UP Farmers’ Violence Raises Larger Questions

A wave of unrest is once again sweeping across Western Uttar Pradesh over the land acquired for the Yamuna Expressway project. Agitating farmers in Bhatta Parsaul village of Greater Noida had last Friday held captive employees of the Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation. When security personnel went to rescue the officials the next day, the farmers attacked them, and in the violence two farmers and two police personnel were killed. Fifteen people, including the district magistrate of Gautam Budh Nagar, Deepak Agrawal,
were critically injured in the clashes,

The farmers are demanding increased financial compensation for the land they claim has been forcibly taken away from them to build the 165-km Yamuna Expressway, between New Delhi and Agra. When ready, the expressway is expected to cut travelling time between New Delhi and Agra by an hour.

Chief Minister Mayawati has been blaming the opposition, saying it has been stoking the unrest that has already spread to parts of Agra, Aligarh-Tappal and Mathura.

Former BJP president Rajnath Singh as well Samajwadi Party leader Shivpal Yadav, who is also the Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, were taken into preventive custody as they headed to the protest epicentre in Greater Noida on Monday.

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and party General Secretary Digvijaya Singh visited Bhatta Parsaul village in Greater Noida even as the party demanded a judicial probe into the violence.

Ironically, the war of words between Congress and SP on the one side and Mayawati on the other comes barely within days of the bonhomie between the three rivals in the state politics, witnessed in Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, which probed the 2G scam.
Last August too, proceedings in both houses of Parliament were disrupted after members of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party vehemently protested the deaths of three farmers in police firing in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura district. A platoon commander of the Provincial Armed Constabulary was also killed in the violence.

The state government had then tried to silence the protests by hiking the compensation but it found only a few takers for the sop. What has complicated the issue is that land was being acquired not just for the road project but also for townships to be built by the private party in charge of constructing the expressway.

While the Mayawati Government is facing the music from all sides right now and is likely to suffer electorally also, the problem, as witnessed earlier in West Bengal, Orissa, Karnataka and other states, is likely to crop up again and again across the country as India urbanises and takes away fertile land from farmers to build townships to accommodate a burgeoning middle class, factories and office complexes, to build roads, mines, power plants and other infrastructural pre-requisites of post-agrarian modernity.

This leads one to the larger question of land acquisitions and the scope of the government in developing infrastructure projects. While there is a logic for the government to acquire land to construct roads, the million dollar question is whether it should also facilitate development of townships alongside by private builders.

As a commentator rightly put it, “a skewed understanding of what constitutes public purpose and private interests is at the heart of the problem. Clearly, the state governments ought to focus on building road and allow market forces to transform villages alongside the road into urban centres in an organic manner.”

Even the nation’s apex court appears to be in two minds on the issue. Last year, a Supreme Court Bench of Justices Aftab Alam and B.S. Chauhan, in a landmark judgment had said: “the whole issue of development appears to be so simple, logical and commonsensical. And yet, to millions of Indians, development is a dreadful and hateful word that is aimed at denying them even the source of their sustenance.”
The Bench said “the resistance with which the state's well meaning efforts at development and economic growth are met makes one to think about the reasons for such opposition to the state's endeavours for development. Why is the state's perception and vision of development at such great odds with the people it purports to develop? And why are their rights so dispensable?
Justice Alam said the fears expressed by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly had been confirmed. “A blinkered vision of development, complete apathy towards those who are highly adversely affected by the development process and a cynical unconcern for the enforcement of the laws lead to a situation where the rights and benefits promised and guaranteed under the Constitution hardly ever reach the most marginalised citizens.”
“This is not to say that the relevant laws are perfect and very sympathetic towards the dispossessed. There are various studies that detail the impact of dispossession from their lands on tribal people. On many occasions laws are implemented only partially. The scheme of land acquisition often comes with assurances of schools, hospitals, roads, and employment. The initial promises, however, mostly remain illusory”, the apex court observed.
Ironically, last week, the same Supreme Court made it clear to the Karnataka Government that it must implement the controversial Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project in terms of its 2006 judgment without further delay.
When the state Advocate General submitted that survey in respect of phase ‘C' could not be completed in view of protest by farmers and the law and order problem, Justice V S Sirpurkar retorted “if you [Government] are afraid of law and order problem, then don't rule the State. Farmers will always protest if their lands are acquired; that can't be the reason for not implementing the project”.
Way back in April 2007, the Karnataka High Court had stated that the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board was “indiscriminately” acquiring agricultural land in and around Bangalore and Bangalore urban and rural districts and Board officials had thrown all norms to the winds and in some cases, acquired entire villages.
The million dollar question is whether to accept the court’s earlier observation about the impact of dispossession from their land on tribal people or that “the farmers will always protest if their lands are acquired”.
A comparative study of the Indian and Chinese experiences vis-a-vis SEZs (Special Economic Zones or Special Exploitative Zones, as activists put it) makes it abundantly clear that while mostly coastal wasteland has been given for SEZs in China, in India, it has been mostly fertile cultivated land.
Unlike in China, where the ownership of such zones rests with the state, in India, it lies with the private corporations and yes, despite the highly successful experience of Shenzhen, the Chinese have gone only for seven SEZs so far whereas in India, where SEZs have been largely unsuccessful and faced bloody, bitter resistance, we are going for 400-500 zones, more than the total number in the world.
Besides, there are complaints from farmers in many states that land acquired for SEZs was being used for `real estate' through `denotification', with owners saying recession has made SEZs unviable.
In Singur, the average size of the holding agitating farmers stood to lose was one-twelfth an acre, which could only yield a meagre living. But these tiny patches of land were the only sources of livelihood for their owners and it made no sense for them to give these away without alternative, certain and better sources of livelihood being in place.
There are enough reasons to believe that the skewed land acquisition policy has contributed to the growth of the Naxalite movement in the country, which the Forbes magazine recently described as India’s Dirty War.
One does not understand why the Government wants to give thousands of hectares of land which is agricultural land, for non-agricultural purposes. Where are farmers in the entire structure? While state Governments talk of job growth but they do not talk of how many thousands of people are uprooted from their homes and culture and are deprived of their sole source of livelihood.
Last year, Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Ajit Singh had drafted a `land acquisition amendment bill 2010' and sent it to leaders across parties, demanding that State withdraw itself from buying land for private entities by shrinking its role to 15%, and that any acquired land not put to intended use inside five years should revert to its original owners. He wants a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) for every acquisition which displaces 100 families in plain areas and 25 families in hilly areas.
For SIA, UPA's bill seeks displacement of 400 families in plains.

UPA's amendment bills on Land acquisitions and Relief & Rehabilitation, shot down by Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, only talk of the land reverting to government. Banerjee had vetoed UPA bills on the grounds that post-Nandigram, she cannot back a bill which legitimises state role in acquiring land for private parties.
The experiences in Singur, Nandigram, Chhatisgarh, Maharashtra, Orissa and Bangalore highlight the need for a progressive land acquisition law that clarifies the role and responsibility of the state, the private sector and the stakeholders, in the matter of land acquisitions while assuring fairness and certainty of long-term sustainable income and to those who lose land and livelihood. With reduced forest cover, decereased agricultural growth, subsidies and income and spiralling cost of living, the tribals and farmers should be made facilitators and partners in an inclusive growth model and not viewed as disposable obstacles on the path of development.
One can afford to ignore this festering wound only at the nation’s peril.
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An Absurdity Called Austerity

‘E-Cow-Nomics’ screamed Amul’s latest satirical advertisement making a pun of Junior Minister Shashi Tharoor’s uncharitable Twitter references to economy air passengers as “cattle class”, days after he was forced to vacate his plush suite in the Taj Mansingh, where he was staying in the absence of privacy and a gym in Kerala House.

The austerity fad seems to spreading like a pandemic, sort of H1N1, with no one including the Royal Gandhis escaping from its clutches. While his expression of solidarity with the ‘Aam Aadmi’ saved a meager Rs 445, it will cost much more for the Indian tax payer to repair those windowpanes broken by some wayward boys of Haryana (some television shows identified one of the stone-throwing boys as Varun Gandhi, little knowing that his expertise lies somewhere else – Just remember the Pilibhit speech).

Rahul’s Discovery of India was preceded by his mother’s equally fascinating journey to Mumbai not to talk about the circuitous route taken by our Foreign Minister S M Krishna to reach Belarus and other places to save some money for the country. The Vokkaliga stalwart was not even allowed to rest in peace at his Maurya Sheraton suite and was forced to vacate it by people who apparently didn’t know that he was the father-in-law of the owner of Café Coffee Day.

This whole exercise or enactment of this farcical and absurd horse play began when the Indian Express broke the story about these two Ministers leading a royal life in a country of the poor, downtrodden, Dalits, underprivileged, religious, linguistic and sexual minorities.

If that be the criterion, why on earth should we be hosting the Commonwealth Games. After all, you cannot blow away the wealth of the common man even if it has been named ‘Commonwealth’. We need more schools than stadia, more hospitals than velodromes, more houses than Five star hotels and games villages.

Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda never used to claim any of the free bus passes or railway coupons he was entitled to as an MLA. In fact, even today, he travels by his own car and stays in a bungalow lower in category than the one to which he is entitled.
One may have sharp differences with the man on his politics, but when it comes to leading a simple life, you just cannot beat the man who wears bathroom slippers to the Parliament and lives on a staple diet of Ragi balls (Muddae) and sambar.

Even in the UPA, we have leaders like A K Antony, whose wife used to travel to her office by bus when he was the Chief Minister of Kerala, Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge who stays in a room at the Karnataka Bhavan and the indefatigable Mamata Banerjee, who even goes to Parliament on Railway Budget day in a friend’s car sans any security cover and is caught in a traffic jam. Even when he was the country’s Defence Minister, the gates of George Fernandes’ residence on Krishna Menon Marg always remained open (one reason why the Tehelka team was tempted to enter and catch Jaya Jetlie unawares). We can recount several such instances from the past.

In the land of Gandhi, I mean the Mahatma, austerity has to be an integral part of life. In fact, it is the ordinary Indian’s inclination towards savings and an austere life that has seen us through the worst of recession.

The Congress stage managers must realize that the ‘Aam Aadmi’ does not travel even the economy class or chair car. At the best, a lower middle class family may travel by a low cost carrier once in a blue moon. Therefore, if at all these leaders and ministers have to travel, let them book their cheapest available tickets through travel portals like ordinary folk and travel without any frills.

Secondly, let these leaders not trivialize the very concept of austerity. If a senior political leaders does not keep well and needs more legroom at his or her age to travel comfortably, even the media should not grudge it. As private citizens, we also look for our basic comforts. Being a politician is not a crime. We don’t mind our elected representatives being looked after well, so long us as they also look after us well.

In countries such as United States, several facilities are extended to elected representatives to enable them to function smoothly and independently. A newly elected Corporator was complaining to me recently that he was finding it difficult to even offer a cup of tea to the scores of constituents who come to him daily with problems. In fact, some newly elected MPs from adjoining states who were allotted rooms in Hotel Samrat temporarily after the recent Lok Sabha elections vacated it after they found it beyond their means to entertain constituents.

Coming back to Gowda, he recently contributed 20% of his annual salary to the Prime Minister’s Famine Relief Fund, keeping in view the flood and drought situation in different parts of the country. And the princely sum amounted to Rs 38, 400/-. That being the case, isn’t it high time, we take a look at the salary structure of our elected representatives and devise mechanisms that would ensure that they are not forced to take favours to do their work properly. In fact, a hike in their salaries and allowances would give us better returns in the long run rather than short-term and short-sighted absurd austerity measures.