Amar Medha Singh

Land for industry in a country where manufacturing is finally buzzing and where agriculture employs an unsustainably large number of people should be a no-brainer for politicians. More and better jobs, more income, more taxes, technology infusion, second order effects on ancillary sectors, speedier urbanisation 8212; which political leader won8217;t want these? Apparently, no one. So almost every land for industry proposal is a political controversy and, taking their turns, almost all political leaders have showed up at 8220;struggle sites8221;. Amar Singh, who courted private capital with breathless and some say reckless enthusiasm when SP was in power in Uttar Pradesh, showed up in Singur, Bengal to share the stage with Mamata Banerjee and Medha Patkar. Ms Patkar is at least consistent in her thesis that India can apparently buck universal history by turning its back on big-ticket industrialisation. But politicians are being dangerously hypocritical.

The BJP, which wanted India to shine, had sat with Jamaat and Naxalites in the Nandigram controversy. Why wasn8217;t it possible for the party to condemn CPM thuggery in Nandigram but support the case for industry needing land, a point made forcefully by the BJP8217;s star CM, Narendra Modi? The Congress has CMs like those in Haryana who have been proactive about putting land to more efficient use but the party8217;s political leadership has made strangely contradictory noises in major rallies. And this affected the national level rehabilitation policy, which is a tortured attempt to be politically correct. The CPM of course holds the PhD in hypocrisy on this count. It opposes almost anything that8217;s neo-liberal everywhere but in Bengal in Kerala, nothing neo-liberal happens and in Tripura, in terms of major policy, nothing really happens.

The political message that8217;s going out is that the political class is in effect on hire for land agitations. That8217;s great for professional agitators and bands of quasi-political Luddites. It8217;s terrible news for the country. Politicians should work to create a market for land 8212; empowering small landholders to bargain directly with industry and may be stop using the inevitably controversial and in-principle illiberal land acquisition laws. The revolution politicians should cheer is a manufacturing revolution.