RIGHTS-INDIA: Communist Gov’t Evicts Farmers for Industries

By Sujoy Dhar Reprint | | Print |

Sujoy Dhar

KOLKATA, Sep 11 2006 (IPS) - Peasants living on the edges of this eastern metropolis are seething in anger at the world’s longest serving provincial communist government which wants them to hand over their lush green farmlands for an automobile plant being set up by the Tata group, a flag bearer of capitalist enterprise in this country.

“The land can be taken only over our bodies- be it the Tatas or the state government,” says Bikas Das, a farmer in Hooghly district’s Khaserveri village, well aware that he is against West Bengal’s formidable Left Front government which has been in continuous power since 1977.

“We will not give an inch without a fight,” says Das and his fellow villagers who hurl curses at West Bengal’s reformist chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Tata Motors, the company which has chosen the 1,013 acres of fertile land for a proposed small car project.

More than 15,000 peasants and their families, including small holders, agricultural labourers, unregistered sharecroppers, cottage industry workers and small business people in Singur now live under the threat of eviction and livelihood loss, in return for a small compensation package.

A few km away in the largely-Muslim Bankura village, falling in Howrah district, Mehboob Ali Halder stands helplessly on his farmland against a twilight sky jagged by the silhouette of bulldozers working to create the planned mega city by Indonesia’s Salem group.

Before his eyes the aspirations of the rich take wings on 390 acres land chosen by the Salem group to build ‘Kolkata West International City’, an international township that symbolizes the Left Front government’s new penchant for foreign direct investment (FDI).

But there is little in this activity for Halder, one of thousands of agriculturalists and fish traders who are victims of land acquisition for the satellite township that will have 6,100 bungalows, four residential towers, three IT parks, a 13-acre club, a 200-bed hospital, two schools, shopping malls and entertainment zones.

Halder has refused to give up his small farm and has filed a case against the government’s move. “I had a dream which is now crushed. My family was in the aquaculture business and I also planted several trees on my land to carry out composite farming”.

‘I think I will be unable to sustain my legal battle and will have to give up,” Halder told IPS.

The battlelines between farmers in places like Singur and the West Bengal government led by the business-friendly Bhattacharya are now drawn. It is ironical that the same communists, after capturing power in 1977, launched a land reform movement which won them enough popularity to stay on in power for close to three decades.

“The communists, who boast of carrying out land reforms in their state are now trying to grab our fertile lands,” says Dudhkumar Dhara of Singur, who represents the rival political group Trinamool Congress in the local panchayat (village body).

No less than 72 two percent of the 68 million people of West Bengal live in rural areas and the majority of them depend on agricultural activities to earn a living. But Bhattacharya wants to change all that and industrialize the state.

“They want us to perish for the sake of industry. No amount of money can compensate for our land which we expect will be tilled by our future generations. Unskilled people like us have nothing to do in a Tata Motors project,” say villagers.

The protests are angering Bhattacharya, poster boy of Indian politicians because of his efforts to rejuvenate industry in a state that was once known for its militant trade unionism, resulting in a flight of capital to other parts of India.

“The problem is that our opposition leaders have nothing else to do. That is why they are desperate to do something for their political existence,” said Bhattacharya, who has been urging farmers to graduate to agriculture to industry.

“They cannot stop us from setting up industry in the state. Let them shout as much as they can, we’ll do what we have to,” he said. But having stifled dissent within the Left Front, Bhattacharya is now an easy target for his political opponents.

The government claims that most of the land requisitioned for the Tata Motors project is single-crop. But rides through the criss-crossing dirt tracks tells a different story – most smallholdings yield a variety of crops round the year like rice, potatoes, vegetables and even jute.

In Singur, grassroots supporters of Bhattacharya’s Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), which leads the Left Front coalition, are voicing their protests in unison with the opposition Trinamool Congress that is spearheading the movement against the plant.

Singur Krishijami Raksha Committee (Forum to Protect Farmlands in Singur) has been formed with sub-committees and now protests and squatting are on full swing.

Some CPI-M members of the villages in Singur, who have joined the apparently apolitical forum, said they were not even informed by the higher ups in the communist party about the moves.

“The leaders at the top would benefit from such deals,” alleges Bikas Das. ”Whether you pay Rs.600,000 (13,000 US dollars) or Rs.900,000 (19,500dollars) per acre, we will not benefit in the long run. For a farmer, land is everything.”

The fear is that sharecroppers are in even greater danger of being deprived of their livelihoods. Whatever the smallholders are paid as compensation, farm labourers will not benefit. While the Tatas have promised few thousand jobs for those displaced, there is very little trust among the villagers.

“There is no reason for acquiring fertile farmland in Singur when there are ample lands available in the state. We are not against industrialization, but it should not be at the cost of fertile land of the farmers,” said Paroma Ukil of FIAN (FoodFirst Information and Action Network), a Germany-based non-governmental organization (NGO).

FIAN, which has filed a case in the Calcutta High Court against the land requisition and taken an international delegation to Singur, accuses the government of trying to pass off the land as single-cropping when the area has long been known to follow a multi-cropping pattern.

“The government has not provided us with any information so far. We are moving through the legal route,” said Ukil.

According to FIAN, as a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, India (and therefore, West Bengal) is duty bound by international law to respect and protect the peasants’ right to adequate food.

International action is urgently needed to protect the rights of the farmers, FIAN said, urging the government to identify non-agricultural land for the construction of the Tata car unit.

For the West Bengal government, the first jolt came when the villagers did not bother to turn up for hearings on land acquisition recently and, instead, held protests.

The turbulence in the green fields of Singur is a precursor to the gathering storm over land acquisition in West Bengal which officially needs at least 40,000 acres in the coming years for various industrial projects.