India / Singur and West Bengal's poor rehabilitation record

Not A People's State

Walter Fernandes,
Times of India, December 13

The West Bengal government has promised to create a climate in favour of private investment. The stand-off at Singur, over land acquisition for a Tata Motors plant, reflects its commitment to this promise. What will happen to those who lose their livelihood? If the state's rehabilitation record between 1947 and 2000 is any indication, their future does not look very good.

During 1947-2000, development projects in West Bengal have used 47 lakh acres of land and affected 70 lakh people. Thirty-six lakh were displaced (DP) and 34 lakh deprived of livelihood without being physically relocated (project-affected people, or PAP). Our studies point to 60 million DP/PAP during 1947-2000 all over India.

That would put over 10 per cent of them in West Bengal. As for the type of DP/PAP, tribals are 6 per cent of the state's population but 20 per cent of its DP/PAP, Dalits are 30 per cent and another 20 per cent are the poorest of the backwards, such as fish and quarry workers. In the rest of India too, more than 40 per cent of the 60 million DP/PAP are tribals and 20 per cent each are Dalits and backwards. Hence, 80 per cent of them are voiceless.

That perhaps explains the poor rehabilitation record. West Bengal has rehabilitated only 9 per cent of its DPs, most of them of the Damodar valley projects in the 1950s and the World Bank-funded projects in the 1980s. The state boasts of a people's government but its rehabilitation record is abysmal. Andhra has rehabilitated 28 per cent of its DPs during 1951-1995, Orissa has resettled 33 per cent and Goa 34 per cent, but West Bengal can boast of only 9 per cent. Kerala, another "people's state", has resettled 13 per cent. Most recent resettlement has taken place under pressure from the World Bank that is behind much land acquisition and demands rehabilitation only to satisfy human rights activists in the West.

One can, therefore, doubt the sincerity of the promise that the Singur land losers will be rehabilitated. After depriving 70 lakh people over the years of their livelihood, the state does not even have a rehabilitation policy, and one is not aware of a policy in the making. West Bengal will take over more land to keep its promise of supporting private investment, but only Singur has been promised rehabilitation because its farmers agitated against displacement.

Even if the rehabilitation promise is kept, will its benefits reach the people? Sharecroppers cultivate much of the land in West Bengal and share the produce with the zamindar.

Registered sharecroppers are supposed to get 25 per cent of the compensation paid to the zamindar when their land is acquired. At least 250 sharecroppers cultivating the 997 hectares to be acquired at Singur have not been registered, so they will get no compensation and will not be resettled. The same fate awaits the 1,000 landless agricultural labourers and others like barbers who sustain themselves by rendering services to the village as a community. The Land Acquisition Act, 1894, ignores the fact that in a rural area land sustains not merely its owner but landless service groups as well.

The result of such deprivation without rehabilitation is impoverishment. Our studies show that most agriculturists have become daily wage earners, their income has declined by more than half and over 50 per cent of them are jobless and below the poverty line. Many of them have pulled their children out of school in order to put them to work. In the absence of other sources of income, many have taken to crime or prostitution. Drunkenness becomes an escape from this trauma and wife-beating has increased. Others fill urban slums but are evicted to keep the city beautiful. Respiratory and malnutrition-based diseases such as tuberculosis are commonplace.

State officials insist that compensation is rehabilitation. This is not true. Compensation is defined as the average of the registered price in an area for three years. It is a public secret that not more than 40 per cent of the price is registered. Since that is used as the norm, land losers do not get the full price. Besides, one is not certain that even that norm is followed. Farmers deprived of their land for the bypass and the Rajarhat township in Kolkata were paid an average of Rs 3 lakh per acre when the market price in that area was Rs 20 lakh.

The situation is worse in "backward" areas where price is low. In the 1980s, several farmers in Jalpaiguri district were paid an average of Rs 1,700 per acre. By today's standards it would be around Rs 10,000 per acre. It is not possible for them to begin life anew with this amount.

Key issues are not restricted to compensation alone. For instance, why should the state acquire land for private entities instead of asking them to buy it through negotiations with landowners?

Can landowners and other dependents be deprived of their livelihood without their consent? Take the case of special economic zones, in which Rs 100,000 crore are expected to be invested to create 500,000 jobs at an average of Rs 20 lakh per job. But the 400,000 acres they will occupy will deprive some 800,000 people of work. Most of them lack the skills that such jobs require.

The jobs will go to outsiders and the land losers will be impoverished. It is time we found a development paradigm whose benefits reach those who pay its price.

The writer is director, North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati.