Conflict zones
The Big Story
THINK OF SEZs and you think off “creating a republic within a republic” or “a ploy for handing over land to builders and private sector” or “trampling over food security” or “creating new zamindars after the zamindari system has been abolished”.
The Centre’s stand that the special economic zones, or SEZs, are for manufacturing is a proposition filled with doubt and suspicion and is questionable. Firstly, of the hundreds of acres that would be acquired, only 30 per cent (earlier it was 25 per cent) is for manufacturing. The rest 70 per cent of the farmers’ land would be for infrastructure, ie., for the owners of the SEZ to build residential buildings, club houses, swimming pools and golf courses etc.
The pulse or the heartbeat of the SEZs is land. The underlying issue behind the mass uprising and multiple petitions pending in the Supreme Court against acquisition of land for industries and SEZs is what use the land is to be put to. For the first time, one of the petitions by Justice P.B. Sawant and the Shetkari Sangharsh Samiti anti-SEZ group challenges the government’s blatant violation of Section 44 of the Land Acquisition Act (LAA). The act is clear that the government cannot acquire agricultural land for private parties, says Justice Sawant.
According to government statistics, the percentage of agricultural land to the total land area under SEZs is 0.112 per cent. The total area is said to be 1,781 sq km. The government hides more than it reveals when it boasts about the employment created. Neither the commerce ministry nor the agricultural ministry says how many farmers and individuals have been displaced and the unemployment generated, or how many landless labourers working on these lands have been rendered unemployed and destitute.
In Singur, where Ms Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamul Congress raised a storm of protests, the land for the Tata Nano plant is agricultural land. In Maharashtra’s Raigad district, it is fertile paddy land and mangroves that was to be taken over for the Maharashtra SEZ to be put up by Reliance. Justice Sawant said the grievance of the farmers is that no agricultural land should be acquired for industry. Yet the government of Maharashtra set in motion Section 6 of the LAA for taking over the land through a notification and a semblance of inviting objections. It is reliably learnt that when this was pointed out to revenue minister Narayan Rane by his department officers, the minister reportedly said he would take care of the law.
The government is now trying to circumvent Section 44B by trying to enter into a joint agreement with the private companies.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in the face of growing discontent among the farmers, has repeatedly been saying that agricultural land should not be taken over for industry, yet even Mr Rane is flouting her diktat.
What is ironical, says the Shetkari Sangharsh Samiti anti-SEZ group, is that on the one hand, there is shortage of foodgrain and India is importing rice and wheat, and on the other hand the government is grabbing cultivable land for industry. Farmers and even Ms Banerjee said over 35 per cent of the land in the country is arid. Why then does the industry not take over those lands? Why should industry come up at the cost of agriculture? Farmers’ leader Vijay Javandia says there is plenty of land in Vidarbha. Why don’t industrialists put up SEZs here?
What irks the farmers and the anti-SEZ groups also is that the government keeps changing its stance. First it was 25:75, with 25 being for manufacturing exports and 75 for the owners of the SEZ to build residential buildings, club houses, swimming pools and golf course. Now it is 35 per cent.
If the government is so concerned about exports then why this meagre land for manufacturing and the rest for a luxurious lifestyle for the well-off and the famous?
“Land for development is an exaggeration,” says Justice Sawant. “This whole SEZ syndrome is actually the way of handing over land to the builders and private sector as they had reached saturation point in the cities. It is realty business in the name of SEZs,” he says. The SEZ owners have mouthwatering concessions. “Are we creating another republic?” he asks.
According to the government, the major incentives available to SEZ developers include exemption from customs/excise duties for development of SEZs for authorised operations approved by the BOA, income-tax exemption on income derived from the business of development of the SEZ in a block of 15 years under Section 80-IAB of the Income Tax Act, exemption from labour laws and exemption from minimum alternate tax under Section 115 JB of the Income Tax Act, exemption from dividend distribution tax under Section 115O of the Income Tax Act, exemption from Central Sales Tax and exemption from Service Tax (Section 7, 26 and Second Schedule of the SEZ Act).
Need to sell idea better: Industry
THE INDUSTRY feels that it needs to sell the idea of all-round development more aggressively to avoid conflict with farmers over land acquisition.
“We want the right of protest to be there. In a democratic country we can’t deny it,” said Ficci secretary-general Amit Mitra. But what the industry needs to do, said Dr Mitra,\ is sell the idea across that if the industry comes up it is going to change your life.
He said, “The person who committed suicide in Singur after Tata gave indication that they are moving said that his daily cash income increased from Rs 40 per day to Rs 300 per day as his three sons were employed by Tatas and he reconstructed his house and bought a new TV from the money he got by selling the land.”
In the changed environment, he felt that he misallocated his money and that he should, instead, have invested it into some livelihood activity, added Dr Mitra.
He said that industry has to struggle to convince the farmers that their current income will double or triple by engaging in industrial activity and the money they will get for the land will be cash flow return on the present value of the money for a lifetime.
“We will have to look at additional models of giving farmers jobs, giving them training and giving them an equity into the company if required,” said Dr Mitra.
CII director-general Chandrajit Banerjee said that here has to be system by which farmers are more engaged in the development of land in a more equitable manner. “If everybody is part of the development of the land then there will not be any problem. There will more engagement of the farmers,” said Mr Banerjee.
“For any land acquisition done by the industry, the farmers should be given more than adequate compensation and should be made a stakeholder in the venture that is coming up,” said Assocham president Sajjan Jindal. Mr Mitra said: “India has 40 million hectares of land which is cultivable but not cultivated due to many reason and it could be used for setting up industries.”
He said that the areas where problems can arise is mineral land, which is mainly occupied by the tribal people still engaged in hunting. “Tribals have a way of life and it is not a matter of shifting people from one occupation to another and therefore, rehabilitation is a major issue,” he said.
Farmers must be compensated properly for land
IN ITS eagerness to host the world’s cheapest car project on its soil, the West Bengal government gave extraordinary concessions, including 997 acres of prime land in Singur, for a song to the Tata Motors. Had chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee displayed similar generosity to the local farmers, Nano would have rolled out of Singur. The state government committed two cardinal errors in allotting land to the Tatas: it gave away fertile multi-crop land and it did not pay adequate compensation.
It was for these reasons that from the beginning a large section of the farmers opposed the state administration’s land acquisition drive in Singur. More than 400 of the 997 acres the government allotted to the Tatas was acquired without their owners’ consent who have not yet accepted the compensation cheques. This explains Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s insistence on the return of 400 acres to unwilling farmers.
These farmers were so fiercely unwilling that even the improved compensation package (50 per cent additional price plus 10 per cent solacium) which the government announced last month found virtually no takers. Their desire for taking back their land was so intense that the Singur farmers rejected what industry minister Nirupam Sen claimed was the best package offered by any state to the land losers. Why? In 2006, the state government had paid Rs 8.40 lakhs per acre for single-crop land and Rs 12 lakhs per acre for multi-crop land. Singur is only 40 km from Kolkata and is located on the National Highway.
A considerable volume of land allotted to the Tatas, as pointed out above, was fertile and multi-crop. The price fixed by the government for the land was clearly below the market price. Moreover, the government also failed to take land appreciation value into account while determining the compensation. Till a week before Mr Ratan Tata announced his decision to relocate the Nano plant, land near the project area was selling for between Rs 40 lakhs and Rs 50 lakhs. The rural folks may be simple people but they are no fools. Why should have they accepted virtually 50 per cent of the actual price of their land? If the government had so earnestly wanted the land in Singur it should have made the compensation so lucrative that the farmers could not have refused.
Like the Gujarat government did last week. Nano’s new home Sanand, like Singur, is strategically located and is only 35 km from Ahmedabad. Unlike his West Bengal counterpart, chief minister Narendra Modi had the advantage of having the land in possession. But even he had to acquire 60 acres to build an approach road to connect the Nano plant to the National Highway 8. The Gujarat government offered a price of Rs 44.5 lakhs per acre while the market rate was only Rs 24 lakhs per acre, No wonder, the local farmers happily parted with the required land. In reply to a query if he thought that he should have purchased the land directly from the farmers, Mr Tata said: “It is very easy to look at everything in hindsight.”
He may not like to admit that he made a mistake but it is now clear that he may not have faced any problem if he had bought the land directly. The Jindals did not. Farmer lined up to give their land for Jindals’ JSW Steel, which is setting up country’s largest steel plant in Salboni in West Midnapur. The Jindals purchased 600 acres from the farmers. They not only a paid good price for land, but also offered one job to every land loser family. If, for example, a farmer was given Rs 100 for his land then he was also given free shares worth Rs 100. The Land Acquisition Act, under which the state government acquires land for industry, is a colonial-era legislation, and is anachronistic and undemocratic.
Little resistance in Andhra
ANDHRA PRADESH has an envious track record when it comes to land acquisition. There have been few protests given the scale of land acquisition for irrigation projects, industries, SEZs and uranium mines and refineries. When nearly 50,000 acres of land was acquired to upgrade Hyderabad to Cyberabad, there was not a single protest. Luckily, much of the land belonged to the Geological Survey of India and the promoter, Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation, did not face much resistance while acquiring the rest.
Land in villages of Ranga Reddy district on the periphery of Hyderabad was acquired for software companies, the Indian School of Business, the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Hitech City, National Games Village, sports stadia, Integrated International Convention Centre, golf course, financial district. “We took the farmers and local residents into confidence and convinced them that the new projects, including the Shamshabad international airport, were in their best interests. That paid dividends,” said former CM N. Chandrababu Naidu, instrumental in formulating the “consent award” in many land acquisition cases.
Recently, the top court upheld the state government contention that it has the sovereign power to acquire land for the public good. One of the notable cases of resistance was in Gangavaram near the port city of Visakhapatnam, where land acquisition for the construction of a port led to a violent agitation. One person was killed in police firing on March 27, 2006, and the government pulled out.
For the Kakinada SEZ, the promoters were asked to purchase land from farmers by paying a flat rate of Rs 3 lakhs per acre as against the Rs 1.05 lakh proposed by the government. The port is now ready for inauguration.
About 25,000 acres was acquired in Vodarevu and Nizampatnam in southern Prakasam district where in many cases farmers were more than willing to part with their almost barren land in the hope of employment. The Vodarevu, Nizampatnam Port Infrastructure Corridor, or Vanpic, project will invest Rs 16,000 crores to develop an industrial corridor.
The government itself acquired 3.85 lakh acres to build irrigation projects under the Jala Yagnam scheme, spending nearly Rs 46,000 crores.
There was resistance not only from environmentalists but also social activists for irrigation projects like Polavaram.
They petitioned the National Human Rights Commission, which asked the Centre and state governments to explain the rationale behind land acquisition. “No explanation is being given. Land was taken away using the Land Acquisition Act. Farmers were thrown out of their villages without ensuring rehabilitation,” said Mr P. Pullarao, an economist, who moved the NHRC.
Deccan Chronicle