How they got it right

Kalubhai Vankar,a Dalit farmer in Bol village in Sanand near Ahmedadad,had dreamt of a better life,but never that he would become a millionaire. But the unimaginable happened when Tatas Nano plant,driven out of Singur in West Bengal,drove straight into his neighbourhood in 2008. The Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation GIDC then began acquiring land to set up an industrial estate near the Nano plant for auxiliary units.

Though there was initial opposition from farmers to the project,GIDC reached out to them by offering compensation for their land that was much more than the market rate. It was an offer that farmers like Vankar could not refuse. His 15-bigha land,which falls in a non-irrigated area,hardly yielded enough to feed his family and so,he was only too happy to sell it. GIDC paid him Rs 28.5 lakh a bigha and he walked away with Rs 4.3 crores. He now plans to use a part of his compensation money to buy an agricultural land elsewhere in the state.

Just two years ago,a bigha in Sanand fetched anything between Rs 2 and Rs 3 lakh. With news of the Tatas shifting their plant to Sanand,land prices jumped to Rs 10 lakh. Then came the GIDC which more than doubled the rates.

In all,the state government is shelling out Rs 950 crore as compensation to farmers from Bol village alone. The village has about 500 families and a population of over 2,000,most of whom belong to Rajput,Bharwads cattle breeder,Koli-Patel and Dalit communities. While Rs 500 crore has already been deposited into the accounts of the farmers,the remaining amount is in the process of being transferred.

According to 85-year-old Bhikhabhai Barad,a former sarpanch of the village,almost 90 per cent of the families in the village have benefitted from the project. Barad and his nine brothers have together received a total compensation of Rs 165 crore.

The villagers,however,are going easy and wise with their new-found wealth. Most of them are buying agricultural land in other villagers and are,of course,spending some of it to buy new cars and houses. The villagers are not wasting their money but investing it intelligently in creating assets that will multiply their investments in the future, says Barad.

Kalubhai Dhanabhai Dabi,a villager who received Rs 8 crore as compensation,spent Rs 35 on a car,an Audi that was a birthday gift for his son. Dabi says about 40 villagers have bought new cars from the compensation money they received. But Dabi has used the rest of the money to buy eight bighas at Nidral village. He also bought a house for Rs 71 lakh in the upmarket town of Bopal,which has a good English-medium school that he wants his two grandchildren to attend.

Meanwhile,Bols new riches have got insurance agencies flocking to the village. Till a year ago,only four banks had branches at Sanand. Now,half-a-dozen more have moved in.

Rs 17 lakh per hectare,a buy-back policy and a job

NISHA NAMBIAR

Ten-year-old Monica and 11-year-old Ashwini talk in Marathi and a smattering of English. Two years ago,they knew just one sentence in English,now their vocabulary has expanded considerably ever since they started going to a school that teaches both in English and Marathi. And its not just themtheir entire family is slowly getting used to a new way of life.

Their father,Mohan Daundkar,who is the principal village official of Kanersar,a village 60 km from Pune,gave up his barren land three years ago for the Bharat Forge-Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation MIDC Special Economic Zone SEZ,a 76:24 joint venture between Bharat Forge and MIDC spanning over 7,192 hectares across 17 villages. With the first phase of acquisition and rehabilitation over for four villagesNimgaon,Dhavadi,Kendur and Kanersarin the last three years,the revenue officials are working towards the second and third phases.

Today,Mohan travels in a Chevrolet Tavera,has rebuilt his house,owns two trucks and makes nearly Rs 1.5 lakh every month from his business. I am happy that I gave up our land for the project,says Mohan,pointing to the green hilly terrain behind his house where his land was located.

Initially though,he had his reservations and had opposed the project but once he was convinced that it was just his barren land that would be taken for the project and that he would get a compensation of Rs 17 lakh per hectare,he persuaded his father and uncle to part with 62.5 acres of their land.

Daundkars father Dagdu Daundkar and uncle Rangnath Daundkarthe owners of the landagreed and the family got Rs 4.25 crore. They also went in for the buy-back policy that MIDC was offering. Under the policy,you can buy back up to 15 per cent of the land that you sold once the SEZ is developed at the cost of 50 per cent of the going rate.

Together with our relatives,we got Rs 3.61 crore which was divided among five families. So each family got about Rs 72 lakh, says Patil.

Once they got the money,Mohan Daundkar and his father Dagdu opened a bank account with the State Bank of India in the villagetheir first account. Besides investing Rs 30 lakh for running a transport business,the rest was spent in buying some tracts of land a little farther away from the village, he says.

As part of its rehabilitation policy,MIDC also offered employment to one member from every family. Some members of our family are educated till class X and XII and with some training in polytechnic,they can work in the company, says Mohan Daundkar.

With 359 farmers giving up land for the project in their village,five villagers have come together to form the Rajmudra Infrastructure Private Limited Company to undertake various development work in the village.

A job at the airport and taxi permits

SHAJU PHILIP

FIFTEEN years ago,when P P Jency married Kanjookkaran Chakkappan Saju and moved to Nedumbassery village,some 25 km from Kochi,she was a homemaker. Nedumbassery then had just begun on its journey of transformation: from a land of paddy fields and brick kilns to becoming Indias first greenfield airport under the public-private partnership model. The airport was completed in 1999 and Jency began on a new journey too,landing a job at the airportone of many from Nedumbassery to do so.

When the government had set out to acquire about 1,500 acres for the airport,there were many protests. About 4,000 people lived in the area that was to be acquired and 857 houses stood on it. But a rehabilitation package that offered good compensation money,a job at the airport and taxi permits won over the people gradually.

Jencys family surrendered their 16 cents of property 100 cents make an acre to give new wings to Kerala. The couple now lives in one of the rehabilitation colonies near the airport that was built for those evicted. Jency,meanwhile,got the job of a sweeper at the Cochin International Airport Limited CIAL while Saju,who earlier did odd jobs,is now a loading worker at the airport.

But for the rehabilitation package,I would not have landed a permanent job. For the eight-hour daily work of a sweeper,I earn Rs 8,500 a month. As a loading worker at the airport,Saju earns about

Rs 12,000 a month. The loading work at the airport has been reserved for people from the displaced families, says Jency,38.

The couple now sends their two children to English-medium schools at a neighbouring town. If we are at Nedumbassery,quality education for the children would have remained a dream. But for my job,we would not have been able to send them to the private English-medium schools, says Jency.

Of the 600 people on the CIAL pay roll,360 are from Nedumbassery. While many of them have landed jobs in CIAL or with various agencies,including Air-India,others have got permits to run taxis at the airport.

Rs 1.5 crore for every acre and a no-litigation premium

Sukhdeep Kaur

Gurdial Singhs family has bought three cars,three houses and 60 acres in a Ludhiana village with the Rs 1.5 crore per acre compensation that they received for their 15 acres in Mohali.

Barely a few kilometres from Chandigarh,Jhurheri was just another village in Punjab before 2008. The two elder sons of the villages former sarpanch,Gurdial Singh,toiled in the nearby fields to raise a bountiful wheat and paddy crop. The youngest,Gurmeet Singh,left early in the morning to sell milk from their cows in nearby Chandigarh and Mohali.

But in April that year,his three sons were among the 222 farmers who turned millionaires overnight from the compensation of Rs 1.5 crore per acre awarded by the Punjab government for the international airport at Mohali. The government,which started acquiring land in April 2008,has acquired 306 acres,paying a total of Rs 460 crore in compensation. Work on the project had started but it has been hit by a series of delays.

Gurdial Singhs sonseach of whom had five acres to his nametogether got Rs 22.5 crore for their 15-acre land. This included compensation for the land,30 per cent displacement allowance and a no-litigation premium for accepting the compensation as full and final for the land acquired by the state,which means farmers forfeit their right to challenge the compensation in courts. The high price for their land,the highest ever that any government acquisition in the country has fetched farmers,has changed everything for Gurdials family.

The verandah,which once stacked wheat and paddy bags,now barely has enough space for the customary wooden cots. His two sons now use it to park their SUVsa Tata Safari and Mahindra Scorpiowhile the thirds house has enough space not just for his own Hyundai Verna but for a Skoda car of a millionaire neighbour,who has the money but not enough parking space. The three now have separate homes in three different corners of the same compound,their doors carefully avoiding facing each other.

Gurdial Singhs elder sons house that is still under construction,stands out in the village for its Chandigarh-like facade and the two daughters of his youngest son have gone beyond what was the highest bar for a girls education in the familyclass X. Rajwinder Kaur is now doing her B.Com first year from Patiala University while her younger sister is now in class XI and plans to get admission in a college in Chandigarh. But Gurdial made sure the windfall was not squandered on cars,weddings and houses. What is a farmer without his land, he says. Though we initially kept the compensation money in banks as fixed deposits,we kept looking for affordable agricultural land. Last year,we bought 60 acres20 acres for each sonat Sehgo village in Khanna area of Ludhiana district. It cost us Rs 26 lakh an acre but is 60 kilometres away from our village. We will have to eventually move out of Jhurheri to where our fields are. We are getting Rs 20,000 an acre annually by giving that land on rent for farming but we will soon begin building our homes there so that we can get back to farming, he says.

Hounded by banks,car and tractor dealers and insurance agents now that they have acquired a millionaire status,many families in Jhurheri also made another important purchase in 2008German Shepherds. Suddenly,with all the millions,the village felt unsafe. Though no farmer risked keeping money at home,German Shepherds ensured a good nights sleep, he says.

But Gurdial Singhs wife Labh Kaur is not happy at the fortunes of her sons. Neither are we able to leave our ancestral land nor stay here without our fields. Our grandchildren want to study in Chandigarh and are reluctant to leave the village which is barely a few kilometres away from here. The village has SUVs,houses,German Shepherds but looks deserted. While some families have moved out,others are in the process of moving out to areas where they have bought their land. Jhurheri is no longer the lively village it used to be. Money has only divided it. Though here she stops from defining the divide,it is soon evident from the words of her daughter-in-law. The three sons no longer speak to each other and while the eldest looks after the father,their mother lives with the youngest,who in her own words,has achieved a little refinement in taste after turning a millionaire.

Pointing to her sleeping son in the living room,she says,He still lies drunk at home in the afternoons after distributing milk. The only difference now is that he drinks English brands.