Make kisans shareholders in SEZs, IT parks

Last month, the government of Karnataka approved allotment of 845 acres near Bangalore to Infosys for its proposed new campus. Neighbouring Andhra Pradesh okayed a similar proposal of Infosys to establish a new 550-acre campus near the upcoming Hyderabad international airport.

Lately, we8217;ve seen a sudden onrush of advertisements by housing and real estate companies announcing mega projects, aimed at providing exclusive American-style habitat experience to the 8216;rich and beautiful8217; set. Tempted by the bull run on the stock exchange, biggies in the real estate business8212;Omaxe, Ansal, Parswanath and others8212;have planned to mobilise big money in the capital market. Big IPOs mean acquisition of bigger chunks of land.

If this is one side of the picture, let8217;s see the other side. Last Monday, a fisherman was killed in police firing and 39 people were injured in Gangavaram in Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh. The fishermen were agitating against development of a deep water port by a private company. The port threatened to snatch away their livelihood. All they were demanding was early payment of compensation. They got bullets instead.

Similarly, on January 2, the tribals of Kalinganagar industrial area in Orissa received a 8216;New Year Gift8217; that they had never bargained for. The government has given over 13,000 acres of land on long lease to various companies. In one instance, land acquired from tribals was sold to one company in 1992, which re-sold it to another company recently8212;for a hefty profit. In another instance, 2,000 acres of government-acquired land were given to a private-sector company for setting up a steel plant. The affected villagers, angry at the non-implementation of rehabilitation and resettlement plans, started an agitation. It led to police firing, which killed over a dozen poor tribals.

Increasingly, dislocation of the poor from their traditional livelihoods and habitats, in the name of development which completely bypasses them, is becoming a major cause of resentment, tension and protest. Most cases of injustice and exploitation go unreported in the media. That the phenomenon is not limited to India alone is evident from a similar incident in China in December 2005. The police killed over 12 people in Dongzhou, a village in southern Guangdong province, when thousands of villagers gathered to protest against insufficient compensation for land to be used to construct a wind power plant.

China8217;s communist government tried desperately to prevent the rest of the world, and also its own people, from knowing about this incident. However, thanks to the Internet and mobile revolution in China, news and photos of police brutality travelled all over the world in no time.

There is a disturbing pattern in all these land-related development projects. The rural poor getting dispossessed of their land due to various kinds of development projects, big or small, is the most destabilising socio-economic phenomenon in today8217;s India. Land is often the only productive asset they own. It8217;s another matter that that asset is becoming largely unproductive, a source of indebtedness, due to an unprecedented agrarian crisis sweeping rural India. It8217;s become routine for moneybags to buy large chunks of land from poor and marginalised farmers in benami title-holders, and then sell it to real estate developers or for IT parks, SEZs, industrial estates, ports, airports, etc. Most of the rural poor who sell their land end up in urban slums.

Companies engage intermediaries, who often engage criminal elements for land-grab. Sensing an opportunity to make huge profits, many politicians, including some big ones, are getting into the act. People in government fail to ask, and often are bribed into not asking, tough questions about the actual8212;as against inflated8212;size of land required by project developers. With land prices appreciating astronomically, benami investment in land has become a rage with India8217;s nouveau riche. All in all, what we are witnessing today is the re-emergence of zamindari in a new form. These are corporate- and politician-zamindars, whose wealth and power are unimaginably greater than those of the feudal zamindars of yore.

How to deal with this problem? There is no doubt that India needs well-regulated SEZs, IT parks, housing complexes and infrastructure projects, all of which require private investment. They are a pre-requisite for India8217;s rapid economic growth. But in promoting them, we cannot jettison the principle of justice, equity and inclusive development. We cannot accept the facile logic that the farmers have no right to complain since they get the market price/compensation for their land. It is patently unjust if a resource that they have owned for centuries appreciates ten-fold or hundred-fold within a short time after they sell it or are forced to sell it, and if they get no share in the value-addition.

Where farmers are well-educated and properly organised, as in the rare case of Magarpatta township near Pune, they have benefited from cooperative land development. Here 120 kisan families organised themselves first into a cooperative and then into a company in which all of them became shareholders to develop a well-planned Rs 4,000-crore project, on 400 acres of land. Magarpatta is of course a rarity. But it is a good example of what can be done to ensure justice and participative prosperity in all land-dependent development projects.

The Central government must introduce a well-conceived law to make farmers and village panchayats substantial shareholders in all projects that require acquisition of land. Since land is a state subject, the Centre8217;s could be a model law, to be emulated by all the states. Apart from initial payment, farmers should be able to get a regular income stream. Additionally, project developers should be levied a land cess, to be used for the improvement of physical and social infrastructure in neighbouring areas. States should also establish a land resource regulation authority that ensures rational and ecologically sustainable use of this scarce natural endowment.

In short, it8217;s time we had 8216;land reforms8217; suited to the era of SEZs, IT parks and mega-malls. Going forward, we must ensure that every Indian citizen become a shareholder in the nation8217;s growing wealth.

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