Can India's industrial growth be at the cost of its agricultural poor?

From rxpgnews.com

India Business
Can India's industrial growth be at the cost of its agricultural poor?
By Sandeep Bamzai, Feb 5, 2007 - 8:24:50 AM

In a scathing denouement, a group of intellectuals led by historian Sumit Sarkar who visited West Bengal's Nandigram and Singur areas have stated categorically that the people of these areas were not consulted about the land acquisition programme. This indicates a clear disconnect between the ruling Left Front and its cadres - the rural masses of Bengal.

More importantly, the chasm between India and Bharat is ever widening. Two and a half years ago, the Bharatiya Janata Party --led National Democratic Alliance - coalition found itself floundering because of the undue importance it gave to its India Shining campaign, where it tried to highlight its economic achievements which were urban agglomerates focused. Rural India was unfortunately peeved as it discovered that it was not part of this growth story. Growth had to be all-inclusive. And this became the mantra for the new government cobbled up with the support of the 60-odd Left MPs.

But in the run up to government formation, Communist Party of India - leader A.B. Bardhan sent the stock markets into a tailspin. Black Monday is still remembered with bone chilling reality. May 17 became a red-letter day in the history of Indian bourses because it had to shut down twice due to the panic that set in. Bardhan and his comment - loosely translated - 'to hell with disinvestments' compounded everyone's agony. Various people tried desperately to bring sanity back to the markets.

Now, the wheel has come full circle. The poster child of Left reforms, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, is being targeted by his own rural masses for distributing large tracts of land to corporate entities. You can argue that Mamata Banerjee is adding a political hue to the protests, but the stark reality of the CPI and Communist Party of India-Marxist - offices being torched in Nandigram is an inescapable fact.

What this entire episode has also managed to do is set back this government's big-ticket reformist plan of setting up special economic zones -. SEZs have unfortunately become a clone of the India Shining blitz and have now been put into cold storage so long as an effective rehabilitation policy for the farmers is not put together. The Left, which has constantly carped on various reform measures, is now trying to grapple with a reformist reality in its own backyard.

Did SEZs then become a vehicle for land grab by corporate entities, without addressing the needs of the tillers whom they were displacing? There is obviously a civilisational component to this problem that governments in New Delhi and in states need to quickly come to terms with.

What is the edifice of West Bengal turning into a Left bastion for close to 30 years? Why is it that the Congress has more or less been banished from Bengal? In 1978, the Left ushered in sweeping reforms through Operation Barga, which won them the unstinted support of the rural masses. Actually this started a few years earlier when the second United Front government in the late 1960s saw local peasants recovering more than 500,000 acres of benami land and distributing it among the landless multitude.

This movement became more or less official when the Left Front swept to power for the first time in 1977. Operation Barga was constructed through the Bengal Land Holding Revenue Act 1979 and Revenue Rules 1980 allowing the recording of the names of sharecroppers -, avoiding the time consuming method of recording through the settlement machinery. Slowly a rural transformation of sorts began to take place in Bengal. In the past, it had been impossible for a tenant to prove his tenancy rights legally.

The Left has over the years succeeded in distributing 384,000 hectares of vested land among over two million farmers, thereby acquiring surplus land and allowing rural poor and landless agricultural workers to till the land. Further studies show that aggregate agricultural production in the 1980s was a staggering 6.4 percent per annum against the annual growth rate of agricultural output during 1965-80 being 2.2 percent. And therein lies the rub.

Now, the proponents of this radical reform seem to be reneging on this promise. What is the agitation in Singur against the Tata small car plant and in Nandigram against Salim Group's based on? Why has it turned so violent? Is it only the handiwork of political opposition? No, it is an emotive issue because these same farmers are resenting the fact that agricultural land is being given away, perhaps displacing the landowners.

Not for a moment can one believe that Mamata alone can create the existing condition in these areas. As anybody in Kolkata will say, she is an urban politician who has just not managed to bridge the rural divide in Bengal politics. But with the land acquisition issue, she has managed to propel herself to the forefront of agitational politics.

But this anger against being displaced is not new. Early last year, in Kalinganagar in Orissa, a Tata Steel plant agitation saw 12 to 21 adivasis being killed. One thing may well lead to another. Even as Naxalite activities are rising in what are now large tracts of the Indian hinterland, the rural protests may well acquire a different colour. The other day, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, conscious of the slowly building up 'aakrosh' - in rural India, categorically asserted to a room full of industrialists and businessmen that it was imperative that a rehabilitation policy be firmed up for displaced farmers.

Industrialisation is obviously required if India needs to improve its appalling infrastructure woes. But will this be done at the cost of displacing the poor, is something that we need to ruminate on. West Bengal may well become a case study. What has been seen in Singur and Nandigram is not isolated incidents, but part of systematic revolt on part of the agricultural poor to ensure that they stay tied to their land. SEZs are fine because they will provide the necessary impetus to radicalize manufacturing growth. But an all inclusive industrial policy that allows various strata of society to feed into the benefits accruing from frenetic urbanization is critical.

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