For three days in March, thousands of
farmers from across the country, and owing allegiance to Bharti Kisan
Union, stayed put at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. With distress
written large on their faces, they hoped that the government they
voted for would at least have the courtesy to listen to them. Their
anger was over an unjust law that they fear will forcibly evict them
from their meager land holdings, and also they came hoping to seek
some assurance from the powers that be for ending the continuing
agrarian distress that they are living with.
A fortnight earlier, nearly 5,000
tribals under the banner of Ekta Parishad had also marched to New
Delhi to join the two-day protest by Anna Hazare and others against
the land acquisition bill. But with indifferent State machinery, and
with an equally indifferent middle class, they found they had no
sympathetic ears to allow them to even share their sufferings. Not
even the national media, barring a few exceptions, took notice.
The disconnect between the middle class
in the cities and the poor and marginalized in the rural areas,
including 600 million farmers and the landless farm workers, is now
becoming loud and distinct. For all practical purposes, the divide
between India and Bharat that has been talked about for long is now
clearly visible.
What Is The Land
Acquisition Bill?
With the government calling the Bill
pro-farmer and pro-development and most of opposition parties and
social activists opposing it as anti-farmer, it is useful to sieve
through the noise and look at the changes proposed and what existed
earlier.
The 1894 Land Acquisition Act
and cost of development-induced displacement
Until now all land acquisitions in
India were being done under the colonial Land Acquisition Act of
1894. That Act allowed the governments to acquire huge lands for so
called ‘public purpose’ and industrialization, but did not give
any say to the farmers in the process. Therefore rapid growth of
industries and infrastructure in the past several decades saw
forcible evictions of farmers and tribals from their lands and
forests. Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN (WGHR)
reported in 2012 that since independence 60-65 million people are
estimated to have been displaced by development projects. Majority of
these are farmers, including tribals, dalits and other rural poor.
Although the industrial and infrastructure projects contributed to
India’s economic growth, the farmers and others previously
dependent on land and later uprooted were never consulted or made
participants in the development process.
The 2013 Land Acquisition Act:
A partial step towards democratic process
The Right to Fair Compensation and
Transparency in Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation
(Amendment) Act brought in by the UPA government in 2013 was an
imperfect attempt to resolve the conflicts. However it was a
significant step that gave a negotiating right to the farmer in the
process of his/her land being acquired for private companies or
public-private-partnership (PPP) projects. The 2013 Act mandated that
consent of 80% of affected land losers in case of private projects
and 70% in case of PPP projects is required. It also required that
Social Impact Assessment (SIA) is to be carried out by the government
before acquisition. SIA included assessment of impacts on potential
land losers, the landless, and the environment. The 2013 Act also
increased the rates of compensation to four times the market rate for
rural land and twice for urban land. In order not to disrupt food
security the Act prescribed that agricultural land be acquired within
certain limit and multi-crop land be avoided as far as possible.
However there were several major gaps
in the 2013 Act. For example, 13 of the 16 Acts under which forcible
land acquisition is possible were still not covered under the new
compensation, resettlement and rehabilitation measures prescribed in
it, and government projects still did not require consent and SIA.
Amendments made by NDA to the
2013 Act: Undoing of democratic process
The Ordinance for amending the 2013 Act
introduced by the NDA government in December 2014 (re-promulgated in
April 2015), and presented as a Bill in February 2015 with some
amendments made in March 2015, has undone almost all positive
achievements of 2013 Act for the sake of easing up procedures for
private industry and facilitating ‘make in India’ campaign.
The conditions of 70% (or 80%) consent
and SIA have been exempted for five areas – industrial corridors,
PPP projects (excluding private hospitals and colleges), rural
infrastructure, defence and defence production, and affordable
housing. It must be noted that practically any major project of
private sector can be included in one of these areas. In addition,
the prescription to limit use of agricultural land and to avoid
multi-crop land has been removed. This is bound to compromise India’s
food security. Furthermore, if an offence is committed by a
government official or the head of a department, no citizen can file
FIR or go to court for the official’s prosecution without prior
sanction of the government.
The only positive aspect of the 2015
Bill is that it has retained the higher compensation levels of the
2013 Act and made them applicable also for the remaining 13 Acts.
However by depriving farmers from having any say in the process of
land acquisition, the core principles of latest Bill have become
similar to the colonial Act.
For several years now, since the time
economists/planners began telling us that land is an economic asset
and it is unfortunately in hands of people who are inefficient, there
has been literally a scramble by business and industry (driven by
real estate) to procure as much as possible. The World Bank is
backing this strategy, and if you have read the World Development
Report 2008, you would know what I mean. It calls for land rentals,
and setting up a network of training centres to train the displaced
farmers to become industrial labour.
No wonder, the UPA government has made
budgetary provisions for setting up 1,000 Industrial Training
Institutes (ITIs). Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself had
called for a population shift, moving out 70 per cent of the farming
community into urban centres. This is what the World Bank had wanted
India to do way back in 1996. It had wanted India to move 400 million
people – twice the combined population of UK, France and Germany –
to be moved out of the villages in the next 20 years, by 2015.
It’s all therefore part of a global
design. All over the world pitched battles are being fought across
nations by the poor and deprived, who fear further marginalisation
when their land is literally grabbed by the government on behalf of
the industry. It first begins by deliberately turning agriculture
into a losing proposition as a result of which farmers, in most
places, are keen to move out provided they get a better price for
their land. Once this happens, it is much easier to drive out the
farmers from their land holdings.
But it’s not as simple as it appears
to be. Land being the only economic security for the poor, they put
up a tough fight. In China, as Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek
sometime back, 75,000 land conflicts, which means almost 250
protests a day, most of them bloody, happen every year. In India,
there were 260 land protests in 165 districts in 2013-14. When the
new land bill comes into force, I foresee the battle over land
intensifying in India. India will soon turn into a land of thousand
mutinies.
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