Land for peace

Uttar Pradeshs flagship Yamuna Expressway project has run into land-related trouble. Organised as the Kisan Sangharsh Samiti,farmers along the route have objected to purchases,and in the violence that accompanied their protests,two were killed leading to anger and adjournments in Lok Sabha. The UP government seems to be a little nonplussed: it has constituted committees to examine the mechanics of compensation,promised an increase in the total sum but also quietly backed away from some of its more ambitious projects.

Each time this happens,the cause of rural India is set back a little. Youre either intoxicated with the idea of Gandhi-style,self-sufficient villages with a restrictive social system covering up enormous disguised unemployment,or you accept that non-farm,especially industrial,work opportunities in rural areas will have to expand enormously in order to absorb Indias aspirational young people. But that will need land to change use; and,every time it appears that acquisition is unfair,forced,or somehow botched,it makes the next time tougher. And,of course,UP is not alone in worrying about this; the West Bengal government,for example,which more than most once grasped real,dead-end nature of relying on agrarian employment,has completely frozen since the double whammy that was Nandigram and Singur. Even so,there are examples from elsewhere in the country that might prove instructive. In Punjab,and other similarly affluent states,acquisition has been carried out quite effectively,albeit at higher prices. But,then again,the market price of land in well-connected Punjab would not be the same as in those parts of rural India less blessed with transport and power infrastructure.

These protests highlight again the desperate need for a comprehensive policy that can be seen to be just and equitable,in which the state cannot be perceived by any but the last Luddite holdouts as using its power for corporations,against farmers. Once a policy,suitably decentralised and market-linked,works a few times,the automatic suspicion that drives so much protest will cease. The UPA must ask itself: how long can it afford to keep Mamata Banerjees objections to the land acquisition bill from seeking other allies in Lok Sabha for that particular vote?