Generating Public consciousness around Land Acquisition for Private Industries Abhijit Guha Associate Professor Department of Anthropology Vidyasagar University West Bengal. abhijitguhavuanthro@rediffmail.com Abstract In course of my research on the acquisition of agricultural land for private industries in India, I came across a variety of public opinion which justified acquisitions. None of the supporters of land acquisition was ready to face the question of food security at the household level, let alone the role of local self-governments, which was endangered by the take-over of fertile land for industries by the government. Under the three sets of public opinion described in the paper, generating public consciousness regarding land acquisition for industries seemed to be a difficult task which should begin by exploring the justification of land acquisition for industries, in the context of food security land reform. Here I have made an attempt to study the opinions of people around land expropriation with an aim to generate public awareness as regards the ground realities of government policy including the recent law passed in the Parliament. Keywords Land acquisition, public consciousness, land reform, industrialisation, land take-over. It was learnt from the media that the much awaited and controversial Land Acquisition Resettlement and Rehabilitation (hereafter LARR) bill 2011 of India had been approved in the cabinet of ministers in a meeting held on 12 December 2012, and the bill would be placed before the Indian Parliament (Lok Sabha) for enactment (The Statesman, 13.12.2012 & The Financial Expres,s 13.12.2012). It seemed that after 118 years of its existence since its enactment by the British colonialists in 1894, the Indian Government was getting ready to reform this piece of draconian legislation. Finally, the Land Acquisition Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill (LARR) 2011 has been made an Act under the name Right to Fair 1 Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 which was passed on 29 August 2013 in the Lok Sabha and on 4 September 2013 in Rajya Sabha. The Act has provisions to provide fair compensation to those whose land is taken away, brings transparency to the process of acquisition of land to set up factories or buildings, infrastructural projects and assures rehabilitation of those affected for the first time in the history of the country. Since 1894, the colonial legislation enabled the Central and the State Governments of India in pre- and post-colonial periods to use the eminent domain of the state to acquire privately owned land for public purpose in lieu of monetary compensation determined on the basis of previous market price of the land. There was no provision for rehabilitation of the displaced and dispossessed farmers and land dependent families (landless agricultural labourers, sharecroppers, artisans etc.) in the colonial law nor was there any provision for getting the consent of the private owners before the acquisition. One of the root causes of farmers’ agitation which often turned into violent conflicts between the state and the people in pre- and post colonial India lay in the forcible expropriation of land for various kinds of development projects which without rehabilitation created more pains than gains for the people who lost their livelihoods in the process. Furthermore, after the introduction of economic liberalization in India since early 90s the demand for getting land (which was often fertile) by the private companies have tremendously increased and the Governments were found to fight with the farmers in acquiring land for the industrialists. The recent cases of the resistance of farmers in Singur and Nandigram in the West Bengal State of India not only revealed violation of human rights but also policy and governance failures on the part of the democratically elected popular Governments. Therefore, managing the legal, administrative and policy aspects of land acquisition in India or for that matter in any country of the world is basically a problem of governance which has academic as well as practical dimensions. Under this general background, I would look into the dynamics of public opinion around land acquisition and the failure of the Indian Government and its politicians to reform the colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894, keeping in line with the democratic letters and spirit of the Indian Constitution. Interestingly, the government spokespersons and the national media repeatedly highlighted the higher compensation packages for land losers in the new law forgetting the fact that monetary compensation can never be regarded as proper rehabilitation as has been shown by researchers in the field.(Cernea, 2002; Cernea and Mathur, 2008; 2 Garikpati, 2011). In fact, the LARR bill, which has been enacted in its present form, is a gross violation of the 73rd and 74th amendments of the Indian Constitution which created Local SelfGovernments (panchayats and municipalities) in the rural and urban areas in addition to the Central and State Governments in the country. But strangely, no political party of India, the communists included, has raised this crucial question of governance in the public domain. It is interesting to note here that in a recent debate between the internationally celebrated social activist Medha Patkar and Jairam Ramesh, the Central Government Minister of Rural Development, the issue of recognizing the Local Self-Government as one of the ‘Appropriate Governments’ did not find any place (Patkar, 2012 & Ramesh, 2012).There are however, recently published scholarly accounts which narrated the superiority of the eminent domain exercised by the state and the central governments over the local self-governments in cases of large scale land acquisitions for private profit making companies(Sampat,2013:40-52). The study reported that The Pohang Steel Company (POSCO) SEZ area in Odisha state of India consistently disregarded panchayat resolutions against the project and the referendum for Mumbai SEZ (MSEZ) in Raigad in Maharashtra conducted in 2008 by the district authorities was an unprecedented effort in ascertaining consent, notwithstanding sustained opposition by the local government to the project.(Ibid). Public Image of Land Acquisition Creation of public awareness regarding governmental acquisition of farmland for development projects is not an easy mission. The task becomes complicated when the elected government shifts the paradigm of development towards the establishment of private industries in the name of increasing economic growth and employment. The vital issues of human survival and democracy centering round food security, displacement of farmers, dampening effects on land reforms, bypassing the local self-governments are immediately obliterated from the public memory under the climate of development, economic growth and employment. The people affected by land appropriation get media attention only when they resist and agitate against governmental land acquisition. Even then, the agitation of the people is often belittled as ‘politically motivated’ or as a simple ‘law and order problem’. Under this background, the ordinary citizens are easily carried away by the views of the government and the party in 3 power and the opposition parties also do not question the basics, they usually talk in terms of higher rates of compensation and when the opposition political parties come to power they again follow the footsteps of the former rulers. My published research based on the Assembly proceedings in West Bengal for the period 1948-92 revealed that in a politically conscious state like West Bengal a separate Land Requisition and Acquisition Law, which was more coercive than the colonial law, was repeatedly renewed by the ruling political coalitions.(Guha,2007a: 3706- 3711). The socio-political processes have given rise to a public image of land acquisition which contained the following constituent elements: (i) land acquisition is an unavoidable necessity for economic growth, (ii) land acquisition should be an easygoing process backed by law and administration and (iii) it is morally justified, since compensation is given. This simplistic public image of land acquisition was further strengthened by the recent proacquisition discourses carried out by the governmental experts, leading economists and the media during 2006-08 centering round the acquisition of fertile farmland in a place named Singur in West Bengal for a small car manufacturing company owned by the Tatas. In this article, I have made an attempt to classify the pro-acquisition discourse into three sets and made an attempt to reveal the fallacious nature of argumentation involved in those discourses, since I believe that in order to generate public awareness on land acquisition this kind of deconstruction is not only an academic exercise but it will also help us to frame a humane policy towards development. Theoretical standpoint Under the above background the paper rests on the basic premise of some recent works in the field of social sciences, particularly in Anthropology, which assumes that applied or actionoriented research need not necessarily be divorced from ‘pure’ research; rather they can be united to produce new knowledge. (Hale, 2001: 96-120) The point becomes more relevant in case of researches done on policy related matters like the acquisition of land for the establishment of industries. One can study the various impacts of land acquisition quite well in an empirical manner using anthropological methods of fieldwork and analyse the findings in terms of the theoretical models on social and cultural change (for example, ‘culture lag’ theory) 4 already developed in sociology and anthropology. But one can also conduct studies which from the very beginning have an applied direction that may bring new theoretical insights and therefore, theory and its application are conjoined. It is under this theoretical premise that we have undertaken to study the opinions of people (the public image) around land expropriation for industries (which ranges from common people’s outlook on land take-over by the state to the views of government and some experts) with an aim to generate public awareness and also to dispel false notions as regards the ground realities (sometime hidden from the public view and absent in the media) of government policy around land acquisition. In this research the already worked out theoretical models (for example, impoverishment risk reconstruction model) accordingly serve as tools for application to generate public awareness. Methodological explanation The theoretical standpoint just described requires its methodological explication. This paper is written in the form of a purposive and action-oriented narrative juxtaposed with the findings of earlier and continuing field based researches on the policy aspects of land acquisition in West Bengal. (Guha, 2008a: 8-14 & b: 144-148; Guha, 2011:336-357 & 2013: 797-814). The narrative is also supported by some concrete case studies of families affected by the governmental acquisition in Paschim (west) Medinipur district. The public image of land acquisition for private profit making industries is constructed on the basis of the interactions and exchanges of the author with various kinds of people in the villages as well as in towns of West Bengal and also in the city of Kolkata. Another source of this narrative came from media reports, which also shaped and influenced public opinion on land acquisition during the Singur episode in West Bengal. The description which followed the sequence of events as well as the classification of the public image (which is not a homogenous entity) around land acquisition by the state can be regarded as a multisite ethnography. (Gellner, 2012: 1-16) 5 Entry into the field During the mid- nineties, three post-graduate students of the Department of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University, went to do fieldwork for their dissertations in a village named Paschim Amba, only eight kilometers from the Medinipur railway station in the erstwhile Medinipur district of West Bengal. They selected a hamlet inhabited by the Koras(a small tribe) and started measuring human bodies and collected data on family, marriage and kinship following the standard anthropological methodology. In one usual afternoon in the Department, when we were discussing about the colourful Kora marriage ceremony, a student remarked, “The colour and pomp of Kora marriage will soon go away since their lands are being taken over for a big pig iron industry of the Tatas.” The remark of the student was a sufficient jolt for me and on one Sunday morning in 1995, I landed up in Paschim Amba where I first met a peasant leader named Trilochan Rana who was then leading a militant movement against the acquisition of agricultural land for private industries by the State Government. In Trilochan Rana’s house we met a good number of farmers hailing from Amba, Mahespur, Kantapal, Gokulpur, Baharapat, Shyamraipur and other villages of the area. Very quickly, they started to narrate quite enthusiastically the gloomy story of how their lands have been taken away for the industries. Trilochan Rana depicted how they were trying to protest against this kind of anti-peasant policy suddenly adopted by the Left Government in the wake of the liberalisation in India. Ironically, Mr. Rana, who was a former Naxalite, took refuge under the Congress party to organise this peasant movement. “But sir, how coming from a university you can help us in this struggle for survival?” At that moment, I could not give any direct answer to this straightforward and pointed question. While returning to Medinipur I was thinking of the possible course of my individual action towards this land acquisition. Should I take up research on this problem? In fact, I had to struggle within myself for a long time on this issue simply because it was not just passing through the railway station Gokulpur twice a week like the service-holders commuting from Kolkata to Medinipur. Anyway, after my maiden visit to the field many events occurred and I had to go to those villages several times accompanied by the students. During this period I took two decisions. One was to do my PhD dissertation on this problem and the other was to support these dispossessed peasants by writing popular articles on the various adverse effects of land acquisition on the socioeconomic life of the enterprising Sadgope cultivators and poor Lodha and Kora families living on both sides of the south-eastern 6 railway track between Medinipur and Kharagpur railway stations. Gradually, a feedback with the peasants developed with me and while collecting data I took an active part in organising a public meeting within Paschim Amba in collaboration with the district unit of the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) which ultimately culminated into a deputation to the District Magistrate on the adverse economic and environmental impacts of land acquisition in this area. This and other kinds activism(writing popular articles on the plight of the farmers in a local daily) and support from the acquisition affected families inspired me to continue an engaged research on land acquisition for development projects by combining field and archival materials and dissemination of the research findings in various academic and popular forums ( Guha, 2005: 151-162) Pure research was thus combined with a kind of activism and it produced new knowledge as regards the hidden realties of land acquisition. Since I began my research on development caused forced displacement with a special emphasis to land acquisition on a particular locale, I also tried to collect public opinion within and outside my field area. I talked with people of other places who were not affected by land acquisition. For example, I talked, listened and debated with my colleagues, friends, relatives and strangers on the streets and public transport systems on the justification of land acquisition. The people with whom I talked were mostly middle class educated women and men of Bengal. I found most of them had very little idea about the adverse consequences of land acquisition, let alone the intricacies and delay towards the payment of compensation to the land losers. Moreover, whenever land acquisition for industrialisation took place most of the urban and educated women and men were found to hold the view that industrialisation, after all was the sign of progress that would create employment for the staggering number of unemployed youth of Bengal. For many people, Bengal’s declining economic growth was due to the lack of industrialisation. I found very few people who also praised the success of Bengal in agricultural production. Even when somebody showed hopes for agriculture they talked in terms of high yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers. The Bengali mind was preoccupied with an image of high technology and growth oriented development whether it was industrial or agricultural. And, probably for that reason Bengalis are still found to admire the state of Gujrat when it comes to industrialisation and they praise Punjab when it is about agricultural growth. I hardly found a Bengali educated person who showed any interest for the success of cooperative farming in Gujrat or small-scale industries of Punjab. So, for the typical 7 ordinary educated urban middle-class citizens, West Bengal needed large industries and since industries could not be established without acquiring land, the impact of industrialisation in terms of displacement was not viewed as major problem. Kharagpur and Singur During the period(1994- 2005) when I was conducting my research and writing my Ph.D thesis and the book based on my field and archival work, no one, even those opposed to the then communist led government in West Bengal was interested to discuss on the maladies of the colonial land acquisition law, rehabilitation and related issues. Although, in my field area large scale acquisition of farmland took place with very poor rates of compensation. The farmers also resisted land acquisition and finally large amount of land acquired for a private industry remained unutilised for several years. But virtually nobody talked against it. I compared this incident at a much later period of my research with the happenings of Singur in 2006(2006a:7). In all respects, there were sufficient reasons for Kharagpur to gain national and international attention like Singur. But it did not happen. The reasons behind the silence of Kolkata-based intellectuals and the Opposition parties over the land acquisition for the Tatas and Birlas by the Left Front government at Kharagpur in the early 1990s were more than one. First, anti-Left Front political parties (the SUCI and CPI-ML) and human rights groups (APDR and Nagarik Mancha) were not much interested in the land acquisition issue during that period when the Left Front-driven industrialisation was at its nascent stage, with promises of huge industrial investments by private companies in the state. Second, though the farmlands acquired in Kharagpur provided food security to vegetable growers of one of my study villages named Gokulpur (it is also the name of a railway station between Kharagpur and Midnapore) those were monocrop (jal soem in the departmental classification) in nature. We still find among those who are opposed to the acquisition of multicrop farmlands a notion which runs like this: “Well, monocrop land may be acquired since we need to have industrialisation in the state, but a multicrop land should never be allowed to be acquired for 8 non-agricultural use.” There is hardly anyone in the anti-Left Front lobby who is demanding the upgradation of monocrop land into multicrop ones, which is the government policy. We often hear from the advocates of this anti-acquisition lobby: “Why isn’t the government building industries in Purulia, Bankura and Midnapore (West)?” As if people in these districts do not depend on agriculture but on something else! So, if industries come up in these backward districts, the poor will benefit. Third, despite the spontaneous but weak protests and resistance by farmers of Kharagpur during the mid-1990s, no opposition party lent any solid support (as they have done in Singur) to them. The media did report the adverse effects of farmland acquisition and the protests of farmers but these did not attract the attention of Kolkata-based intellectuals and human rights groups. They were at that time busy with other issues. After all, Kharagpur was not equipped with a great number of anti-Left Front intellectuals of all shades and colours. The fact that land acquisition scenario in Kharagpur was far worse than that of Singur could be based on government records and field research over six years for my PhD thesis at Vidyasagar University. I now state some of the dismal facts. According to information revealed through the print media, a total of 997 acres of agricultural land have been acquired within eight months for the Tatas’ small car factory at Singur. The compensation rate, according to government sources, turned out to be a little more than Rs 7 lakh per acre (The Statesman, 14 December 2006). Let me compare Singur with Kharagpur. In 1992, a pig-iron manufacturing plant named Tata Metaliks was set up by the Tatas on the monocrop land of six mouzas under Kharagpur I block of the erstwhile Midnapore district, though non-arable land was available in the vicinity, having communication and other facilities. A total of 217.23 acres was acquired by the state government and the acquisition was complete within a year through the application of the more coercive West Bengal Land (Requisition and Acquisition) Act, 1948 which became defunct after 31 March, 1993. The compensation paid by the district land acquisition department was Rs 20,686 an acre for a landowner, while for a recorded bargadar it was Rs 11,211.75 an acre. On 1 June, 1992 in the West Bengal Assembly, Mr Manas Bhunia of the Congress wanted to know about the land acquisition for the establishment of the pig-iron industry by the Tatas at Kharagpur. The land and land reforms minister in his reply informed about the amount of land given to the company and the rates of compensation. No question was asked about the 9 rehabilitation of the displaced peasants by any member of the Assembly (West Bengal Assembly Proceedings Vol. 99; 1992). An unpublished report of the Midnapore land acquisition department dated 27-3-92 revealed that the lack of irrigation facilities and the monocrop nature of the acquired land led to the calculation of its market price at such a low rate.(Guha, 2007b). The department, too, did not explore the possibilities of rehabilitation of the affected families in terms of providing permanent jobs and/or land as compensation. The administration seemed to be concerned only with monetary compensation at the market price prevalent in the area. Three years later, people of the same area were served with notices by the district administration for the acquisition of their farmland in 10 mouzas covering about 525 acres for another pig-iron plant named Century Textiles and Industrial Limited (CTIL) owned by the Birlas. The local people, being totally disillusioned and frustrated with the government’s attitude towards rehabilitation and compensation in the Tata Metaliks case, began to protest against this decision of acquisition. This time, the land acquisition department prepared rates of compensation, which ranged between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1, 00,000 an acre and Rs 7,000 an acre for the bargadars. The farmers objected to these rates and mass deputations to the district authorities began, and on 10 January, 1996, the peasants prevented soil testing by the company and blocked the National Highway 6 for eight hours. The farmers’ agitation continued for about five months and they also boycotted the parliamentary election in May, 1996.All these events were reported in The Statesman and some Bengali dailies. No political party came to organise this spontaneous movement of peasants, no social or human rights activist came forward to support landlosers of a rural area in West Bengal, just 120 km from Kolkata and well connected by trains. One former Naxalite peasant leader, with the help of a few local INTUC boys, led a brief but significant movement against land acquisition. The district unit of the APDR published a leaflet, held a meeting in the locality and gave a deputation to the district magistrate and that was all. The land acquisition episode for CTIL, however, took a horrible turn within a few years. After taking possession of 358.25 acres by April 1997 and fencing the land, the company decided not to deposit any money for payment of compensation. The company’s managing director, Mr BK Birla, in an interview with the correspondent of The Statesman, said they would not proceed with the project since “the national market of pig-iron has become very 10 competitive because of the entry of China and Australia in the field”. The then state land and land reforms minister, Mr Surya Kanta Mishra, on the other hand told The Statesman: ‘We are not finding any takers for the land’. (The Statesman, 18 November, 1999). This huge chunk of fertile agricultural land, which provided subsistence to nearly 3,000 families, remained unutilised till 2003 after which some portion of it was given to a private company but a large area still remained unutilised. Field realities of land acquisition Our field study revealed that under the existing legal, administrative and policy framework, the people, whose livelihood was drastically altered by the takeover of agricultural land, were not allowed to play any role once the process of acquisition was initiated by the concerned Departments of the Government of West Bengal, which, for no ostensible reason, took years to be completed. The people, who were put first in the policy drafts of the international funding agencies and the NGOs, had actually been placed in the receiving end of the elaborate process through which the state power tried to usher a new era of industrial development in West Bengal. The new era of industrial development in West Bengal or for that matter, in any other state in India is bound to be accompanied by dispossession of the peasantry from their major means of production that is land. Dispossession from one’s own means of production is one kind of displacement in which the dispossessed family not only loses its economic security but also social status and empowerment achieved through political movements and land reforms. So, dispossession of the rural cultivators from their agricultural land is intimately interwoven with displacement from one’s own existing mode of survival. The second aspect of dispossession of the farmers from their major means of production, that is agricultural land, is the differential impact of land acquisition on the heterogeneous group of agriculturists in a region. This is precisely because of the fact that when any Government acquires agricultural land it does not take into consideration the pre-acquisition land holding pattern of a region. Thirdly, dispossession also entails a political dimension. In a rural society where peasant movements had taken place in successive waves and the rights of sharecroppers as well as landless labourers have been ensured by a Government just a few years ago, the acquisition of fertile agricultural land for capital intensive heavy industries by the same Government not only 11 dispossessed the farmers economically but it also created political disempowerment as well as disillusionment of the peasants about the role of a Left Government. The Study Area Our study area lies on the bank of the river Kasai which is the largest river of the erstwhile Medinipur district. Cultivation of paddy (staple of the region) in the villages under study depends primarily upon rainfall and no systematic irrigation facilities have yet been developed by the Government. The villagers residing on the south-eastern bank of the river cultivate a variety of vegetables on the land adjoining their homesteads owing to a very good supply of groundwater tapped through traditional dug wells. But just west of the South Eastern Railway track the groundwater level is not very congenial for cultivation of vegetables. The main agricultural activity on this side of the railway track is rain fed paddy cultivation for about four to six months of the year. Land for the two big pig iron manufacturing private industries has been acquired by the Government on this side during the last ten years. Selection of Households The selection procedure of the households for this study followed a combination of purposive and opportunity sampling. At the outset, the main aim of the researcher was to locate the households whose farmlands have been acquired for the establishment of the Tata Metaliks Company. Instead of searching through the records of land ownership kept in the Land and Land Records Department of the district, this investigation depended directly upon fieldwork by following the traditional anthropological method of intensive interviews of the projectaffected persons. Apart from knowing the current status of land ownership (which are not promptly made up-to-date in the Land Records Office) and the nature of micro-ecological variations and local level political movement centering round land acquisition could be glimpsed within the first few weeks of fieldwork. It became also possible to know from the active members of the political movement the names of the villages whose inhabitants have been affected by the acquisition of agricultural land for the industries. Later, at the time of conducting the household survey, snowball sampling was taken recourse to, wherein the affected household members gave the names of other such household heads whose land have also been acquired for the same industrial projects. Within a period of three months the members of 144 households (which is roughly about 70 percent of the total number of families 12 affected by the acquisition of land for Tata Metaliks Company) belonging to different landholding categories, caste and community affiliation as well as families residing in the two on both sides of the South-Eastern Railway track which provided interesting ecological variations in terms of groundwater level and cultivation of non-cereal food crops were interviewed. Consequences The first and foremost consequence conforms to the observation of Michael Cernea which he mentioned in his publications on the “eight major risks” involved in involuntary displacement caused by development projects all over the world. Industrialization in the liberalisation decade in Medinipur has led to dispossession of the small and marginal farmers from their principal means of production. Table 1 Pre-acquisition Agricultural Landholding Pattern of Sample Households Affected by the Acquisition for Tata Metaliks Size category of holdings (in acres) Number of households Mean household size Landless Nil < 0.5 19 (13.194) 4.73 0.5 – 1.5 58 (40.227) 6.43 1.5 – 2.5 32 (22.222) 8.84 2.5 – 3.5 13 (9.027) 8.60 3.5 – 4.5 8 (5.555) 8.86 4.5 – 5.5 6 (4.166) 5.5 – 6.5 6.5 – 7.5 Total 12.6 Nil 8 (5.555) 144 (99.996) 13 13.3 5.76 Table 2 Post-acquisition Agricultural Landholding Pattern of Sample Households Affected by the Acquisition of Tata Metaliks Size category of holdings (in acres) Number of households Mean household size Landless 22 (15.277) 6.36 < 0.5 35 (24.305) 5.48 0.5 – 1.5 51 (35.416) 8.25 1.5 – 2.5 14 (9.722) 7.57 2.5 – 3.5 13 (9.027) 12.07 3.5 – 4.5 5 (3.472) 9.20 4.5 – 5.5 3 (2.083) 10.33 5.5 – 6.5 1 (0.694) 15.00 6.5 – 7.5 Nil Total 144 (99.996) 5.76 The most striking feature of the above two tables is the appearance of 22 landless families (15.28%) in the post-acquisition phase. Moreover, 75 per cent of the families belong to the size category of 0.5 – 4.5 acres which according to the latest standards set by the Government of West Bengal, should be regarded as marginal and small farmers. The pattern of landholding among the same families after land acquisition shows that 15 percent of them have become landless and the number of families belonging to the lowest landholding category (< 0.5 acres) has increased from 19 to 35. On the other hand, the number of households within the size category 3.5 – 7.5 acres, has declined from 22 to 9 only. 14 Table 3 Land Acquisition Scenario Among the Sharecropper Households Affected by Acquisition for Tata Metaliks Amount of Land in acres Number of households < 0.5 2 0.5 – 1.5 8 1.5 – 2.5 Nil 2.5 – 3.5 1 Total 11 In this table, the distribution of sharecroppers according to the size category of their landholding has been shown. It is true that the number of sharecropper families constitutes only 7.63 per cent of the total number of affected families but the overall importance of this phenomenon has to be assessed in the light of the land reforms policy of the Left Front Government in West Bengal. Acquisition of the land of the bargadars (sharecropper) could not be avoided by the Government whose one of the major aims was to empower the former through the recording of their rights on barga land. Furthermore, the process and rules of the payment of compensation to these bargadars is also very much against their interest. The Government of West Bengal is yet to make any change in the rules of payment for the sharecroppers in case of land acquisition for development projects. The Government has not also taken up the issue of rehabilitation of the bargadars beyond the payment of a meagre amount of cash compensation. Another devastating consequence of the acquisition of agricultural land in this area of Paschim Medinipur is the landlessness of a scheduled tribe named Kora. The Koras are allied to the Mundas of Singhbhum, and have migrated to West Bengal from their traditional homeland in Chotanagpur. They earn their livelihood as day labourers and poor marginal cultivators in the study area. In this case of acquisition of land for Tata Metaliks, we have found 24 (16.66%) Kora families out of 144 who have been affected by land acquisition. Let us look at their landholding pattern before and after acquisition. 15 Table 4 Landholding pattern of the Koras in the pre-acquisition stage Amount of land in acres Number of households 0.5 – 1.5 21 5.1 1.5 – 2.5 2 8.5 2.5 – 3.5 Nil 3.5 and above 1 Total 24 Average household size 10 Table 5 Landholding pattern of the Koras in the post-acquisition stage Amount of land in acres Number of households Landless Average household size 9 3.9 10 6.6 0.5 – 1.5 4 6.5 1.5 – 2.5 Nil < 0.5 2.5 and above 1 Total 10 24 The tables show how landlessness has set in among the Koras of the study area. None of the 24 Kora families surveyed by us was landless but after the acquisition, 9 families have become landless. It may be noted in this connection that agriculture in this area is characterized by rain fed monocrop cultivation and these poor tribal families consume whatever they grow on their land. So the acquisition has directly affected their food security. Undoubtedly the attention of the Government and the panchayat should be on the improvement of agriculture instead of hectic acquisition of agricultural land for the construction of heavy industries where these people work as temporary wage labourers. The acquisition of the recorded agricultural land of the poor scheduled tribe families by the State Government itself is one of the worst consequences of land acquisition in West Bengal in the recent period. 16 Post- Singur Public Image of Land Acquisition The scenario however changed after the massive resistance of the farmers against land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram during 2006-8. During this short period a large number of articles, interviews, opinions, debates and news items were published (and it continued) in the newspapers and journals on the development caused forced displacement in West Bengal. Economists (including the Noble Laureate Amartya Sen), journalists, social activists (like Medha Patkar) and politicians began to write and talk vociferously on the justification of land take-over for private industries in West Bengal. Editorials and several articles by academicians and activists, were published in Economic and Political Weekly, which is one of the of the most widely circulated journals of the country during 2006-7(Patkar 2006; EPW Editorial 2007; Banerjee et.al 2007; Bhaduri 2007; Sarkar 2007; Bose 2007; Patnaik 2007; Bhattacharya 2007; Mishra 2007; Karat 2008; The Telegraph 2007).Websites named sanhati.com and counterviews.com were launched in the cyberspace. Development caused forced displacement and resettlement in communist ruled West Bengal state of India became the national and international agenda for debate and discussion. Out of this plethora of literature, I have made an attempt to find out the major arguments which provided justification of land take-over for industries in West Bengal, which till the other day was a state famous for the implementation of pro-farmer land reform and decentralised rural development policy. The arguments and their fallacious nature First set During the early 1990s the ruling LFG leaders argued that since land reform is a very successful endeavour in the state which raised the agricultural production and also the purchasing capacity of the peasantry, the state is the ideal ground for the establishment of capital intensive heavy and medium industries(WBIDC:2000). One may name it industrialisation-through-land reform argument. The proponents of this line of argument never considered the possible impact of land acquisition on land reform. My field-level research 17 revealed that land acquisition may push back the process of land reform by dispossessing the farmers at a faster rate. Let us consider the case of Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat in my field area where plots of fertile agricultural land have been acquired by the State Government for two pig iron industries. But before describing the case of acquisition we would consider the distribution of land to the landless in this Gram Panchayat, which is predominated by families living below the poverty line. The figures reveal that from 1993 to June 1995, at about 300 acres of land was distributed to 1500 families inhabiting within the Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat (Smaranika, Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat 1994-95). Interestingly, the Annual Report of the Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat for the year 1992-93 also gave statistics on land reform in its last page, which published figures of land distribution during the period 1978-1992. The figures show the same number of families (i.e. 1500) who had been given land which simply means that during the period 1992-95 no landless family in the Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat area has been given land (Smaranika, Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat 1992-93). The rate of land distribution in this area during 1978-1992 (i.e. 15 years) turns out to be 20 acres per year. I have made an attempt to calculate the rate of land acquisition in the Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat for two big industries, viz. (i) Tata Metaliks and (ii) Century Textiles. Incidentally, the second industry, for which 525 acres of land has been acquired is yet to come into existence. For these two industries, the amount of land that has been acquired during the period 1986-2000 (i.e. 15 years) is about 759 acres (233 acres for the Tata Metaliks and 526 acres for Century Textiles). The rate of land acquisition turns out to be 50.6 acres per year, i.e. more than 2½ times the rate of land distributed by the Government through land reforms during 1978-1992. 18 Table 5 A Comparison Between Land Distribution and Land Acquisition in Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat Period Amount of Land Distributed (in acres) Annual Rate (acres/year) 1978-1992 300 20 1986-2000 Amount of Land Acquired (in acres) 759 50.6 In the light of the above comparison, the case of Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat brings out an important implication for the development policy of the state. The distribution of land to the landless families in this area, which operated through the involvement of the elected panchayat, was a much slower process than land acquisition for large industries. Moreover, land acquisition caused dispossession of small and marginal farmers and disempowered the bargadars and pattaholders who despite all their efforts and resistances ultimately failed to achieve empowerment. During our fieldwork, whenever the elected panchayat members were asked about the rehabilitation of the farmers whose lands have been acquired for the industries, the only answer which came to us was: “It is not the business of the panchayat. It is the duty of the Government.” The panchayat members were not even interested to conduct any household level survey to find out the number of families (including scheduled tribes) who had lost their rights over land owing to acquisition for the two big industries, within their jurisdiction. The empowerment of small peasants achieved through land reforms in the Kalaikunda area was rather reversed owing to the acquisition of huge chunks of fertile agricultural land for industries. ( Guha, 2006b: 155-173 ). The second line of argument came from more theoretically oriented Marxists of the ruling parties, who claimed that industries would be able to absorb the extra labour force engaged in agriculture in disguised form and also owing to the introduction of mechanization in traditional means of cultivation. The proponents of this line of argument also stated that agriculture owing to land fragmentation caused by inheritance of property rights and hike in input costs have already become non-viable for many small and marginal farmer families. This argument may be termed as employment-through-industrialisation (Mishra, 2007). It may be noted here that 19 the land reform initiated by the LFG resulted in pattaholders having small plots. Needless to say that both these arguments were not supported by any empirical survey done in real situations of industrialisation in West Bengal either by the government or by any independent researcher. On the contrary, the two substantial government reports, one prepared by Nirmal Mukarji and Debabrata Bandopadhayay in 1993 and the other by Jayati Ghosh in 2004 showed with a lot of data collected from government sources that land reform and sharecropper registration still remained incomplete tasks and landlessness had been increasing in West Bengal (Mukarji and Bandopadhayay, 1993). The Jayati Ghosh report did not mention a single line in favour of industrialisation as a development strategy for West Bengal in its long list of recommendations. The report suggested better land reform and formation of active cooperatives as well as more government responsibilities towards the creation of improved marketing facilities for the rural cultivators. The empirical findings of government's own reports by experts were largely ignored by the government and huge investments for capital intensive industrialisation was encouraged and justified by the aforementioned macroeconomic arguments(WBHDR: 2004). My empirical findings showed that land reform could be pushed back by land acquisition by dispossessing the pattaholders as well as sharecroppers (2006 b: 155-173). The third line of argument may be termed as the historical necessity of industrialisation. This argument was advanced by the Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen which he expressed in his long interview in a newspaper in 2007. But there are other less famous followers of this argument. The proponents of this line of argument claim by citing examples from the pages of the history of Western Europe that industrialization is an inevitable stage after agriculture and accordingly, the farmers of Bengal have to give away their agricultural land for the establishment of industries. Second set At a later stage, when acquisition of huge tracts of fertile agricultural land began to take place giving rise to peasant resistance in a number of districts in West Bengal which culminated into Singur and Nandigram crises, another line of macroeconomic argument came into existence. In this argument it was stated with facts and figures that since all the land for proposed industrial investment for the coming years was only a very small fraction of the total amount of cultivated and cultivable land, so there would be no food crisis in the state if those lands are 20 acquired.(Sarkar, 2007). This set of argument justified land take-over for industrialization and could be labeled as the no-food-insecurity-by-industrialisation argument. Here, my field observations in the villages of Paschim Medinipur are relevant. I have found at the micro-level that almost all the farmers of the studied village used to consume the paddy they grow in their land. We have not come across any farmer who sold their paddy in the market. Purchasing rice for consumption was viewed by the members of a farmer family as derogatory and was regarded as a dishonourable act for a chasi (farmer). Owning cultivable land was viewed as socially prestigious for the farmer families of this area. A ‘good farmer’ in this area was one who could feed his family with the paddy grown in his field throughout the year. A popular maxim in this area which we collected during fieldwork was ‘Arthe maan / Khote dhan/.Freely translated it meant: ‘Money gives prestige/‘Fertilisers yield paddy.’ In almost all our conversations the members of the landloser families always blamed acquisition of land by the government as the ‘root cause’ (mul karan in Bengali parlance) of food shortage. And, they also expressed their hopelessness whenever they had to talk about the number of months in which they purchased rice from the market for domestic consumption. (2013). The following case study of a family Gokulpur is one among the many stories which I have heard from the acquisition affected villagers. BOX I Sukul Choudhury is a middle aged man of Gokulpur village in the study area, who owned 0.54 acres land from his father. He has read upto class-VI and his main occupation was agriculture. But after the acquisition his main occupation is vegetable selling. He used to till the land with his family members and got 2800 kg paddy per year. He cultivated different traditional varieties of paddy (Rupsal, Patnai etc.) which are usually planted in the rainy season. He came to know about acquisition of the land from a notice, which came from land acquisition office of Midnapore. After receiving the notice he however, attend meeting but never submitted any objection in writing. After a short period of time like other farmers of Gokulpur, he agreed to give away his land with the hope that a member of his family will get a permanent job in the industry. He got compensation of Rs. 4000/- for giving 0.22 acres land (located in the Pritimpur mouza) which was acquired for the Tata Metaliks Company. His other piece of purchased land located in the Amba mouza amounted to 0.32 acres, was acquired by the Government for the Bansal Cement Company in the year 1995. He got compensation of Rs. 48000/- for giving this land. He saved the money in the local State Bank. The land which he possesses, now cannot supply food for his family throughout the year. He now has to purchase paddy from the market for two- three months of the year. He and his son also sell vegetable grown in his homestead land. He stated that the most adverse and immediate effect of land acquisition in his family was scarcity food and fodder for he cattle. ( Majumder and Guha, 2008). 21 There is still another line of argument in favour of the recent industrialization move of the LFG and this is the last in the list. Interestingly, this argument is often leveled by the opposition leaders of present day West Bengal. The followers of this argument advocate industrialization on uncultivated or monocrop land in the relatively arid districts of the state, viz., Purulia, Bankura and Paschim Medinipur in order to protect the highly fertile multicrop lands in Hooghly, Bardhaman or Purba Medinipur. This argument may be termed as industrialisation on uncultivated land (2008a:8-14.). Third set This set of argument was developed under the disguise of market principles. The proponents of this class of argument stated that the government should not acquire land for industries. In other words, land should be exchanged between the farmer and the industrialist by the principle of ‘willing- buyer-willing-seller’. A variant of this argument proposed that there should be a ‘land bank’ created by the joint effort of the government and the industrialists from which land would be purchased or leased out to the requiring bodies on the basis of some market principles. We may term this set of argument as forced acquisition under disguise since it did not take into consideration the already existing differential bargaining power of the heterogeneous group of landholders in terms of the quality and size category of arable land in possession of the farmers. While identifying all the above classes of arguments in favour of industrialization, one should keep it in mind that these arguments do not form rigid watertight compartments. Most often, the supporters of industrialization utilise a combination of the argument classes to strengthen their positions. For example, employment-through-industrialisation argument is often combined with historical necessity of industrialisation. Likewise, industrialisation through land reform may be mixed with employment-through-industrialisation argument. Basically, all the arguments have missed the micro level ground realities which the anthropologists and sociologists have discovered through their painstaking fieldwork. Moreover, none of the arguments dealt with rehabilitation of the displaced farmers or with the 22 violation of constitutional provisions which empowered the local self governments to implement development programmes within their jurisdictions (Guha, 2007a: 3706- 3711). Second, all the arguments were based on some form of fallacy. For example, the first set of arguments did not look into situations of land acquisition which would pauperize the land reform beneficiaries and drastically reduce their purchasing capacity. In fact, this is a selfdefeating logic. The second line of argument under the first set also did not take into consideration the fact that in a land scarce and high population density state like West Bengal, modern capital intensive and technologically advanced industries might not absorb the socalled extra labour force. The third line of argument was the weakest among the others simply because comparison between Western Europe during industrial revolution and present day West Bengal was nothing but an infantile exercise by one of the best brains in economics (2008b 144-148). The second set of argument totally ignored the fact of household level food insecurity and lowered purchasing capacity of displaced farmers which was a common feature of every case of land acquisition whether it had taken over monocrop or multicrop farmland under the present legal arrangement of providing only cash compensation without any sustainable measure of rehabilitation like benefit sharing. The other variant of the third set though apparently looks like a pro-peasant argument is actually anti-poor because it supported acquisition of uncultivated and/or monocrop land as if people did not depend on those lands nor do the departments of rural development and irrigation had any responsibility to transform those lands into multicrop and cultivable lands. The third set though apparently favoured a non-coercive mode of land take-over was basically coercive to actual cultivators. The absentee holders of land might be ‘willing’ to sell the land even at a lower price at the cost of displacing sharecroppers and unrecorded actual cultivators of their land who might have been ‘unwilling’ towards the sale of the land on which the livelihood of the latter depended. More fundamentally, the proponents of this school of thought have totally ignored the fact that in India a large amount of land is being used by the rural poor 23 customarily as common property resources for which there is no provision for compensation to the users in case of acquisition under the existing law (Guha, 2004: 80-88). The current scenario The Trinamul Congress led government of West Bengal which has recently come to power in the state is yet to develop any comprehensive R&R policy for the thousands of families affected by various development projects. The new government has enacted a law on 14th June 2011 in the West Bengal Assembly named ‘Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, 2011’. With this law, the West Bengal government has reacquired about 1000 acres of farmland from the Tatas which was given to the company for building up a small car manufacturing factory in 2006 by the then left front government. The Trinamul government’s intention was to return 400 acres of farmland to the ‘unwilling’ farmers around whom the agitation against the left front government was organised by the Trinamul Congress party. But now the whole issue seems to have fallen into a long legal battle between the present state government and the Tatas, since the latter has challenged the ‘Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act’ in the court. As a result, the Trinamul government has not yet been able to return the land to those ‘unwilling farmers’ nor have they received any compensation (The Statesman, 12 January 2012). In another case of governmental land acquisition for housing at North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, the farmers began to cultivate their farmland which were acquired but remained unutilised. According to media report these farmers were assured by the Trinamul Congress Party leaders before the election that their land, which is about 1,687 acres, would be returned to them if the party could come to power. But now these farmers are turning their backs to the Trinamul Congress, since the party has not kept its pre-election promise (The Statesman 11 February, 2012). Under the above disturbing episodes, it may be worthwhile to narrate the glaring incident of the opposition leveled by Mamata Banerjee, the present chief minister of West Bengal to the draft Land Acqusition(Amendment) Bill 2007 in the Lok Sabha. At that time Miss Mamata Banerjee was the Railway Minister of the Central Government. She opposed to a clause of the bill which empowered private companies to acquire up to 70 per cent land directly from 24 farmers and land owners. The remaining 30 per cent could be acquired by the state government. Miss Banerjee wanted private companies to buy 100 per cent of the land, according to a report (The Statesman, 26 July2009). It seemed that Ms Banerjee would have allowed the amended Bill to be passed if the Lok Sabha agreed to modify the 70/30 proportion to 100 per cent purchase by the companies under the principle of willing- buyer-willing-seller principle. I had the opportunity to hear out the MPs as an expert appointed by the Standing Committee on Rural Development to offer suggestions on the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill and Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill, 2007. The proceedings were held in Parliament’s Library Building on 17 June 2008. My suggestions focused on basic issues involved in the definition of ‘public purpose’ and ‘appropriate government’. The first aspect should be determined by the elected panchayats because they represent those likely to be affected. This suggestion was based on the 73rd Amendment of the Constitution as well as the Right To Information Act. These laws empowered the citizens with (i) the right to decide on whether their land should at all be acquired and (ii) to obtain the correct information regarding every aspect of acquisition, including alternative sites that would minimise the adverse effects. The members of the Standing Committee seemed to agree with the basic issues. But these were skirted. Instead, the panel provided examples of purchase of agricultural land by the private companies mostly through their agents. All the MPs seemed to be united on this issue. Nobody supported me. I was requested to send concrete suggestions in the light of the discussions. The hint was clear, i.e. that one should forget about the 73rd Amendment, panchayats and the Right to Information Act. One should think in terms of sale and purchase. The issue of benefit-sharing and the alternative employment opportunities for the project affected persons did not figure in the questions directed at me by the elected members of the Lok Sabha. Miss Banerjee’s objection to the 70:30 proportion for private players vis-à-vis the government was only a bargaining point in favour of private companies who, according to the members of the Standing Committee, already buying huge tracts of land. Public awareness on the adverse impacts of land acquisition cannot be generated only through specialised and advanced research. Awareness building requires the deconstruction of the existing public image on land acquisition which may involve critiques of untested and nonempirical hypotheses advanced by eminent persons. Finally, we may say that dissemination of 25 the findings of empirical research centering round food security, displacement of farmers, dampening effects on land reforms, bypassing the local self-governments should be part of basic level education in India. Is There Any Way Out? Some Policy Recommendations With the above analysis and interpretation on the land acquisition process and the public image around it as well as the overall disempowerment of the farmers we may now proceed to formulate some policy recommendations regarding land acquisition in the state. The recommendations are as follows: Any generalized macro-level hypothesis regarding economic development should take into consideration the micro-level realities of the field of its application. That land reform prepares the ground for industrialisation may be true in some specific situations but industrialisation without a down to earth policy of rehabilitation through the generation of employment and skill development could be a self-defeating endeavour. The Government should have a clear-cut policy regarding the acquisition of fertile agricultural land for the establishment of industries. The Government should explore all the possibilities of the establishment of industries on non-agricultural land and mention this with reasons in the Gazette notification, if acquisition of agricultural land becomes unavoidable. The Gazette notifications for land acquisition must mention the type of land (agricultural, non-agricultural wasteland, orchard, pond etc.) acquired for a particular project. And the state Government should publish a book from the Land and Land Reforms Department every year which would give the statistics on the type of land acquired by the Government in each district for development projects. This would enable the Government to evaluate its policy towards development. 26 Every case of land acquisition should be preceded by a socio-economic survey of the would be affected people in collaboration with the local gram panchayat before the preparation of the preliminary enquiry report by the Land Acquisition Department. This survey should be specifically aimed to make a socio-economic impact assessment (SEIA) of the concerned development project (Ramanathan and Geetha, 1999). The socio-economic impact assessment survey should first be cleared by the gram panchayat(s) and then forwarded to the District Land Acquisition Department for its placement in the screening committee. And this procedure should be made mandatory and incorporated in the LA Act by making necessary amendments in the State Legislative Assembly. The gram panchayat and the panchayat samity should be legally empowered to reject any proposal for land acquisition within their jurisdiction by showing sufficient reasons. This amendment would also be well in line with the 73rd Amendment of the Indian constitution which empowered the panchayats to the level of a self Government at the local level. There should be a provision in the revised LARR Act which would make it mandatory for the elected panchayats to give priority to PAP’s within its area at the time of implementation of various poverty alleviation schemes by the panchayat. Here the project affected scheduled tribe and scheduled caste families should be given priority among all the DP’s. . The existing method of calculation of monetary compensation for bargadars should be changed. The bargadars must be compensated by following the same principles of compensation calculation as it is being done in case of the owner of the land. The bargadar may be given 75 per cent or 50 per cent (as the specific case may be) of the compensation money awarded to the owner of the land. This would also considerably reduce the time which is now being taken by the LA Department to make payment to the bargadars. The payment of the landowner and the bargadar should be made at the same time. . There should be an arrangement for the payment of compensation to the unrecorded bargadars affected by land acquisition. If a genuine bargadar loses his/her rights of cultivation over barga land due to acquisition, then it should be the responsibility of the Government to arrange 27 for the payment of compensation, since recording of the bargadar is the joint responsibility of the Block Land and Land Reforms Office and the panchayat. Non-recording should not be regarded as a fault on the part of the bargadar. Since it is very difficult to identify all the persons and families who derive some benefits in terms of CPR from the acquired agricultural land, it would be better too make an approximate estimate of the said amount in monetary terms. For example, one can roughly calculate with the help of the villagers, the amount of straw eaten by the cattle through grazing in the agricultural fields during the post-harvest season when it becomes a CPR. The market price of this straw should be taken into consideration in the calculation of compensation after acquisition. But since this compensation cannot be paid to any individual landowner, it should be paid to the gram panchayat which would decide in its grassroot level meetings about the mode of expenditure of that money received as compensation for the destruction of its CPRs owing to the acquisition of land for development projects. Accordingly, the Land Acquisition Act should be amended to include the provision for the payment of collective compensation to the gram panchayat to be calculated in terms of the market value of the CPR’s produced in the agricultural fields. The calculation of market value of various types of CPR should be a part of the planning process to be undertaken by the gram panchayats. 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