The Land’s End!

Dr Pravin Togadia

New large airports/metros, big manufacturing units by industries, swanky big malls with their huge storage facilities, star resorts/hotels with lengthy patches with artificial green lawns, golf courses on hills/banks of rivers, multiple residential colonies… All these do not stand in space; they need land – BIG land.  As money does not grow on trees (per Indian PM), even land does not grow on trees. Somewhere it has to be already there. And that’s the point.

Bharat being traditionally an agricultural economy, most cultivated land has been near the rivers, on slopes of mountains, on large plains, jungles and on the sea coast. Civilisations have a history of growing in these areas for easy and sufficient availability of water and basic food.

Today, these areas of land have become the prime properties for all the development symbols that are mentioned up here.  All need big lands which are obviously cultivated and fertile. Barren lands are away from water and lack basic living facilities.

It has become a vicious cycle. Industries and other projects want land and public (in Bharat that is over one billion) needs food to eat, place to stay and water to survive. The situation has now come to the stage of either or for industries/large projects and common public. Naturally, confrontation is inevitable. In such situations, conflict resolution cannot be done on superficial levels as has been tried past 65 years post the British departure from Bharat.

Pakistan got Bharat’s big land and Rs 55 crore gift. Slowly for various reasons including the above, the cultivated land started reducing and at the same time population alarmingly rising due to certain religious compulsions. Food security has become an issue and basic work in the agriculture/horticulture sector has gone down. Result: Shortage of jobs and shortage of food. So the logic given is that if the nation needs jobs and food security then it must bring in /create BIG projects and industries. They need land. Best land, not waste land!

Experts in land sales will give data how much square land has gone off agricultural cultivation for many projects over the years. Those whose land was snatched (‘acquired’: the sophisticated technical word for this!) got the price much lesser than even then market rates saying the land was being acquired for social, national, developmental purposes like schools, hospitals, etc. Where the land was acquired specifically mentioning industries, the SEZs (Special Economic Zones) were created with full support of governments and Industrial Development Corporations.

What happened to those whose lands were snatched for all these purposes? Most of them either did not get any money or got peanuts. Speculating that the big projects would be coming up in a particular area (info gained from their own government sources) big real estate / corporate houses ‘bought villages’ including lands there paying a bit better than the government acquisition or some even chased away the habitants there by force. As a son of a small farmer I know how much it must have pained the hearts of those farmers to see their farm land – whom they saluted as their mother – being snatched away like this.

But when it comes to development without concern for protecting the civilisation, then the growth may look sparkling and inclusive but it is a death row for many and it is excluding the majority. In this case, majority being a common person who has been made poorer, without any land and over-dependent on the larger monopolising entities like governments, corporate units and as a last resort – some social activists with hidden vested interests at heart.

Why blame the common public then if they take to streets when they start seeing through the horrible deception? They lost their land on the promise of a substitute of a better /similar land or sufficient money. They did not get any. The purposes which were quoted while snatching huge prime lands were fake and after the big prime lands – Agriculture/Gochar (Cow Grazing – the lands which legally belong to cows and nobody can take them)/coastal / jungle (that belong to the Tribals only) had been in the hands of the Governments (Central and all states), the same lands were sold to the corporate houses at much higher the price than that was given to the original land owners i.e. farmers, villagers, fishermen, tribals etc. So, here is double deception: Social purpose thrown for a toss and selling the same land (if at all) directly to the corporate houses; the original land owners could have earned more to buy some other land somewhere.

Sitting in power or owning big corporate house in Bharat or abroad is not the license to betray people of Bharat. Well, it already has happened for years and now will take place more with Foreign Direct Invasion (Ok ok, investment!) FDI proposal.

What is the solution? No developmental projects? This cannot be the practical solution. But while developing nation’s economy in western styles, it is must that the very unique characteristics of our civilisation – experienced farming and preserving the heritage – should be protected. Lands like these should never be snatched: on the banks of rivers/coastal areas/ mountains, hills and hillocks/ temple, mutts, ashrams/ gochar (Cow Grazing)/ schools, colleges, hospitals etc. ancient villages and habitats in the hilly or coastal or jungle areas and fertile cultivated agricultural land anywhere.

How to handle it? Central and all State Governments along with agricultural, social, cultural experts should form a well-meaning committee. This committee will earmark the ‘Not to be acquired’ lands all over and records will be maintained without any tampering. Then the lands which have been unused for years need to be surveyed and recorded. These lands can be made available for useful projects though a specific and systematic as well as transparent selection process which will be supervised by this committee with the help of local experts. The purpose for which the land has been allotted/acquired should be maintained; if it does not happen then there should be a penalty and criminal punishment not only to the new owner but also to the government in charge (Not officers, but the head of the government). There should be a review of the acquired and allotted land every six months. The committee should devise specific compensation and rehabilitation package for them.

This is all fine, but then what happens to already snatched and grabbed lands now which are huge? With retrospective effect since past 65 years, all land records should be verified. Nobody from Pakistan / Bangladesh should be allowed to claim any ‘ancestral’ land.

If any Central or State government has acquired land from people with a particular purpose and then gave land for any other work/project then the entire land should be taken back and be made a part of a larger land pool. The culprits in the government should be punished for cheating and other sections. The original owners of the land should be paid at current market rates and the payment should come not from public tax money but from the said Government head and the corporate project that got the land. The rules by the committee should apply to all. Union government should ask for the data of such lands and this committee can now verify the truth.

Land is a precious resource just like water and energy. If not handled wisely, then not only our glorious civilisation but also the bright future of our economy will be ruined at the hands of land sharks and greedy Governments. Water wars have already started, with farmers taking help of the so-called social activists is a red alert and if all of us do not wake-up to the distress call of our Mother Earth then that will be the Land’s end!