Singur to Nandigram and beyond

Marcus Dam

The Hindu, January 10

The West Bengal Government is set to announce a comprehensive policy on special economic zones to allay fears about land acquisition.

THOSE KILLED in last weekend's violence in Nandigram in West Bengal's Purbo Medinipur district — even before the dust had settled at Singur in adjoining Hooghly district — were not just the first casualties in the State of group clashes over the acquisition of land for prospective industry. There were, disturbingly, also victims of a seemingly well-orchestrated campaign claiming that the local peasants were on the verge of losing their lands to a government bent on bull-dozing through its plans for greater industrialisation in the State, without a care for their concerns.

The campaign, aimed at inflaming passions by stoking apprehensions among the villagers over the fate of their lands as well as their future, took off in both Singur and Nandigram. It is now threatening to spread to fresh areas elsewhere in south Bengal, identified as potential sites for industry.

Though the core issue at hand — that of acquisition of farmland — both at Singur and Nandigram is the same, the strategies employed by those behind the movements have been different as has been their rhetoric.

At Singur, leaders of the Singur Krishi Jami Raksha (Save Farmland) Committee — while fudging data and contradicting official estimates to drive home their point that much of the land required for Tata Motors proposed car manufacturing plant had been acquired without the consent of the owners — pegged their protests to the demand that the land be returned.

At Nandigram, the Bhoomi Ucched Pratirodh (Resistance to Land Acquisition) Committee has played on the fears of the local people, warning them that the acquisition of their lands was imminent and that the notices to do so had been issued. This despite the State authorities repeatedly pointing out that a final identification of the land to be acquired for the proposed special economic zone to be set up there by the Indonesian Salim Group was nowhere close to being finalised.

Cause for concern

What has added to the anxieties of the West Bengal Government is that those behind the protests at Nandigram include a distinctly religious-political grouping, the Jamait-e-Ulema Hind. This, it is feared, is imparting communal overtones to events unfolding there.

Understandably, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has expressed concern over this development.

Added to this are reports of a large number of activists and strategists belonging to different ultra-Left Naxalite factions converging in the area over the past weeks from areas beyond the State's borders. This is like what those belonging to militant Maoist outfits have been doing in the south-western parts of the State, which have seen subversive activity in recent times.

That the increasingly dominant role of those Naxalite organisations in the anti-land acquisition movement at Singur has been cause for chagrin for a section of leaders of the mainstream Opposition parties that had banded together on the issue is another story.

There can be little denying that those behind the protests at both Singur and Nandigram are out to stonewall the State Government's plans for industrial growth.

The claim of parties like the Trinamool Congress and the Congress that they are not against industrialisation as long as it does not impinge on agricultural land does not hold good in the light of the facts on the existing land use pattern of the State.

The share of fallow, uncultivable land and pastures constitute only one per cent of the total land in a State whose net sown area is nearly 63 per cent — 46 per cent being the national average — and which is, according to a recently published status-on-land report by the West Bengal Government, "characterised by its intensiveness."

Neither have the leaderships behind the movements at Nandigram and Singur shown any inclination to sort out their misgivings through discussions with the State Government. This despite repeated requests from the Chief Minister to do so.

Asking them to desist from precipitating a situation that could turn volatile and lead to violence — as it turned out at Nandigram — Mr. Bhattacharjee has been reiterating that he is willing to discuss the "entire gamut of issues related to land acquisition for industry" as well as his Government's future industrial plans. So far the appeal has fallen on deaf ears.

In such a situation, perhaps it is in the fitness of things that the State Government has decided to make public its views on the subject, particularly in view of the immense possibilities for the facts getting twisted to suit political ends.

It is set to announce a comprehensive SEZ policy for West Bengal, which will exclude multi-crop farmland, homestead areas, places of worship, and graveyards.

It will delineate the sites to be chosen for the creation of such zones and will also include a compensation package — not simply confined to cash — for those whose lands might need to be acquired.

This could help the Left Front counter the campaign that has travelled to Singur and Nandigram and seems well on its way to other areas, the route being determined by West Bengal's road map for industrial resurgence.