Where are the jobs, what will happen to our river: angry villagers have complaint list

The most recent flashpoint is the expansion of an 11-foot-wide unmetalled road that runs for about 2 km to a tarred 31-foot-wide road to facilitate transport of equipment and material to and from the distillery. The expansion of the road required another round of land acquisition, resulting in tension between distillery managers and villagers.

Several villagers allege they were forced to give up their land to make way for the road. Among them is local physician S K Dahri.

Even the police were called in to handle the situation. Dahri told The Indian Express: “Land for widening the road was acquired by the distillery literally with cash in one hand and a fat stick in the other. My land fell on both sides of the road and I too initially resisted selling any part of it. But eventually, I had to give in.”

Locals also complain bitterly about the fact that the natural flow of Begna, a seasonal river, will be hampered since the distillery has been constructed right on the river bed, which may result in flooding of their fields and even villages. The construction of the 31-foot-road, villagers say, has also resulted in the caving in of natural rivulets that freely flowed under it earlier. Says Mohan Singh, a farmer from Badoli, “We are considering launching a full-fledged agitation on the manner in which the distillery is functioning and affecting lives of villagers.”

Last month, villagers of Sherpur, local forest officials and staff of the distillery were involved in a fracas over an alleged land grab. Says Pawan Diwan, the Sarpanch of Sherpur, “In 2003, the forest department had done tree plantation on our land. A few days ago, workers from the distillery cleared three acres and chopped 157 trees. Villagers collected in large numbers at night and recovered the logs but the police is refusing to register a formal case.”

District administrators in Ambala said they had been informed about the incident but not about the fact that employees of the distillery were also involved in it. Surprisingly, a top district official, speaking on the condition that he not be named, said he was unaware that the distillery has begun operations — it started bottling for major brands, including Seagram’s three months ago — but admitted that requests for urgent clearances for land acquisition as well as pollution and excise permits had come from “senior CID officials” in Chandigarh.

Baldev, the Sarpanch of Badoli, is the most outspoken and says that villagers are smarting. He says that a majority of the land on which the distillery stands belonged to Badoli and was sold to a businessman around 15 years ago (for approximately Rs 7,000 per acre) who, in turn, sold it to Ashok Jain, the owner of N V Distilleries. He holds a sheaf of CVs of educated youth of the village, whose applications for employment, he says, have been rejected by distillery managers.

“When the public hearing of the Panchayat was held to approve the distillery, we gave our no-objection on the promise that at least 100 semi-skilled jobs would be given to the locals of Naraingarh. There are hundreds of workers in the plant but only three or four boys from Badoli were given jobs. When we contact the distillery manager, he directs us to the head-office in New Delhi. How can we travel all the way to Delhi to beg for jobs?”

The Sarpanch of a third village, Gola, also has a grouse against N V Distilleries. He alleges that 7 acres of riverine Panchayat land have also been encroached upon by the distillery. A visit shows that the distillery’s earth-movers have begun digging operations outside the boundary of the distillery on land the villagers of Gola identify as the property of their panchayat.

When asked about these complaints, chairman of N V Distilleries Ashok Jain told The Indian Express that this was simply a case of villagers getting too greedy. He said, “Due to our distillery land prices in Naraingarh have soared and eventually it is the villagers who will benefit. As far as jobs are concerned, we have given around 10 local boys semi-skilled jobs in the distillery. The rest of the labour force comes from annual contracts given out by us to labour contractors.”

Tomorrow: Distillery got Ministry to bend, now an ailing sugar mill waits for similar luck