Economic Highlights

New Delhi, 5 September 2008

Wanted: Agriculture Policy

BAR FARMLAND FOR INDUSTRY 

By Shivaji Sarkar

India is at the crossroads. It has yet to decide the road to its development. If it votes for age-old agriculture, what would happen to modernized industrial growth? It is a problem that has besotted the country. Specially, against the background that arable land has been reducing every year since 1982, causing concern for food safety.

Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal have given a shrill voice to the problem. No less are the issues of the special economic zones (SEZs) in almost every State. Be it in Haryana’s Gurgaon-Jhajjar, Maharashtra’s Raigad district, the Reliance Power project in Dadri, UP or Vedanta’s move to acquire Orissa’s hilly tracts in Kalahandi, considered sacred by the Kondh tribe for bauxite mining.

Experts are divided. So are some chief ministers like Gujarat’s Narendra Modi or Tamil Nadu’s M Karunanidhi. However, they have solved the problem without a whiff of protest. As Modi says, “We decided on a land policy and then barged on”.

This is one definite issue, wherein India lacks a proper land use policy. Since agriculture is accused of a growth rate of around three per cent, the proponents of industry argue: “It is time to shift”. But, when the country seeks to shift or shifts it faces other problems. Agriculture sustains at least 55 per cent of the population-- about 55 crore, and not just five lakh farmers as protagonists of industry say.

Regrettably, the media by and large has been overtly pro-industry. Specially in Singur or Kalinganagar in Orissa, whereas it should have had a more probing attitude. A section of the media in fact has even gone to the extent of saying that a boost to industrialization was a chosen path for India to break out of mass poverty.

The nation needs to prod whether the above statement is correct or not. Isn’t it a fact that the largest number of poor live in slums around the most industrialized areas of Delhi, Mumbai, Noida in UP, Surat in Gujarat, Gurgaon in Haryana or for that matter everywhere? The industrial trickle certainly has not benefited them. Among them are those who have lost their livelihood at their distant homes because their agricultural land was taken over.

Statistics show that since 1982 four million hectare of arable land has been gobbled up by urbanization and industrialization. At that time there was 163 million hectare of cultivated land. By 2005 it has shrunk to 159 million and is shrinking every day.

This raises the moot question of food safety. Neo-liberals in the 90s campaigned for an exit from agriculture on the grounds that the nation could buy food from the international market. The present inflation at 13 per cent on the wholesale price index,-much more on the basis of consumer price index, is the direct result of food shortage. As against this, at stake is an investment of Rs 2.43 lakh crore, ($ 54 billion) committed on giant projects of mining, steel, aluminium, power and others. It is being touted that the total land requirement would be “only 92,000 acres” all over the country.

However, the tribals and the poor by and large are skeptical whether the new projects would improve their condition. There is a fear that they would lose whatever little they have. And, the “promise” of a job to a member of each family fails to give them that confidence.

Experience shows that wherever projects have been taken up, be it Maithon in West Bengal or Tehri in Uttarakhand, a large number of people continue to complain of not having been paid due compensation. Besides, at all such places some families complain of being reduced from “an independent farmer” to a “mere labourer”. As such the compensation for the loss of farmland is never considered adequate.

In Delhi’s vicinity, where people have sold their land to developers, a different problem has cropped up. Families have been displaced in lieu of large sums of money. Not all know how best to invest it the amount, thereby mostly squandering it away in luxuries. At the end, there is a heartburn, wherein some feel that while they were offered peanuts, the builder or the entrepreneur made a fortune by reselling.

This raises another question: do we need to displace people? Why can’t we look at agriculture as an industrial and strategic food security activity? The loss of work force in the farms is adding to our problems, instead of aiding our growth. Clearly, there is need for critical balancing of the existing economic activity and search for new avenues.

An interesting problem of giving land as industrial land use has been noticed in Mumbai, Kolkata or Kanpur. While the farm land is normally acquired at a small price initially for industrial activity, the latter is not perennial. After a few decades, the activity comes to a halt and the industrialist turns into a “land shark”, as the land is rarely reused for another industry. Given this background, the Government is bequeathed to provide more land, further displacing the farmer.

This apart, the displacement compensates only a very small section of the population, often less than five per cent of the actual landholders. Rarely does anyone care for the rest 95 per cent, who live on the edge and are pushed to penury. Industry, as has been seen, does not provide jobs to more than one per cent of the displaced. So where are the jobs it creates? It is only a myth.

Clearly, the scenario calls for looking at our industrial policy afresh. There is no denying the fact that industries are needed, but not at the cost of food security or the livelihood of millions. Don’t forget that ecology too gets affected. The lush green productive patches turn to ecological disaster and ground water shortage becomes the rule. Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad and Ghaziabad are known examples.

It is time for those governing to develop a proper land use policy. The farm land should be kept off limits for industry. For instance, let us probe why miles of closed industries from Kolkata to 24 Parganas are not being allowed to be reused to set up a new industry. Is the nexus of industrialists-land sharks- bureaucrats-politicians the beneficiary? A key question, which requires an honest answer.  

For one, the nation needs to create a Land Bank. The industry should not be given land for perpetuity but should be vested in the bank. Once an industry closes down or makes an exit it should be mandated to return the land. The law thus requires to be amended so that the land does not become the property of the industrialist and whether the farmer could have a perpetual right or stake in it.

Let the Government set up a committee comprising real farmers, industrialists, politicians and bureaucrats to discuss the issue threadbare and come out with a holistic approach – something the Planning Commission has never done.—INFA

 (Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)