| Published on 24-03-2007 In National |
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| SEZs: Does the Acquisition Arithmetic Add up? |
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Written by
Anita Ratnam |
Nandigram is the not the first place where farmers protesting against land acquisition have been fired upon by police acting on the orders of state governments. And despite the current outrage, it may not be the last. While the West Bengal Government has now announced a temporary freeze on land acquisitions in Nandigram, it has done so under much public outcry as well as pressure from its own Left Front Allies. Farmers voices are drowned in the cacophony of statements from the Union Ministry of Commerce ( the source of the SEZ dilemmas), the UPA leadership's cautious comments, CPI-M allegations of opposition orchestrated farmers resistance, opposition allegations of CPI-M cadres operating in police uniforms etc. Even as investigations get underway and responsibility is finally "fixed" on some individuals, the anxieties that farmers have about land acquisitions may again get relegated to the sidelines.
In Karnataka's recent history too we have had many such ignominies. The coercion of farmers to hand over their land, to accept the compensation and get out without expressing any anger, is only the tip of the iceberg. The abysmal compensation (sometimes one-tenth of market prices), acquisitions in excess of what is required (remember BMIC?), rumours of acquisition spread by land developer mafias who make a killing by buying land cheap (Devanahalli ahoy!) and the frantic migrations of agricultural labourers, are only some of the uncomfortable questions that have stared at us repeatedly.
Despite the emotional attachment and dependence on a piece of the earth that has sustained them for generations, sale of lands by farmers is sometimes the only way out of debt traps. Around Bangalore, small farmers have been "selling" land, mostly through GPA (general power of attorney) agreements to land brokers who have in turn sold land to resorts, builders, floriculture units, industrial houses, schools and colleges. Often the farmer is not even aware who the final buyer is or the price paid to the broker till much later .
With the crisis in small-holder agriculture looming large, distress sales of lands has increased alongside a booming demand for land for industry and infrastructure, especially around the metros.
If a buyer requires 20 acres of land within an hour's drive from the metropolis, a broker has the headache of finding 6-8 farmers in a contiguous area who are willing to sell at the same time. Even if one farmer does not sell, the broker resorts to pressure tactics to get him to "consent", at times even leaving standing crops in the fields. The money when it arrives in small parcels, is too fragmented to invest and is spent on home repairs, weddings or paying off debts which can finally leave a farmer both landless and penniless.
The arithmetic of acquisition works very differently. Firstly, there is no freedom to decide whether to sell, when to sell, to whom, and at what price. After months of rumours, a notification arrives in the post that your land is required for a "public" purpose and a specified amount of compensation will be paid. The rest is 'legalese'. The "broker" is replaced by the State machinery and the "buyer" is often a public-private partnership or a foreign SEZ promoter who wants hundreds of acres.
State governments are "buying" from some of the poorest people on earth and allotting it to some of the world's richest companies.
In terms of tactics too, the State is different from the small time broker or the builder lobby. The use of the police forces to terrorise people into consenting is a "prerogative" only of a State and state violence over land, from Muthanga to Pillaganahalli to Kalinganagar does not happen out of the blue. The desperation of the state to have its way and reassert its control over dissent is always a factor in each of these terrible incidents.
In the case of SEZs where the state has much loss of revenue to deal with as a result of exemptions and subsidies and tax holidays, such zealous dedication to the SEZ concept seems an oxymoron.
Today state governments are wooing foreign investments as they do not have investment resources of their own. Using its state "authority", and peoples powerlessness in the face of thatmight, all it can do is acquire land for projects and make life easy for the investors. Finally when the shareholders agreements in public-private partnerships have to be signed, it tries to inflate the value of land acquired so as to claim a substantial percentage of shareholding as a way of ensuring prestige and profits.
A curious set of tensions between the States and the Centre has also emerged as States draft SEZ Acts based on Central Guidelines which vest Development Commissioners appointed by the Centre with tremendous powers, bypassing State level systems on several counts- from pollution control to land reforms legislation to labour laws. Despite this, state governments are falling over each other to attract investment and use this as a measure of their "development" efforts.
This race has now reached incongruous proportions with Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Gujarat writing to the Centre to reconsider the upper limit of 150 SEZs in any one State. So far only 63 out the approved 236 SEZs have been notified by the central government, adding to their nervousness. Investors walking out of delayed deals has aggravated their desperation. There seems to be a competition to somehow acquire Manhattan type skylines with steel and glass hothouses, convoluted flyovers, airport parks with golf courses and swanky looking buses (even if empty!) zooming on tree-less superhighways.
In such a polarised atmosphere, the need for a policy that will urgently address the issues of small farmers is pushed to the margins. It s eems as if subsidising private profit-making companies under the guise of "public purpose" is more important than the problems of impoverished farmers. Occasionally announcing crop-loan waivers and making claims for river waters will hardly earn the goodwill of farmers when land itself is increasingly being taken away. Indeed, it seems highly possible that with desperation of both farmers and states mounting, more Nandigram type tragedies are waiting to happen. |
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