Kisan
Ki Malkiyat: A Way
Out Of The SEZ Impasse?
By Aseem Shrivastava
05 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
“To build the SEZ, Reliance needs use of the land, not ownership
of it.”
-Kisan Jagrukta Samiti (Farmer Awareness Association) poster,
Jhajjar, Haryana
For
those who live in Bharat, not India, development has always been a euphemism
for war stretching across the half a dozen decades of “independence”.
Tens of nameless millions have countenanced rude displacement from their
homes and fields, officially unreckoned loss of livelihood, loss of
customary access to water, forests, pastures, fisheries, the ruin of
their traditions and culture, the breakdown of communities, and the
devastation of a whole way of life rooted in the centuries. In exchange
for these gifts to urbanized “modernity” they have had to
accept the fate of peons, cleaners, sweepers, even beggars in the cities
that have mushroomed on the graves of their past. This is the sort of
de facto employment that has come their way in lieu of the secure livelihood
that they customarily had. And women have borne the brunt of the burden
of adjustment.
Because we in the cities
claim to know better.
With the march of urban industrial
arrogance inspired by an imitative modernity, it is the populous countryside
of India that has borne the brunt of what has sometimes been called
the collateral damage of “development”. It is they who underwrite
our affluent, resource-intensive, polluting lifestyles in the cities.
After getting uprooted from the countryside when they are enticed or
forced to move to urban areas to earn a hope of getting a bite of the
accumulated wealth, their jhuggis and slums are summarily demolished
to satisfy the aesthetic vanities of our middle classes and clean up
and beautify the cities to improve the climate for foreign investors.
At the root of all conflicts
over resources has been the issue of land: who owns it, who controls
access, and for what purpose. The land battles over Special Economic
Zones (SEZs) are only the latest manifestation of a tragic drama that
has been enacted countless times in one region of this country or another
for decades now, the state relying on such legal anachronisms as the
1894 Land Acquisition Act, one of the most handy bequests of British
colonial masters to our policy-making elites.
For the sake of the present
argument (and only for its sake), let us grant the “nationalist
modernizers” that they are indeed justified in their sense of
holding a superior vision of “what’s good for the country.”
In other words, let us agree temporarily that industrialization on the
Western model is necessary, and abstract from such inconvenient matters
as the spoils of war and colonialism (old and new), unnoticed massacres
in energy-rich nations, cruel terms of trade, past and looming environmental
disasters both global and local, the historical and ongoing super-exploitation
of workers across the developing world in a ruthlessly competitive globalized
capitalist economy, the alienation and dehumanization of consuming elites,
the numbing of their moral sense and their ongoing idiotization in the
lap of powerful electronic technologies. Let us grant that despite all
this Westernized modernity (whatever the latter term might mean) is
the best form of culture and human existence that our peculiarly gifted
species has ever evolved and that any other civilization can aspire
to.
So we are assuming, much
in the heroic manner of an economist professionally accustomed to his
convenient abstractions, that energy and resource-intensive industrialization
– which makes possible large-scale power generation, rapid overseas
travel, satellites, subways and the elaborate and sophisticated paraphernalia
of giant metropolitan cities, to name but a few of the putative benefits
of industrialism – has never really been a matter of public choice,
but one of historical inevitability which, to deploy Lenin’s famous
words, is the sort of progress that is predestined “to sweep all
before it.”
Where does such a world-view
leave us today? In more concrete terms, how are we to face the potentially
devastating consequences of land battles that are brewing across India
not merely over acquisition for SEZs, but for all manner of activity
– dams, ports, highways, roads, power plants, mining projects,
industrial units and much else – involved in the making of industrial
modernity?
Here I discuss only land
acquisition for SEZs – and only for those areas where the ecological
consequences and disruptions are tolerable. Equally importantly, local
owners of land – whether peasants or tribals – should be
freely willing to part with it if offered better economic prospects.
Everything else is morally and politically incompatible with an environmental
democracy. In other words, none of what follows even enters the pale
of discussion if the police or thugs hired through land mafias are used
(by governments or corporations) to force people out of their lands
– as has happened at Nandigram or is being attempted in places
like Jhajjar or Jagatsinghpur.
If SEZs are not shorthand
for landgrab…
Why isn’t land being
leased from farming and tribal communities by corporations or governments,
rather than being bought (or simply taken over forcibly) by them? After
all, strictly speaking corporations only need use, not ownership of
the land.
The idea came from Jat peasants
in Jhajjar, Haryana, where Reliance Industries is trying to acquire
no less than 25,000 acres of farmland for one of their two giant SEZs
in the country. “SEZ agar bane bhi toh malkiyat hamari honi chahiye”
(even if the SEZ is built we must have the ownership), they told our
team of researchers while we were conducting a study of the area.
The idea is hardly as far-fetched
as might be presumed. This writer knows of at least one case –
the modern township of Magarpatta near Pune, built on 400 acres of what
used to be farmland till recently – where farmers have been willing
to dramatically change their way of life and allow use of their land
for the price of a royalty earned in perpetuity (for landowning farmers
and their progeny) from the developer. They live in comfortable housing
in the township, have been awarded supply contracts of various kinds
and their per capita income has increased significantly. All this while
their land is on rent to software companies, shopping malls, schools
and hospitals. Farmers also have the right to cultivate land which will
not be used for some years to come.
It is not a perfect arrangement.
For instance, one wonders what has happened to landless farm workers
who were employed by the farmers earlier. Have they found equivalent
or better employment in the township?
One can also take issue with
the fact that fertile agricultural land has been diverted towards industrial
use, when there is so much wasteland in the country. At a time when
food prices are rising on account of shortfalls in supply and there
is some doubt about the long-term food security of the country, one
can justifiably criticize the adoption of approaches like Magarpatta’s.
It may be argued in response
that a free, democratic society ought to leave the decision about land-use
(below a certain quantum) in the hands of the owner. Isn’t it
the case however, that millions of farmers across India have begun finding
agriculture a poor economic proposition (and have often been driven
towards debt and even suicide in the hundreds of thousands) only during
the last decade and a half, thanks to hostile World Bank/IMF/WTO-friendly
state policies towards agriculture – which have raised input costs
for farmers, even as they are having to compete with subsidized grain
from the West without the aid of support prices guaranteed by the government?
(Free trade as Washington understands and wants it.) For instance, companies
like Monsanto are slowly taking full control of India’s seed supply
(and costs), thanks to World Bank pressure (often exercised subtly through
such institutions as the National Seed Corporation). And public investment
in agriculture has fallen sharply under pressure from the IMF to curb
public spending (though it doesn’t complain about defence expenditure
rising by a shocking 60% during the last four years alone!).
The argument is difficult
to knock down. Yet, in a world of third-best solutions, one has to acknowledge
that even if it has led to the creation of yet another gated community,
what Magarpatta symbolizes is certainly among the more amicable resolutions
of land issues in present-day India.
An arrangement like Magarpatta
also ensures, especially if land rights are made non-transferable, that
no real estate speculation – by Indian or overseas finance capital
– can come about. This addresses a major area of concern for critics
of the SEZ policy.
The issue of compensation
is critical. Compensation in cash (even at so-called market rates) is
not merely not enough, it fails to appreciate the significance of land
as the only source of security and insurance in an agrarian context,
and in a society which has avoided providing any sort of safety-net
to the underprivileged, let alone one comparable to a developed country.
Compensation in cash also
fails to understand that the farmer will feel cheated in the new situation
– in whose overall gains his part will be zero, as he watches
the developer run away with the growing jackpot. Moreover, inevitably
inflation will cut away at his little stash of cash in the bank. We
all know how much faster land prices rise compared to everything else.
The approach of cash compensation
also pays little attention to the habits of farmers and tribals, unaccustomed
as they may be to handle such capital. Alcoholism among men, for instance,
has been known to grow rapidly when a whole way of life is brought to
an end by state fiat and cash is given to make up for it. Women then
have to typically bear the burden of raising families, doing hard labor
day after inhuman day.
Further, cash compensation
reflects a complete absence of understanding of the sentiments of the
losers. It assumes that all injustices – including the rupture
of old filial bonds and the termination of the joys and comforts of
community living – can ultimately be made up for in terms of money.
Forcible acquisition, even with cash compensation, violates the right
to private property and disregards the loss of dignity and feeling of
violation that follows dispossession, not merely for a Baiga tribal
but for just about anyone – especially in a perverse society like
today’s where almost anywhere, you are seen as little more than
the sum total of your assets.
If farmers are compensated
via (inflation-indexed) royalties, much in the manner that patents or
any other wealth-generating asset is compensated, some of the above
problems are obviated or at least their impact is lessened. If I am
not mistaken this is precisely the approach that has been adopted in
places like Europe in order to change land-use in favour of industry.
Imaginatively sensitive consideration
also has to be given to those with de facto ownership of land (tribals
often do not have the papers to prove their ownership), and to those
like sharecroppers, landless workers, pastoralists, common property
users and artisans whose means of livelihood is seriously disturbed
by land acquisition. There has to be long overdue recognition given
to pre-existing local economies of the poor. If, as the economists would
have us believe, in the new industrial set-up “everyone can be
made better off, without making anyone worse off”, the claim has
to be met in practice not merely by policies of redistribution of income,
but by more creative approaches which do not rob the underprivileged
of “development with dignity.”
If SEZs are not aimed at
enriching developers and builders at the expense of farmers and tribals
and are not about real estate speculation at all, this, two months after
Nandigram, is perhaps the last call for the governments in New Delhi
and the state capitals to consider a serious rethink, tear up the 1894
Land Acquisition Act, draw up a completely new land rights legislation,
in addition to a rehabilitation policy which will restore the dignity
and respect due to Indian agriculture and its long-standing guardians
as also to pastoralists, forest-dwellers, fisherfolk and artisans who
have all suffered from long neglect by Downtown India.
There is no greater lie in
today’s newspapers than the “there is no alternative”
(TINA) syndrome. There are many. They are viable. They are being tried
out amidst Herculean odds in far-flung corners of the land. In many
cases, communities are struggling hard to maintain their modest traditional
economies, whether of betel nut or of small fisheries. They know much
more about sustainable living than many of our environmental pundits.
To learn from them, one does not have to know how to compute general
equilibrium models. One only needs to shed urban hubris and view matters
in the light of a new sympathy.
In the dismally imperfect
world in which we are being asked to sue for peace, this is how the
cards are stacked: Continued thoughtless policies, corporate overreach
and a failure to think justly about the land question will not only
destroy all chances of re-election for ruling coalitions, opening the
door to rampant political instability (with attendant economic consequences),
but will pave the path to more Kalinganagars, Nandigrams and Maoist
violence, ultimately opening the door to new and unsuspected national
nightmares – soon coming to a shopping mall or a theatre near
you.
Aseem Shrivastava is an independent writer. He can
be reached at [email protected].
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.
Click
here to comment
on this article