Distant thunder

The political class as well as industry may be under-estimating the growing resistance to land acquisition for the setting up of greenfield industrial ventures and operating mining leases. What began as isolated instances of resistance across the eastern and central belt, spanning the poor but resource-rich states of West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, has grown to become a much broader phenomenon. It is worth noting that no mainstream political party is organising the resistance, which is usually born out of local spontaneity; indeed, the mainstream parties are on the side of industry, and state governments are busy trying to get the land acquired for new projects, because they see that as the route to investment, job creation and tax revenue. The issue therefore is not partisan politics but the nature of development and what it does to people who see only the costs of large-scale development, and none of the benefits.

This is a variation on the theme of resistance to big dams because they displace large numbers of people whose land gets submerged; indeed, the sustained resistance to hydro-electric projects like those on the Narmada, and the administration's failure to deal fairly with those displaced, have placed a question-mark on the very feasibility of new dams, except in relatively unpopulated areas like Arunachal Pradesh. If similar doubts are not to sweep over large industrial projects because land cannot be acquired without violence, and throw into jeopardy the several hundred special economic zones that have been approved, the issue of land acquisition has to be resolved with manifest fairness.

Nandigram in West Bengal has become a metaphor for what can go wrong "" violent resistance, police firing, and eventually abandonment of the project. There have been cases of resistance and police firing in Orissa too, spelling trouble for many projects that have suffered delays as a consequence. In Chhattisgarh, companies are able to get going only because they seem to be buying off the resistance that has been organised under the Maoist banner ""not a model that commends itself. Companies have responded in other ways too; one has offered shares in addition to compensation for the land acquired; and as reported yesterday, Posco is offering to find markets for fish products, so that fishermen in its project area are assured of their livelihood. There was a time when people were willing to give up their land if a member of the family got a job in the project. But this is no longer a promise that can be made because of the increased levels of mechanisation and automation.

The government has gone afresh into the land question, and tried to settle the issue of relief and rehabilitation with a formula that does away with forcible acquisition (using the principle of eminent domain) unless the bulk of the land required for a project has changed hands voluntarily "" a position that many companies argue makes projects impossible to execute. It has also recommended premium land compensation prices, presumably because you have to deal with the pain of forcible displacement. These are improvements, but it is far from clear whether they are enough to quell the resistance when giant, greenfield projects in extraction-based industries have been approved and the project areas demarcated. Industry needs to examine its own assumptions about how the issue can be dealt with, because this is not a problem that will go away on its own.