Red signal: Trinamool Congress' Mamata Banerjee rallies farmers against government land acquisition

JULY 18, 2006
Singur, 55 km off Kolkata

A few thousand angry farmers have gathered at Bajemelia Mouza (Singur) in Hooghly, some 55 kilometres from Kolkata. The brown expanse is wet, thanks to a light drizzle, but the mood here is anything but damp. The land that we are standing on is part of the 1,200-acre site that the West Bengal government wants to acquire for Tata Motors' small-car plant. There have been sporadic protests in these parts ever since the state government announced plans to acquire land for the project, and today the farmers, who have been asked to stop cultivation of their paddy fields in this area, are awaiting the arrival of Trinamool Congress supremo, Mamata Banerjee, who has been championing their cause. "Buddhababu (Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee) should come here today to see the strength of the farmers in Singur...the Tatas will just run away from this place," is the rallying buzz spreading fast among the farmers.

After a delay of several hours, at 3:20 pm, Banerjee, or didi, arrives in a shiny new Scorpio. The slogan-shouting crowd runs amok as didi takes the make-shift stage, a Tata 407. After a short speech, she suddenly gets down and starts walking through the muddy field to plant a sapling in a symbolic gesture of defiance. The crowd, mostly local farmers, follow her. "We'll give our blood, but not give up our land," shouts Khursheed, a local farmer in his 40s. Someone else shouts, "Tatas go back". Didi, however, clarifies: "We are not against any particular industrialist or industrialisation in general. We are against forceful acquisition of crop land. Let there be industry on closed industries' land." (Tata Motors refused comment.)

Banerjee or her farmer friends in Singur are hardly the only ones protesting over acquisition of land by government for development. Over the recent months, there have been similar protests all over India. In a village called Attipra near Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala in February this year, revenue officials were forced to back off from a land survey after villagers surrounded them in protest over acquisition of 270 acres of wetland for expansion of a technology park. In early April, hundreds of people in Chennai formed a two-kilometre long human chain stretching from Pallavaram to Trisulum in Tambaram to mark their protest over acquisition of additional land for the Chennai airport. Haryana, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh are some of the other states that have witnessed similar protests.

Left in the lurch: The issue for farmers of Singur, like those elsewhere, is two-fold. Some of them don't want to sell their farms, while the others aren't happy with the compensation being offered by the state government

The issue at the core of such protests is the same: Farmers either don't want to sell their land or think they are not being adequately compensated. Given that governments have the right to acquire any land, there is no legal option available, except to stage protests. As for the price, apparently, most state governments follow a standard formula for arriving at the compensation. Typically, the cost at which land is bought is the average of the previous six months' market price. Depending on the type of land and nature of cultivation (single crop or multiple crop) and intended use of the acquired land, prices range from Rs 80,000 to Rs 3 lakh per acre. However, since the Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot fix the market price for land, rather it must be decided by the buyer and seller, purchase price can vary from one state to another and within a state too. "More than 50 per cent of the farmers have already consented to offer their land across five mouzas (or crop-land demarcated according to its registration with various panchayats) of Gopal Nagar, Bajemelia, Khaser Bheri, Singer Bheri, and Barberi," says Abhijit Mukherjee, block development officer, Singur. "We have not included multi-crop land, land under extensive cultivation and habitation," he adds.

Trinamool's Banerjee pooh-poohs the state's claims. "These are all bogus names. Either they don't exist or they don't own any land," she says. But Mukherjee has an explanation for the protests. "Farmers who do not have clear papers or do not have clear title or partition deeds fear that they might not get the compensation. And these are the people who are creating trouble, who are being instigated," he says. The protesting farmers themselves, of course, don't agree. "These farmers have come spontaneously to register their protest and more will arrive in the coming days," says Becharam Manna, the convener of the Krishi Jami Bachao Committee.

The state government isn't about to give up either. The ruling CPI (M) government has set up a core committee to facilitate land acquisition. People like Ranjit Mondal, a member of the committee, Srikanta Chatterjee, Secretary of Krishak Sabha's local unit, and Sruhid Dutta, the sabha's President, are meeting farmers one-on-one to convince them to part with their land. However, Mondal says that "farmers are approaching us on their own to give their land. Already, 483 farmers have offered 412 acres."

Perhaps, but land acquisitions is an issue that will only get more contentious across India. And the only way to end this struggle may be to ensure that farmers have a stake-even if limited-in the new factories and special economic zones that will rise on their paddy fields. What's needed today is a land acquisition model that's both transparent and fair.