Politics of Land Rights

Today, Land Rehabilitation Development Bill was passed in the state of West Bengal returning 400 acres of land to the farmers whose it was at Singur. Now, we have new ways of giving relief to the farming people.Government acquired land of farmers for industrial planned development at Greater Noida and its extended locations but sold it to builders. Now the stage is set when farmers have to be paid and court will rule on September 12,2011. Farmers at Gautam Budh have given their 150 acres which was acquired by the government. High court has said that this acquisition cannot take place. Making land acquisition difficult will affect industrial growth.There is blanket ban in acquiring agricultural land in UP and Haryana. If 80% of the families in a land to be acquired say 'no', land cannot be acquired.Sometimes land is acquired for undefined use and then later it is handled by land mafia, there needs to be transparency in dealings.National Manufacturing Policy may influence land acquisition policy reforms and again deprive the farmer of his land.
If the government does not intervene in land transactions, there is fear large scale buying and selling will go on and that land mafia will undertake large scale operations to acquire industrial land. How to maximize profits? By depriving the rights of the illiterate, peasant farmer. Farmers of Singur have been given their land back. May it be Bhatta-Parsul case, POSCO case,or Lavasa case, it is big issue—to industrialize or give way to farmers. When giving up their land farmers should demand rights as stakeholders over their contribution to industries. Farmers should give land on lease only and not give it away permanently. Farmers should be advised so that they are not completely exploited because their lack for their knowledge and awareness. Deals between unequals will be exploitative only unless we intervene and advise. They should retain their hold and be given status of a stakeholder.

Land Acquisition Act had deprived the farmer to bargain for his land,The idea of adequate compensation changes from time to time. Farmer had to accept what he got. He should be given a choice of giving his land on a long lease say for 30yrs or 50yrs.He should not be deprived of rights over the land where his forefathers had lived, worked and made their home. His farm is a piece of living history which he had inherited. We cannot deprive him of his family identity and culture by taking his land away.

Land Rights increases the Gap between rural rich and the rural poor

When the farmer looses his rights over his land due to debt, he becomes very very poor.The phenomenal feature of the past decade is the rising inequality amongst rural classes. Somehow or other rural rich land lords had acquired all cultivatable land and kept it for themselves. There are the rich rural moneylenders and the absentee landlords. And in the bottom are the poor landless laborers who earn wages as they are the hired labor power. They suffer as they are indebted due to informal credit. Now, we can help the farmer/laborer. We must ensure that he gets his minimum wages as man-day and man-hours he has worked on. Thus manpower should be kept registered. And he must get benefits of insurance and at least some health-care. He should also be able to save some for future uncertainties. Some micro-finance scheme should give him cover .This must be done before he is drowned completely in debt. The informal credit system offered to him by moneylenders exploits him completely. He is reduced to serfdom or slavery. There are limits to the power of human body and spirit of endurance; these are tested when landlords exploit the landless labor. Their lives must be saved and we must teach the farmer to farm better, by cooperating with other farmers and to live better. We must restore the poor farmer of his rights over his land. We must help the poor labourer to survive and at the same time we should not put limits on the prosperity of the rural rich class which is also working in keeping the wheel of economy turning.

Land laws and their inadequacies

Old policies cannot cope with new exigencies. Colonial policies cannot meet today’s dynamic challenges and have to be changed. Land Acquisition Act of 1894 was enacted by the British for meeting their own private purposes, but referred to as “public purpose”. They wanted a way to occupy and made up a policy to take over land. Act was made to acquire land for setting up of educational institutions.
Inadequate compensation was paid Using the power of the same Act,now the state governments were given this acquisition power for acquiring land for residential purpose of the poor, and for educational institutions. This is an obsolete Act and it should not be used. But state government has misused the centre government’s laws. Any land was acquired and an adequate compensation of money was paid to the owner whose land was acquired. “Adequate compensation” is arbitrary and the citizens are not given a say in what is adequate value, this is as per Section 38 of the Act,  
Today new compensation rules are made.Haryana state's government had increased the value of the land acquired in making the Yamuna Road. They are misinterpreted without keeping in mind the general welfare of the people. Sometimes the seller is given a share of a flat in a residential complex, sometimes he is given a job in the factory made from his land. This is Uttar Pradesh’s proposed and promised model: a good rate for land and 33 years of annual payments and a share for next generation. Politicians are making an issue out of land rights to elevate themselves or launch themselves. They act as if they are caring for  the needs of the poor. What are the needs of the poor?

Poor own no land.No land means that they have no livelihood--to care for themselves. The poor face uncertainty of existence.They lack proper food and lack home and  they lack access to health care; they lack  access to proper means of livelihood; they are not having access to schools and are not having a clean environment. Denying access to resources is poverty also. People without land are indeed poor. Snatching away of land makes these people poorer. The only assert they have is the piece of land they own.They lack proper livelihoods and they will lose their land to live in also.Government must make people's life better. For times we live in, better standards of living are required.
Inadequacies in making of laws.The Supreme Court in 1971 passed an Act redefining the “right to property” and also justified taking of land for public good.  This means that the Act’s provisions can be utilised when the government makes itself infrastructure facilities for public good. They should not be used for land acquisition for private firms. If private companies are making infrastructure for “public good”, then land  must be allocated in a transparent way like open tender processes of bidding. But the reverse has been taking place in land acquisition in India. Private companies do not take the risk of buying from individual owners but tell the state governments,off record, to acquire land for them. The state governments have been allowing wishes of private companies. Government has power to take land from land owners compulsively and justify investments in it. The unwary citizens surrender their land to the government with “adequate compensation” which is very very low. The land is then sold to private firms at high rates. The same land value increases many folds after being snatched by government. Plight of the citizen is bad, he has lost his livelihood, his heritage, his mother land.

Even the Rehabilitation and Relief Policy of 2007 cannot help the people to secure a home. People are being deprived of right to livelihood. The Andra Pradesh State's government allocated forest area as reserved land for large tribal population there. The local government interpreted the tribal community as village community and did not give the tribal people land from where they could get their livelihood from. Tribes remained forest less or homeless people without food.

Government has to take charge in making of large farms and factories. Why? Because of the nature of the Indian society-Indians are constantly creating hierarchies of inequalities among themselves and try to exclude the weaker people. 
Indians constantly make hierarchies among themselves.In a town in Rajasthan, for the first time, was given clean water through pipe line to various homes and it was funded by the local municipality. The cost of the water would be charged uniformly from all households, but the people of this small town wanted to pay their way. Although municipality proposed uniform charges, they proposed and implemented a system of calculation the cost as per household—house with sons will have a different rate than those with daughters, upper castes got different charges, and dalits get only one pipe from where all have to take water and dalit women were not allowed any piped water as their presence would defile the water. So government has to bring about inclusiveness forcefully otherwise people would divide unequally any new resource made available to them. In whatever new sphere they are offered the Indian people re-invent a hierarchy of statuses immediately, excluding poor or weaker decisively.

Development has to make good economic sense, it has to address to the needs of all the people, and it has to keep the environment clean.. If there is degradation of environment followed by loss of natural resources (like by mining), then the economic output of that region is lost forever. The welfare of the citizens is affected as continuous support of life in that locality is made impossible. Compensation cannot be weighed as there would be no future form of livelihood for the people of that locality. The pollution will shorten their lives and their extinction is hastened.
In constructing industries also, government has to take correct initiatives. Private builders would not consider the cost of environmental degradation which industrialisation may create. Industrialisation means giving minimum wages and exploiting the labour force. Cost of health of people is not counted as a resource, and profits are all that is visible to the industrialists. In emitting wastes of a factory, what quality of water would be down stream is not their concern. While making new factories, the environment has to be protected and the continuation of the factory should give some share of the profits to the native peoples’ land on which it was made.  Generally, the environment is degraded; and the water table became much lower. Cultivators loose their water resource and the soil could not be cultivated because of chemicals in polluted air and water. Environment is lost to gain profits. Environment must be protected, and conserved for future generations; its not possible that if this planet is polluted we can move to another planet. We have to live here and generations will have to live here. Even if we charge an amount of money for causing environmental degradation, we cannot “control undo” pollution. Thus even payment for environmental services were to be made by private factories, it can neither conserve the resources lost (like mining) nor can it return its citizens clean environment. For example: at Jaitapur near Goa, farmers had mango farms which had brought them profits. And they were also fishing for their staple diet of fish. After the establishment of the nuclear plant, mango trees perished due to environmental degradation. The fish stocks were gone due to spoilage of water quality. Their drinking water was contaminated due to wastage from the plant. The loss was total, because of haphazard industrialisation, poor planning and not caring for the local people. Private industrialists do not care for the people or environment and will find a way to evade pollution standards set by government. .

Government has to make proper land laws to guarantee the citizens their rights. And make environmental laws to protect and to preserve our heritage—the land.

The Indian government should make good strategic plans favouring the farmers. For the poor have urgent need for a “way of living” as their basic needs are unfulfilled. These poor people  would be today’s farmers, tomorrow’s labourers and future outcasts living like second class citizens; then we can no more call our country a democracy as no man would be equal and the voice of the poor wont be heard. We would then know the actual social cost of today’s crisis of improper policies. Our failure in making effective strategy today for bright future would be clearly visible then.