 "Land acquisition: Need for a shift in discourse?")
Several researchers and journalists have found that farmers are willing to have their land acquired if the price-compensation package is acceptable.
Is willingness to sell at acceptable compensation package a trend? It definitely seems so in the relatively advanced regions of India, where the majority of land acquisition is occurring in any case. Against this backdrop, I hypothesise that the discourse on land acquisition in India has been stagnant for a while, and in view of the emerging evidence it needs to be changed.
Land acquisition in India has been explained in terms of the “inevitable story of primitive accumulation” in the Marxist tradition. Following Marx’s analysis, David Harvey has argued that primitive accumulation practices continue and proliferate even in capitalist economies, and he calls it “accumulation by dispossession” (ABD).
There is growing evidence that answers to these questions would point towards the trend that increasingly the farmers are not against losing their land per se; rather what they want is ‘acceptable’ compensation, with the proviso that the notion of acceptable is not stagnant. This would be my interpretation of the trends that we are observing over the last couple of years in many parts of India.
In his well-known paper, Chatterjee has defined civil and political society. However, given that definition of political society, can we think of the farmers agitating to get acceptable compensation as part of political society? Here the farmers are asking for an acceptable compensation for an asset that they own and in which the State is interested for acquisition.It is my contention that the farmers wanting better compensation and agitating for it do not become part of the political society as defined by Chatterjee.
However, the transaction between the State and the farmer is not completely a market transaction either. This is because the Indian State, like most other States in the world, has the power of eminent domain. To that extent, this exchange goes out of the domain of the market.
It would be too simplistic to accuse the Indian State of being pro-capitalist ‘all-the- time’ and ‘come-what-may’. Undoubtedly, the capitalists have been used to and still look for patronage from the State. But this relationship has undergone an alteration over a period of time. Governments (at the central and state levels) have come under pressure from the other involved parties too (and not just capitalists).
In a democracy, the political parties have had to cater to the demands made by the farmers and the larger civil society. As the election results after Nandigram-Singur showed, the ruling party (that is, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M), which tried to take the land in an extremely coercive manner, lost the elections quite pitiably. Later, the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act, 2013 was passed before general elections in 2014, supposedly to show that the ruling party at the Centre (that is, the Congress) is pro-farmer. The then opposition party -- the BJP -- supported the Law precisely for this reason.
Whatever be the merits and demerits of the Law, the important point is that the government wanted to do and be seen as doing, something for the farmers.
Additionally, what we can discern from cases such as Nandigram-Singur, Goa Special Economic Zone (SEZ), Maha-Mumbai SEZ and so on, is that the government may/can give up the idea of land acquisition if protests are too severe. It is my contention that precisely because of episodes like Nandigram-Singur, the government/political parties may be in the process of becoming more and more sensitive to the demands of the farmers. Both these cases occurred around 2007 and since then episodes of this kind of violence have certainly decreased.
From all this, one can discern that the Indian State is moving towards a situation where it will use more of a consensus approach and avoid using repression and violence, though it may not be completely abandoned, especially in remote areas. This points towards a ‘learning State’ wherein the state has moved from asking for sacrifices, to understanding that such kind of violence will not work in ‘repeated games’ of acquisition. This definitely is the trend, whatever may be the exceptions.
A learning State changes itself by changing political and economic institutions. I argue that in case of land acquisition, the movement has been towards more inclusive economic institutions over a period of time.
Will this trend continue? Of course, what actually happens in the future will depend on the politics of the issue. Can the politicians in India, under a democratic regime, afford to ignore the demands made by the farmers? It needs to be accepted that at least in the face of resistance, the State has been changing. The crucial point now is to what extent is it willing to change itself, how does it change itself, and what is going to be the speed of that change. Clearly a covenant between the State and land needs to emerge.
Dhanmanjiri Sathe teaches at the Department of Economics, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune
Published with permission from Ideas For India, an economics and policy portal
Is willingness to sell at acceptable compensation package a trend? It definitely seems so in the relatively advanced regions of India, where the majority of land acquisition is occurring in any case. Against this backdrop, I hypothesise that the discourse on land acquisition in India has been stagnant for a while, and in view of the emerging evidence it needs to be changed.
Land acquisition in India has been explained in terms of the “inevitable story of primitive accumulation” in the Marxist tradition. Following Marx’s analysis, David Harvey has argued that primitive accumulation practices continue and proliferate even in capitalist economies, and he calls it “accumulation by dispossession” (ABD).
More From This Section
Harvey articulates the function of ABD as when assets are taken at zero or very low prices. However, what if the price paid is neither zero nor low, but is acceptable – in this case, to the farmers for their land? Further, what if the farmers are going to be partners in the ‘capitalistic’ growth that is expected to be taking place on the acquired land, for example, when they are given back a part of the developed land or if they rent out the land to the capitalist?
There is growing evidence that answers to these questions would point towards the trend that increasingly the farmers are not against losing their land per se; rather what they want is ‘acceptable’ compensation, with the proviso that the notion of acceptable is not stagnant. This would be my interpretation of the trends that we are observing over the last couple of years in many parts of India.
In his well-known paper, Chatterjee has defined civil and political society. However, given that definition of political society, can we think of the farmers agitating to get acceptable compensation as part of political society? Here the farmers are asking for an acceptable compensation for an asset that they own and in which the State is interested for acquisition.It is my contention that the farmers wanting better compensation and agitating for it do not become part of the political society as defined by Chatterjee.
However, the transaction between the State and the farmer is not completely a market transaction either. This is because the Indian State, like most other States in the world, has the power of eminent domain. To that extent, this exchange goes out of the domain of the market.
It would be too simplistic to accuse the Indian State of being pro-capitalist ‘all-the- time’ and ‘come-what-may’. Undoubtedly, the capitalists have been used to and still look for patronage from the State. But this relationship has undergone an alteration over a period of time. Governments (at the central and state levels) have come under pressure from the other involved parties too (and not just capitalists).
In a democracy, the political parties have had to cater to the demands made by the farmers and the larger civil society. As the election results after Nandigram-Singur showed, the ruling party (that is, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M), which tried to take the land in an extremely coercive manner, lost the elections quite pitiably. Later, the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act, 2013 was passed before general elections in 2014, supposedly to show that the ruling party at the Centre (that is, the Congress) is pro-farmer. The then opposition party -- the BJP -- supported the Law precisely for this reason.
Whatever be the merits and demerits of the Law, the important point is that the government wanted to do and be seen as doing, something for the farmers.
Additionally, what we can discern from cases such as Nandigram-Singur, Goa Special Economic Zone (SEZ), Maha-Mumbai SEZ and so on, is that the government may/can give up the idea of land acquisition if protests are too severe. It is my contention that precisely because of episodes like Nandigram-Singur, the government/political parties may be in the process of becoming more and more sensitive to the demands of the farmers. Both these cases occurred around 2007 and since then episodes of this kind of violence have certainly decreased.
From all this, one can discern that the Indian State is moving towards a situation where it will use more of a consensus approach and avoid using repression and violence, though it may not be completely abandoned, especially in remote areas. This points towards a ‘learning State’ wherein the state has moved from asking for sacrifices, to understanding that such kind of violence will not work in ‘repeated games’ of acquisition. This definitely is the trend, whatever may be the exceptions.
A learning State changes itself by changing political and economic institutions. I argue that in case of land acquisition, the movement has been towards more inclusive economic institutions over a period of time.
Will this trend continue? Of course, what actually happens in the future will depend on the politics of the issue. Can the politicians in India, under a democratic regime, afford to ignore the demands made by the farmers? It needs to be accepted that at least in the face of resistance, the State has been changing. The crucial point now is to what extent is it willing to change itself, how does it change itself, and what is going to be the speed of that change. Clearly a covenant between the State and land needs to emerge.
Dhanmanjiri Sathe teaches at the Department of Economics, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune
Published with permission from Ideas For India, an economics and policy portal