Arvind Kejriwal dismissed suggestions that Hazare had invited Pawar to be part of his agitation for Lokpal Bill saying the "question does not arise".
Veteran social activist Anna Hazare backs Maharashtra Navnirmaan Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray's campaign against non-Marathi 'Dadagiri' (dominance) in Maharashtra, but opposes the violent means being used to achieve the purpose. The 71-year-old social activist expressed support for MNS's programme, while talking to journalists Saturday night after addressing students of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) on 'Gram Swaraj and Experience in Ralegan', his native village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra which he transformed into a model village through persistent efforts.
"Some ideas of Raj Thackeray were correct, but damaging public and national property was not right," Hazare said.
When asked which ideas of the MNS chief were correct, Hazare noted people from many states live in Maharashtra, but "outsiders trying to prove their dominance in the state was not at all acceptable".
In a reference to North India-based political parties like Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal trying to show their strength in Maharashtra by holding rallies and other programmes in the state, he said such activities were not acceptable.
"They have ample space in their states to hold such programmes," he noted.
When asked to comment on attacks by MNS activists on students from Bihar who had gone to Mumbai to appear in railway recruitment exams, Hazare said: "I do not support everything Raj Thackeray does. If violent means are adopted by MNS, it will not be in interest of a united India."
"We need to work for unity of the country and not for its disintegration through violence against innocents," he added.
We are deeply shocked by your endorsement of Narendra Modi's rural development. There has been little or no rural development in ths state. In fact gauchar lands and irrigated farmlands have been stealthily taken by the government and sold off at ridiculous prices to a small club of industrialists. There has been no Lokayukta in Gujarat for nearly seven years so hundreds of complaints against corruption are lying unheard. From the Sujalam Sufalam scam of 1700 crores to the NREGS boribund scam of 109 crores, the fisheries scam of 600 crores, every department is involved in thousands of crores of scams. The poor and rural peoiple are being sold to Modiu's friends the industrialists. The state is in terrible debt because of his largess to industry while 21 lakh farmers wait for compensation.
Your endorsement is apalling and we will be forced to distance ourselves from the Lokpal movement unless it is irrevocably retracted.
Nothing is black and white ever but Gujarat’s grey spots are getting frighteningly glaring. Last fortnight validated this again.
Narendra Modi’s beefy rhetoric stressed Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) had put Gujarat as top investment destination of 2008-2009 with 19.91 per cent of the country’s total investment coming to Gujarat in mid-June report.
Chief minister Mr Modi tomtommed on Twitter about being number one in providing vocational training and employment. A state official explained how Gujarat led the nation in providing jobs through employment exchanges. Out of the total jobs provided in India through employment exchanges, he said the highest, 72.77 per cent were provided by Gujarat, he contended. Soon, Gujarat will become the first state to have a Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) with bus stands competing in style and functionality with Curitiba, Brazil, which is home to the first and one of the most successful BRT systems in the world.
Did you know that the Gujarat government has promised that all 1,8,000 villages in the state will have all the facilities present in the chief minister’s chamber, that Gujarat will become the first place in Asia where villages will have IT connectivity," the official informed.
Gujarat is the No. 1 state in India when it comes to economic freedom index also. Economic freedom index means absence of government coercion or constraint in the production, distribution or consumption of goods and services beyond the extent necessary for citizens to protect and maintain liberty by itself, he explained adding he was indeed sorry for all those "pseudos" who fail to see Modi beyond 2002 riots. Modi’s vision is more important than his role, if so any in Gujarat riots, he earnestly explained.
Past is past and 2002 is history. Gujarat has moved on, he reasoned.
Admitted it’s a good to have great roads, uninterrupted power supply and world-class mall-multiplex culture besides Golfing societies and plentiful profit churning businesses. It’s a pleasant feeling to be in a state which is number one in so many sectors besides investment, infrastructure and industry. But the bad news refuse to fade in the background.
In fact, several of them. Here are a few samples which are dubbed as stray cases in an otherwise vibrant Gujarat. A 40-year-old pregnant woman went for her check-up to the G.G. hospital in Jamnagar. Two qualified gynaecologists along with the staff pasted a tape on her forehead that screamed her HIV positive status. She was then paraded in different wards of the hospital. Shockingly, none of the medical, paramedical staff who were aware that HIV status cannot be declared this way, objected to the woman’s public parade. The woman got her two-month-old foetus aborted because of her health condition, but the humiliation of public parade with a tape screaming HIV-seropositive will hang forever.
Little before that, a 12th grader, a brilliant science student with great career goals, left her home for tuitions when she was intercepted by three men posing as cops a little away from her home early morning. She and a male co-student were forced in the car and the girl was gang raped for 90 minutes before being dumped at the same spot.
This happened in Surat, Gujarat’s fastest growing economic paradise. The rapists filmed the gang rape on their mobiles. After the arrest, the police recovered about half a dozen "live" gang rape videos from them.
Because Mr Modi scores high on the luck quotient in developed but divisive Gujarat, some local media pithily put it that the rapists were Muslims feebly attempting to spare the state government of any blame about the law and order situation. What followed was worse. In the HIV positive case, the only positive action the state government initiated was to ask the doctors and nurses involved to go on indefinite leave. Sadly, in the last three months, 10 HIV positive persons have committed suicide in Gujarat after they were socially and economically ostracised. The No. 1 state did not offer them enough motivation to continue with their lives.
In Surat, the first response of the police commissioner was that the girl was a soft target for rape because she was with a male co-student. Indirectly hinting at the teenager’s character, the police commissioner craftily justified the gang rape. When Surat literally took him to task, the state government, just to avoid confrontation, transferred the police commissioner, Deepak Swarup.
Here is more to Vibrant Gujarat. The Annual Status of Education Report by Pratham, a non-governmental organisation, points out that Gujarat is worse than Bihar when it comes to education standards. The report, sponsored by Google, Oxfam and Unicef, categorically says that Gujarat students are behind their Bihar counterparts. The percentage of students who can read their textbooks, do basic subtraction, tell time or do basic currency tasks is much lower in Gujarat than in Bihar.
Several other reports also authenticate that Gujarat has been doing miserably in almost every index of human development. Gujarat’s developmental model and module has been questioned and dubbed flawed by several social commentators and researcher who have been casually dismissed as "anti Gujarat" or "pseudo secular". Infant Mortality Rate(IMR) in Gujarat was 69 per 1,000 in 1991 compared to 80 of India. While the national IMR became 58 per 1,000 in 2005, that of Gujarat became 54. So, while India on the whole really did much better to cut down its IMR, Gujarat’s performance was not actually impressive. The gap between Gujarat and India reduced because states like West Bengal, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand fared much better than Gujarat. Experts stress IMR is a sensitive indicator of women’s status in general besides being a mirror of healthcare facilities for pregnant women.
A February 2007 Reserve Bank of India report put Gujarat as 17th among 18 large states when it came to social sector budget allocation. With 31.6 per cent budgetary expenditure on social sector, Gujarat dipped from 12th spot in 1991(then there were 15 large states category) to 17th of the 18 large states proving expenditure on social sector had considerably declined in Mr Modi’s regime. In the past, former President Abdul Kalam has also commented on the need for Gujarat to focus more on its social development index.
Mr Modi is described as an iconic leader with innovative thoughts. A leader for whom progress matters more than propaganda. Mr Modi’s resolve is to put Gujarat on top of human development index.
Resolution and reality, however, seems to have a huge gap which is steadily widening.
Diehard cynics are pushing the threshold. The rumours doing the political rounds in Kolkata and Delhi are uncanny and diabolical. That the spontaneous protests against Taslima Nasrin in Kolkata were stage-managed by those who wanted the nation's attention to shift from the shame of Nandigram. That the Centre and state government played footsie as they twiddled their thumbs while Taslima is shunted from here to there. Is it possible that the mighty Indian nuclear State can't protect one lone woman? And that too in a CPM bastion? It's fishy, and it stinks.
So how come suddenly, from nowhere, unknown, fringe fundamentalist groups with no identity or strength, started calling the shots on the streets of big bully's Kolkata and the big brothers at Alimuddin Street chose to watch the show on the idiot box? How come suddenly Taslima became a hate-figure in a city and state where the 'secularists' call the shots? And why was the army called so desperately and in such quick notice and curfew declared etc, even when the party's bloody party went on non-stop at Nandigram under siege while Writer's Building washed its hands off. So who has the blood of the peasants on their hands, in March, and in November, so that Lal Salem can resonate on the recaptured village bylanes by armed thugs and motorcycle gangsters?
This blood won't wash and the communal twist won't work now as it did not work after the March 14 massacre. It is a peasant struggle and it's not the fault of the poor Dalit and Muslim farmers if they constitute the majority in Nandigram. Besides, Muslims in Bengal have never voted for Muslim fundamentalists — they have voted for the Left, the Congress or Trinamool Congress. The Nandigram MLA belongs to the CPI and it does not matter if he is a Muslim.
Those who forcibly decided to 'deport' Taslima to BJP-ruled Jaipur, have obviously lost not only their ideology, but also their sanity and integrity. This communal insanity, combined with rapes and killings in Nandigram by their cadre, is so transparently crass that even the belligerent and foul-tongued troika of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, Biman Bose and Benoy Konar seemed to have lost their tongues. If anybody who needs to be deported from Kolkata, it is this cosy muscle-flexing threesome. And if this is not utter degeneration and ideological bankruptcy, then what is?
And look who is celebrating? Narendra Modi and the Hindutva rabble-rousers. They will protect Taslima — so send her to Gujarat. Modi can then take her on a guided tourist package to Naroda Patiya, Ehsan Jaffrey's Gulberga Society, Kalupur, Juhapura, the Shah Alam refugee camp where thousands of survivors were dumped, and of course, the ravaged Best Bakery of Zaheera Sheikh in Vododra where they were all burnt alive. And enlightened 'Buddha' can call up 'vikas purush' Modi and promise to show him his pet, infatuated obsession: the chemical hub of Salem, notorious for backing the murder and disappearances of 2 million dissidents and communists by dictator Suharto in Indonesia.
Indeed, if money has no ideology or colour, as Buddha so proudly claims, then why not deport Halliburton and Bechtel from 'occupied Iraq' to Bengal. Blood for oil in Iraq. Chemical hub for blood in Nandigram. And if Henry Kissinger can be an honoured guest of Buddha, why not George Bush and Dick Cheney?
No wonder, a Rightwing Hindutva columnist is glorifying Modi and Buddha — as great role models of development. The Gujarat genocide celebrated communal fascism. And the Nandigram massacre — capitalist fascism. So why not?
So between the Left and Right, what happens to Indian citizens in the twilight zone of a failed democracy when the State turns predator against its own people? Ask that Muslim woman in Nandigram, surrounded by a CPM mob, gangraped by known CPM criminals, her daughters too gangraped and still missing. Does’t it all remind you of Gujarat, 2002?
