Lessons from Nandigram

Editorial
The Hindu, 16 March

A gang-up of mainstream and extremist political elements on a matter that was considered troublesome but not explosive; political slowness in responding to the issues at stake and to the risks; and administrative mishandling of a volatile situation combined to produce an avoidable tragedy in Nandigram in West Bengal's East Midnapore district. Fourteen persons were killed and scores of people injured as the police — encountering brickbats, country bombs, and pipe guns — opened fire on protesters who had apparently declared five gram panchayats in the troubled area out of bounds for the administration. The anti-Left Front alliance spearheaded by the Trinamool Congress, in which naxalites, the Jamiat ulema-e-Hind, and other extremist elements have made common cause, was protesting the proposal to create a Special Economic Zone in the area, although Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has repeatedly declared there would be no forced land acquisition in Nandigram. The militant protesters, who over the last three months dug up roads and bridges, cut off communication facilities, and drove hundreds of Left Front supporters out of the area, were clearly spoiling for a confrontation with the State administration. What needs explaining is why the State government allowed the situation to reach this pass. As in a bad movie plot, the police, called in to end the lawlessness, were provoked into firing at the agitators. The CBI inquiry ordered by the Calcutta High Court should reveal what actually happened.

Land acquisition may not have been the real cause of the ugly situation that developed in Nandigram. But what the tragedy highlights is a set of contentious issues that can flare up whenever the acquisition of farmland for industry and infrastructure, with the state exercising its eminent domain, comes on the agenda. The Left Front Government in West Bengal promised that it would not acquire any farmland without the consent of the land owners but this message does not appear to have percolated down. A greater commitment to transparency might also have helped. As an editorial page article published in The Hindu on February 1, 2007 pointed out, the acquisition of farmland for industry tends to come up against "a coalition of anti-development crusaders, groups concerned over the dislocation of farm families, those worried about the impact on agricultural, particularly food, production, protectors of farmers' interests, assorted do-gooders, and plain political opportunists." What came together — unsuccessfully at Singur but explosively at Nandigram — was an extreme variant of such a coalition. What makes land acquisition a prescription for trouble is, first, the element of compulsion that comes with the exercise of eminent domain by the state, and, secondly, the flawed system of paying compensation for farmland. Clearly government policies relating to land acquisition for special economic zones and other industrial and infrastructural projects need an urgent overhaul not only in West Bengal but across the country. Nobody takes seriously the call of the Trinamool Congress for the dismissal of the Left Front Government. More disconcertingly, a usually sagacious Governor, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, stepped out of line in publicly airing his philosophical and tactical differences with the State government while expressing high-minded anguish over the Nandigram deaths. Under the Indian Constitution, it is surely not the job of a Governor to offer public judgments on how an elected government should have handled a tricky situation. What Chief Minister Bhattacharjee needs to do is not to get provoked by the opposition — he must take a cool, objective, and just stand on all matters arising out of Nandigram and learn lessons from a mishandled crisis.