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`Great land grab' sidelines India's farming industry

AFP, MUNDHA KHERA, INDIA
Sunday, Jul 29, 2007, Page 12

Farmer Pratap Singh smokes his pipe at his home in Neemana, India, on July 3. Singh was the owner of an 8 hectare fertile field that yielded three harvests a year until his sons persuaded him to sell. PHOTO: AFP

It's a hot, humid Sunday morning in northern India, but the oppressive heat does not deter a group of about 15 farmers from trudging door-to-door, offering advice and sometimes warnings.

"Do not sell your precious land. Even if you are offered millions of dollars, do not sell. It is your only source of livelihood," Mahavir Gulia, the leader of the group, tells a villager in Mundha Khera, 100km from New Delhi.

"Sell your land and you will lose your identity," he warns another as the group winds its way through the cluster of austere mud, brick and cement homes.

Gulia is trying to spell out the dangers to locals whose land has been earmarked for a Chinese-style business enclave -- a joint venture between the Haryana state government and Reliance Industries, India's largest private conglomerate.

"We want to be sure our fertile land that gives us three crops a year does not end up as part of the Reliance empire," he said. "We don't want Reliance to colonize us. Land is what sustains us farmers with food, respect and dignity."

In Neemana village, 10km away, Pratap Singh, 75, understands the message -- but a little too late.

Eight months ago, he was the owner of an 8 hectare fertile field that yielded three harvests a year.

"My sons were lured by the promise of good and quick money. They persuaded me to sell most of my land to the big company," Singh said, squatting on the sandy floor of the one-room house that he and his wife share with a buffalo.

He did get some cash, but it did not last him long in the world outside his usual farming routine.

"We have a saying here that our land is our mother," Singh said sadly. "How can you get any respect when you have sold your mother?"

Singh's land is now part of the 10,120 hectare Reliance-Haryana government Special Economic Zone (SEZ) -- a project encouraged by the Indian government to spur industrialization, infrastructure development and push economic growth into double digits.

For foreign and domestic corporate giants, the SEZs are a tempting option -- promising a way around the country's notoriously slow, spirit-crushing and often bureaucracy.

But opponents say the government is merely sidelining the still-crucial farm sector -- stealing labor and prime land from a sector that employs more than 60 percent of the workforce and generates more than a fifth of India's GDP.

Journalist-turned-activist Praful Bidwai said that last year and this year "will be noted in history for the launch of the Great Land Grab."

"It's happening across India," social activist Vandana Shiva said, pointing to farmers' protests in the Communist-ruled eastern West Bengal State in March.

Fourteen farmers were killed when police entered their village to evict them from land designated for a SEZ -- causing a furore and polarizing public opinion.

Not that land grabbing is a new concept in India -- tribal peoples have long seen their forest land shrink with the march of urbanization.

But SEZs are different, Shiva said.

"These are enclaves of privilege, insulated from the laws of the land -- whether it is labor laws or environment laws."

So far, India has approved 303 SEZs and set aside 1,400km2 of land on which they are to be built.

The Indian trade ministry said that the 126 enclaves already operating have generated 32,578 jobs and that this would swell to 1.5 million by December 2009. It also hopes SEZs will generate US$25 billion worth of exports next year and in 2009.

While the figures look impressive, critics argue that Indian democracy is suffering.

"When there is large scale displacement of people involved, you need their consent. In a democracy, people have the right to decide their own future," prominent community activist Aruna Roy said.

Economist Paranajoy Guha Thakurta said India's ambition to emulate the Chinese SEZ model is basically flawed -- "because India is a democracy."

"The Chinese SEZs are like giant urban agglomerations, independent nation-states with their own rules for labor and environment," he said.

India following the same model will only create "huge islands of industrial affluence in a sea of deprivation and poverty.

"This will be unacceptable in a democracy," he said.
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