U-turn into a wrong lane

Singh is one of several farmers who are now facing an unexpected conundrum demanding that the government restore the very project they had been protesting against. And so,beneath a shaky tin shed opposite the Tappal police station,a new farmers movement has begun.

On September 2,in the face of increasingly violent protests by farmers in Tappal,Zikarpur,Jahangar,Kripalpur and Kansera,Mayawatis government announced the cancellation of the township in these five villages,as well as the interchange that was to link the township to the Yamuna Expressway.

Almost immediately,farmers gathered to protest,as did politicians.

I sat on a dharna with the farmers in Zikarpur for nearly 40 days, says Bijendra Singh,a Congress leader who was Lok Sabha member from Aligarh between 2004 and 2009,referring to the earlier protest for better land prices. Not once did we ask for cancellation of the project,we merely asked that compensation rates be raised.

According to Singh,Mayawati has cancelled the project to punish poor farmers who were increasingly becoming pro-Congress,particularly after Rahul Gandhis very successful visit to these villages. Singh does not believe the project will be ultimately scrapped Mayawatis latest move is political brinkmanship,she is bluffing the farmers to get her way,he says.

The government wants to restore it as much as the farmers do. They the government just want to ensure that there is a way for them to save face, says Singh.

Satyapal Singh,Rashtriya Lok Dal MLA from Khair,the Assembly constituency of which these five villages are part,says Mayawati is playing a trick on the farmers.

This whole cancellation business is Mayawatis trick to kill a genuine farmers movement. I am the local MLA of the area,I never recommended that the project be cancelled and neither did the farmers, says Singh.

The township promised to bring development to this largely agricultural belt,something that the farmers now claim they have always wanted. If the interchange doesnt come up,the farmers from these villages will have to travel approximately 8 km in the direction of either Delhi or Mathura in order to get on to the Expressway.

The absence of the interchange will further isolate these villages, said a senior official in the Aligarh District Magistrates office. And naturally,the value of the land will not appreciate.

Early on Tuesday afternoon,as a furious downpour beat down on Tappal,Chandraprakash Panchal,leader of the newly-formed Tappal Kshetra Vikas Sangharsh Samiti,sat writing a letter to Mayawati.

We have three major demands that we hope the chief minister will consider. First,the township and interchange project should be restored; second,the Tappal region should be developed as promised; and third,farmers should be given royalty for 33 years after they have sold their land, said Panchal,as some 50 supporters stood around.

But MLA Satyapal Singh is suspicious of Panchals movement and motives.

Panchal is a former president of the BSPs Aligarh unit. This new protest is just a move by the BSP to coax the farmers into demanding that the project be restored. So that the BSP can claim that it is only doing what the farmers want. I do not think the project has really been cancelled, Singh said.

Asked if his office may actually consider restoring the project,Aligarh District Magistrate Ravindra Nayak said,We are collecting information from individual farmers about whether or not they want the project. In the past,we dealt with their representatives,and that was a mistake. Now we will speak to every farmer and if the majority is in favour of the project being restored,we will forward that request to the Chief Minister.

Panchal and the farmers around him deny there is an agenda beyond what is visible. During the protests at Zikarpur,we werent demanding that the project be cancelled. Why would we want that? We were merely asking that compensation be raised, he said.

However,several Zikarpur farmers had told The Indian Express in the last week of August that they would never allow the government to acquire their land.

Hardat,a farmer from Jahangarh,says dishonest dalals had orchestrated the earlier protest. Men like Ram Babu Katheria and Manveer Singh Tevatia put words in our mouths. They are both netas with little interest in Tappal and the surrounding villages, he said.

Tevatia,who had formed the Kisan Sangharsh Samiti that led the earlier protests,packed up and left after Mayawati cancelled the project. The township would have brought development to Tappal. We want our children to go to college here instead of in Lucknow,and the township would have seen to that and would have created employment. The government has to restore the project, Hardat said.

Beneath the broad demands for development lies a more immediate reason for the panic the cancellation of the project has triggered. Many of the farmers have already been paid the compensation due to them,and most have spent at least a portion of it. If the project goes,the deal too is off.

The bank manager today told us that the government has directed them to freeze our bank accounts,and that the government will collect its money back. I spent mine in setting up a new business. How can I pay it back?, asks 30 year old Dr Sher Singh,who used the Rs 26 lakh he got from the government to set up a medical practice and build a new house in Tappal.

A walk around the village shows there are many like Sher Singh who have invested in new homes. We use to live in a small,shabby hovel. You wouldnt believe how filthy it was, says 20-year-old Krishna Gautam,whose father has used the compensation money to build a pucca bright orange and pink house.

Some others have set up small shops like 43-year-old Vijendra Singh,who says that in just six months his new grocery shop in the village market has begun to get him better returns than farming ever did.

Standing in the village market,Harish Singh put the situation in candid words. We got greedy, he said. We wanted a higher compensation,but we never wanted the project to be cancelled. If the government does not reverse its decision,the cost of our land will plummet further,and we will be left with nothing.