Several groups at the forefront of
the campaign
against forcible land acquisition say the Bills do little for
landowners in rural areas who are mostly poor and have very little
power to voice opposition when their land is taken away. “We do not
want forcible land acquisition. There must be some more option
assessment where there is minimum displacement,” said activist Medha
Patkar, convenor of the National Alliance of People’s Movements.
Recently,
hundreds of people representing around 52 campaign groups gathered in
Connaught Place, barely 2km from Parliament. They signed a resolution
to step up the campaign to protect the rights of landowners across 15
states next month.
Another group launched a “Parliament
march” along the country’s coastline to protest against SEZs and
private ports—land has been acquired for both. The National Campaign
for Fisherpeople’s Right began its campaign along Gujarat’s coast last
week and will end its marathon protest in Kolkata in July, said
Harekrishna Debnath, chairperson of the National Fishworkers’ Forum.
Still, for the Bills to help people, the government will have to know
who they are and how many.
According to data that appeared in The Administrator dated
March 1998 (the publication is from the Lal Bahadur Shastri National
Academy for Administration, a training institute on public policy), in
the previous decades, around 21.3 million people across India have been
displaced by mining, dams, industries and wildlife. Only a quarter of
them have been rehabilitated.
A more recent study that covers
industrial projects, education institutes, firing ranges and river dams
that were set up between 1947 and 2000 estimates that the number could
be higher, at 60 million—three times the number of people who lost
their homes during partition, or 6% of India’s 1.1 billion population.
Titled The Human Cost of Development-Induced Displacement, the
report will form part of the Social Development Report 2008, to
be published by the Oxford University Press.
Prepared
by Walter Fernandes, a former director of Indian Social Institute, and
currently head of North Eastern Social Research Centre, which provides
a platform for groups in conflict to meet and search for solutions, the
report says 19 million people were displaced in six states between 1951
and 1995. The report studied at least 100,000 government filings on
land and other documents to arrive at the type of land acquired and
kind of people affected. And it interviewed around 900 families in each
state.
Between 1951 and 1995, the study adds, only one-third
of the 19 million displaced people were resettled. Orissa resettled
only about 35.27% of the total oustees, Andhra Pradesh, 28.8%, and Goa,
33.23%. Kerala, ruled for at least part of the period covered by the
study by a Communist government, resettled only 13.6%.
Assam
and West Bengal—which witnessed violent land protests last year over a
proposed chemical hub and Tata Motors Ltd’s small car factory—fared
even worse. Between 1947 and 2000, only 9% of the 3.7 million people
displaced were resettled in West Bengal, which has been ruled by a
Communist government for the past three decades.
Many of
these uprooted people live in poverty, says the study. Most of them
belong to schedule castes or scheduled tribes, which constitute 16% of
the population. About 40% of the land owned by tribals, and around 20%
owned by scheduled castes, has been taken away for development.
With updated
data until 2006 from states such as Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar
Pradesh and Gujarat, the numbers are staggering, Fernandes said. He
added that the study does not take into account the number of people
who voluntarily migrated to work in unorganized industries, “which is
substantial”.
“We need to question many of these projects,
the extent and type of displacement,” said Fernandes. “For example, can
we not provide skills to avoid these townships which need more space?
With little options, many of them (people from whom land has been
acquired) end up as landless workers.”
Observers say much of
the countrywide resistance—from preventing an airport expansion in
Chennai to protests against a hydel power project in Sikkim—stems from
the government’s poor record in paying proper compensation and failure
in making alternative housing and livelihood arrangements. Few states,
such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka, have
rehabilitation laws in place.
Once the two Bills are enacted,
a system of accountability for paying compensation will prevail, said a
government official who did not wish to be identified. “People have
been constantly harassed when it comes to payment for land. The new Act
will make it mandatory for the buyer to pay full compensation before
taking possession,” he added.
With inflation touching 7.57%
and amid growing concerns of food security, lawmakers plan to take a
critical look at the sensitive issue of land acquisition. Hannan
Mollah, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) member of Parliament, said
the standing committee will look at how much land is available for
industrial growth and how much of this can be given away, or whether
it’s feasible to use wasteland for this.
“In many cases,”
Mollah said, “the amount of land that has been currently acquired
resembles ‘an invasion by real estate owners’.”
Others worry
about the stage when the Bills will finally translate into Acts, and
how much attention the administration will pay to treating the
landowners humanely, who mostly end up making rounds of the corridors
of bureaucracy to claim compensation.
“We have a horrendous
record of resettling people, who are usually moved and dumped in trucks
in these (resettlement) colonies where no infrastructure exists,” said
Miloon Kothari, a housing specialist with the United Nations Human
Rights Council.
