The beginning of the end?

Uday Basu
The Statesman

KOLKATA, Jan. 6: Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee may want us to believe that history won’t forgive him if the state isn’t industrialised on the plea that farmland can’t be acquired, but he and his party are clearly trapped by history.

This is evident from the state government’s status report on Singur which shows how desperately the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government is trying to extricate the party from its history of feeding for decades on the hopes of marginal farmers and share-croppers to acquire a plot of land of their own.

After building the party’s main support base through land reforms and granting vested land, the party has now to reverse its history and try to convince these very farmers that they must part with their land for industrialisation that would serve their interests as well. The status report reveals the anxiety of the Marxists to cushion the farmers’ shock with legal platitudes that are in effect an exercise in equivocation.

The report states that the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 has no provision for obtaining landowners’ consent for acquiring land “for any public purpose.”

Section 5A of the Act only allows landowners to file objections, if any, within 30 days from the date of publication of notice under Section 4. The objections will be heard, but “the decision of the government shall be final.”

While reminding the farmers of the inexorable legal process under the provisions of the colonial law, the state government has sought to make them believe that it has tried to act in their interest. “The state government, through its Order No. 1703-LA-3M-07/06 passed on June 6, 2006, made provision for consent award under Section 11 (2) of the Act and prescribed the form in which such consents are to be submitted,” the status report stated.

Having said that, the state government realises the trap of history it is laying for itself and then tries to wriggle out of the quicksand of its own making. “Consent under Section 11 (2) is a means of involvement of the citizen in determination of award. However, non-submission of consent in writing in terms of Section 11 (2) doesn’t prevent the collector from declaring the award and acquiring the land.”

In another words, what the Marxist government gives the farmers with one hand, it takes away with the other. As if to dispel any illusion about consent the status report makes it clear : “Not accepting the compensation after declaration of award for any part of land doesn’t mean that the land for that part will not be vested in the government.”

The Trinamul Congress and 19 other parties, including Naxalite outfits, were quick to discover that the Marxists have become a prisoner of their own history and launched their movement that touches a raw nerve of the state’s farmers that constitute the backbone of Left support.

They also question the raison d’etre of acquiring land for the Tata small car project in Singur. The Land Acquisition Act stipulates that land can be acquired for “any public purpose”, while the Tatas’ is a private project. The resistance against acquiring farmland for industrialisation has spread from Singur to Nandigram in East Midnapore.

The battle between the Marxists and the Gandhi-Mao combination is not really over industrialisation at the cost of agriculture, but over capturing the imagination of the agrarian masses, which, the Marxists believe, has been their monopoly, historically.