From the Tatas giving up on Singur to farmers in Haryana demanding more from an SEZ developer, land acquisition has been industry’s worst nightmare in the past few years. Business Standard analyses what went wrong in some of the biggest projects that have hit the land-purchase roadblock.
Nandigram and Singur. These two places in West Bengal have entered the Indian vocabulary as synonyms of violent protests against land acquisition for industry, an opposition that, at least in the state, seems to be a direct result of the government playing a role in the process.
In Nandigram, 150 km from Kolkata, the state government tried to take over nearly 22,000 acres for a petroleum, chemicals and petrochemicals investment region, popularly referred to as a chemicals hub, through the proposed elimination of around a dozen villages. In Singur, 40 km from Kolkata in the country’s most fertile belt, it wanted to buy 1,000 acres of multi-crop farmland for a Tata Motors project.
In both cases, there were public disturbances, particularly the police firing in Nandigram on March 14, 2007, which killed 14 people. Nandigram faced a virtual civil war, which ended only when the project was abandoned.
At Singur, sporadic police firing led to some deaths and impoverishment of over 2,000 families who refused compensation but lost their land anyway. On September 2, a hostile local situation made Tata Motors suspend work at the site.
Both conflicts focused on the fact that land in West Bengal is hard to come by. But in reality, the people of the state are happy to offer their land directly to industry.
Jindal Steel is acquiring thousands of acres for its 10-million-tonne steel plant in West Midnapore district, while Bhushan Steel is happy with the ease with which villagers are giving up land for its five-million tonne steel plant at Salanpur near the Bihar border.
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Videocon is also thrilled with the co-operation from villagers eager to give up their land for its steel and power complex at Asansol, 130 km from Kolkata. Even smaller investors like the Sonthalia group, which picked up several 60-70 acre plots for its notified SEZs, are happy.
| LAND IN WEST BENGAL: AN ANALYSIS |
| STRENGTHS |
| * Easy to get agglomerated land from private investors or directly from farmers. |
| * Abandoned factories not hard to come by |
| WEAKNESSES |
| * The government tends to interfere in land acquisition citing public concerns |
| * Litigation related to plots, which are small |
| OPPORTUNITIES |
| * Farmers appear to be eager to sell because population pressure has created a large number of dependents |
| * Most people are pro-industry, more so in barren and backward districts |
| THREATS |
| * Local communities sometimes demand jobs for land-sellers |
| * The land records department is notorious for obstructing applications for change of use of land from agricultural to commercial/industrial use |
Despite the ongoing protests in Singur, investors in the state appear to be in a race to outdo each other in compensation packages.
For example, Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Limited (BAPL), the Changi Airport-aided builder of the state’s only private airport and a related economic zone at Durgapur, 160 km from Kolkata, indicated it would pay Rs 7.5-10 lakh per acre for the 3,500-odd acres it intended to acquire.
This along with incentives like payment of annuity for five years, job for one person from each displaced family and up to six cottahs (1 cottah=750 sq ft) of alternative land.
This is 25-30 per cent more than the current price of land in the area even if the additional benefits are not calculated. BAPL agreed to pay this much despite the fact that most of the project land yielded just one crop in a year.
In contrast, the government has continued to face resistance, so much so that on August 27, it agreed to pay an unheard-of Rs 10.14 lakh an acre for land within 200 metres of a state highway at Katwa, a poorly developed district town 100 km north of Kolkata at the confluence of the Ganga and Ajoy rivers.
The market price was Rs 1.5 lakh per acre. Sharecroppers (‘bargadars’ in local parlance) would get 25 per cent of the value of the land while agricultural labourers would get wages for 300 days in advance. Even then, the government faced resistance.
Pradeep Gooptu from Kolkata, Dillip Satapathy and Bishnu Dash from Bhubaneshwar, Makarand Gadgil from Mumbai, Rituparna Bhuyan from New Delhi