Land Acquisition: The battle for land will intensify

Protesting farmers spending the night at Parliament Street in New Delhi. March 18. 

For the past three days, thousands of farmers from across the country, and owing allegiance to Bharti Kisan Union, are staying put at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. With distress written large on their faces, they are hoping that the government they voted for would at least have the courtesy to listen to them. Their anger is over an unjust law that they fear will forcibly evict them from their meager land holdings, and also they came hoping to seek some assurance from the powers that be for ending the continuing agrarian distress that they are living with.

A fortnight earlier, nearly 5,000 tribals under the banner of Ekta Parishad had also marched to New Delhi to join the two-day protest by Anna Hazare and others against the land acquisition bill. But with indifferent State machinery, and with an equally indifferent middle class, they found they had no sympathetic ears to allow them to even share their sufferings. Not even the national media, barring a few exceptions, took notice.

The disconnect between the middle class in the cities and the poor and marginalized in the rural areas, including 600 million farmers and the landless farm workers, is now becoming loud and distinct. For all practical purposes, the divide between India and Bharat that has been talked about for long is now clearly visible.

It is primarily for this reason that the debate over land acquisition fails to move beyond growth and development. In the race to build more infrastructure, the cries of poor and marginalized who are struggling to make the two ends meet gets drowned. The tribals who walked all the way to New Delhi or the farmers who are protesting at Jantar Mantar and also at a number of places across the country are therefore being considered as a hindrance in the development process. They are a roadblock, the sooner they are removed, and faster will be the pace of development.

For several years now, since the time economists/planners began telling us that land is an economic asset and it is unfortunately in hands of people who are inefficient, there has been literally a scramble by business and industry (driven by real estate) to procure as much as possible. The World Bank is backing this strategy, and if you have read the World Development Report 2008, you would know what I mean. It calls for land rentals, and setting up a network of training centres to train the displaced farmers to become industrial labour.

No wonder, the UPA government has made budgetary provisions for setting up 1,000 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs). Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself had called for a population shift, moving out 70 per cent of the farming community into urban centres. This is what the World Bank had wanted India to do way back in 1996. It had wanted India to move 400 million people – twice the combined population of UK, France and Germany – to be moved out of the villages in the next 20 years, by 2015.

It’s all therefore part of a global design. All over the world pitched battles are being fought across nations by the poor and deprived, who fear further marginalisation when their land is literally grabbed by the government on behalf of the industry. It first begins by deliberately turning agriculture into a losing proposition as a result of which farmers, in most places, are keen to move out provided they get a better price for their land. Once this happens, it is much easier to drive out the farmers from their land holdings.

But it’s not as simple as it appears to be. Land being the only economic security for the poor, they put up a tough fight. In China, as Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek sometimes back, 75,000 land conflicts, which means almost 250 protests a day, most of them bloody, happen every year. A recent report states that 28 lakh villagers have committed suicide in China in past 10 years. About 80 per cent of them did so because of forcible land takeover. Rural China has been on a boil all these years. In India, there were 260 land protests in 165 districts in 2013-14. When the new land bill comes into force, I foresee the battle over land intensifying in India. India will soon turn into a land of thousand mutinies.  #

Source: Land Acquisition: The fight for land will only intensify.

ABPnewstv Mar 20, 2015. http://goo.gl/wKQXOJ

It's time Prime Minister listens to farmers' Mann Ki Baat

While we wait with abated breath to listen to you on Mar 22, I thought it appropriate to share my Mann ki Baat with you. I am not sure whether my thoughts will in any way influence your decision making, but at least I can share the plight and suffering of farmers – an outcome of deliberate economic policies over the years to keep me impoverished – with you. Knowing that you believe in sabka saath, sabka vikas I am hoping that you will not abandon the saath of 60-crore farmers in a quest to ensure vikas for a few.   

You know it very well that the path to economic growth in India passes through its 6.4 lakh villages. Mahatma Gandhi had always talked of gram swaraj. In your election campaigns, you had quoted extensively from Mahatma Gandhi and promised to make agriculture economically viable. You had promised to provide 50 per cent profit to farmers over and above the cost of production. Whichever part of the country you campaigned, you talked about the terrible agrarian crisis. You talked of sugarcane farmers. You talked about cotton farmers. You reiterated again and again on the need to bring in more prosperity to the farm.

Farmers are now asking whether what you promised to them was also a chunavi jumla.   

Soon after you became Pradhan Mantri in May 2014, a shortfall in monsoon had hit farming operations. Instead of rescuing farmers with an economic package, the government merely increased the minimum support price (MSP) for rice by Rs 50 per quintal, a rise of 3.8 per cent against an inflation rate of 7-8 per cent. For wheat in rabi season, the procurement price was also raised by a paltry Rs 50 per quintal. At a time when government employees get 107 per cent DA, does it not mean that farmers are being penalized for food inflation?    

On top of it, the Food Ministry has directed the State governments not to provide any additional bonus to farmers. Procurement of rice and wheat is now being aggressively restricted, in Chhatisgarh and Madhya Pradesh only 15 quintals per farmer are being procured while the rest is to be left to the exploitation by markets. Instead of expanding the network of APMC mandis the government is dismantling the existing ones. Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal has warned of a civil war within the country if MSP is withdrawn.

An international crash in commodity prices in 2014 has hit farmers. Cotton, sugarcane and basmatifarmers have suffered a huge blow as a result. Prices have slumped by 40 to 60 per cent. As if this is not enough, unseasonal rains have devastated the standing crop in various parts of the country. More than 500 farmers have committed suicide in Telengana, Vidharbha and Marathwada regions since the beginning of this year, and there is an unprecedented gloom prevailing in the countryside.

According to the 2014 National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) the monthly average income of a farming family is only Rs 3078 from farming operations. Some studies estimate that nearly 62 per cent farmers depend on MNREGA to augment income, and almost 58 per cent farmers go to bed hungry. While the employees unions are demanding a minimum monthly basic salary of Rs 26,000 for a chaprasi in the 7^thPay Commission, a farmer is left to survive on a pittance. Why can’t we have a Farmers Income Commission that provides for an assured monthly take home package? Why should farmers alone be made to bear the burden of keeping food inflation low?

Agriculture crisis is not because of lack of technology but because of the deliberate effort to keep farm incomes low. BJP manifesto had opposed the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops, but the government now appears to be aggressively pushing GM crops in the name of ‘more crop per drop’. There is no GM crop which increases crop productivity, and what is little known is that even in America, GM crops have failed to withstand the raging epic drought that continues for the 4^th year in California and Texas. ‘More crop per drop’ is possible only with non-chemical agriculture, not with GM crops.   

It is also being said that industry has to be provided with finances and tax holidays so as to generate revenue that can be used for agriculture and rural development. This thinking must change. A farmer is not a burden on the society. Neither do the poor lack entrepreneurship. It’s only that they are being denied an enabling environment. A poorest of the poor women in a village wants to buy a bakri. She gets a loan of Rs 8,000 from a micro-finance institution at 24 per cent interest, which effectively becomes 36 per cent on weekly repayments. On the other hand, Tata’s get a massive soft loan for their Nano car factory at an interest of 0.1 per cent. If only the poor women had got the loan at 0.1 per cent I bet she would be driving a Nano car at the end of the year. Similarly, there are some 25-crore landless farmers in our country. They are also hard working, and toil endlessly. If only the government could provide them 1 or 2 acres each, you will see the economic turnaround they bring.

Evicting farmers from their meager land holdings and teaching them skills to become industrial workers is what the World Bank had told India to do way back in 1996. It had wanted 40-crore people to be moved from rural to urban areas in next 20 years, by 2015. World Development Report 2008 had asked India to hasten the process by going in for land rentals. Further, Niti Ayog deputy chairman Arvind Panagariya has acknowledged in an article that if farm land is not acquired forcibly how the industry and infrastructure will get cheap labour. Pradhan mantra ji, please don’t relegate farmers to the level of dehari mazdoor. Neither do they want to pull rickshaw in cities.

Farmer’s land is his only economic security. They can turn it into an economic dream if you provide them even a fraction of the support that is doled out to the industry. In past 10 years, Rs 42-lakh crore has been given as tax concessions to the industry. In 2015 budget, Rs 5.90 lakh-crore was given as tax exemptions. Such a massive dole has failed to generate employment, and failed to increase industrial output. If only Rs 2-lakh crore a year was given to agriculture, and spent meaningfully, it would have not only created gainful employment for millions but taken vikas to every part of the country. That will truly be sabka saath, sabka vikas. #

Land Acquisition: Let's have a land audit first.

In the days to come the battle over Land takeover is only going to be intensified, both in Parliament as well as on the streets. As various farmer organizations get ready to storm Jantar Mantar on Mar 18, and Anna Hazare planning a padyatra from Mar 30, the government itself is getting ready to face the tough challenge in Rajya Sabha where it lacks the numbers.

While the Lok Sabha passed the LandAcquisition bill with 11 minor amendments, most of these already existing in the 2013 law, the painstaking defense by Rural Development Minister Birender Singh has failed to cut much ice. In the shrieking debates and the deafening noise that preceded and still continues, the real issues behind the need for a law that allows forceful takeover of land have disappeared from public scrutiny. In this article I am trying to analyse some of the main arguments that have been floated to justify land acquisition without the consent of the farmer.

I hear again and again that the availability of land is coming in the way of development. Projects worth Rs 4-lakh crore are held up because of non-availability of land. While the government has failed to provide a list of projects that have been held up, Economic Survey 2015 does not list land as a limiting factor for infrastructure projects to take off. It states that the projects are held up because of unfavourable market conditions, and lack of investor interest. Secondly, if land availability was a factor I don’t see any reason why over 576 Special Economic Zones should have failed to perform.

A CAG report says that out of the 45,635.63 hectares of land notified for the development of SEZs, actual operations took place in only 28,488.49 hectares or 62 per cent of the land acquired. Neither did the SEZs create employment nor did it lead to manufacturing or industrial growth. And remember there was no environment clearance hurdle nor was there any social impact assessment required. Moreover, with all kinds of tax holidays, estimated to be in tune of Rs 1.75 lakh crore, the SEZs failed to perform. In a scathing comment, CAG says “Acquisition of land from the public by the government is proving to be a major transfer of wealth from the rural populace to the corporate world.”

I don’t think the government even knows how much of land already acquired is lying vacant. An investigation by a TV channel found that nearly 45 per cent land acquired in just five States is lying unused. In Orissa, for example, 3799 acres acquired for TISCO steel plant in Gopalpur in 1995 has still not been used. 

In any case, the government is eyeing 17 lakh acres of surplus land lying with public sector undertakings. With so much of land already available, I don’t see any reason why the available surplus land is not first put to proper use.

Further, the argument that the 2013 law needed to be changed since the Chief Ministers wrote against it is simply amusing. Let us not forget that the Chief Ministers of the coal mining States also opposed open auction of the coal blocks. But after a Supreme Court order cancelled 204 coal blocks, the auctions that are underway are likely to bring in revenue of Rs 15-lakh- crore. I wonder why in a market economy, where free enterprise is being promoted, the private sector can’t be asked to bid for land in open auctions taking the prevailing market price as the base price.

A study by IIT Roorkee estimates that in past 50 years some 50 million people have been displaced by ‘development projects’. With the oustees of Bhakra dam and Pong dam still not rehabilitated, land conflicts have erupted primarily because the government forcibly takes over land for the private entities in the name of ‘public purpose’. As several CAG reports have found out that the land acquired has finally gone into the hands of real estate firms who have made fortunes.

In 2013-14, a study by Washington-based Rights and Resources initiative found 252 conflicts over land acquisition. A Newsweek article sometimes back had pointed to 75,000 land conflicts, most of them bloody, in China every year. A recent report states that 28 lakh villagers have committed suicide in China in past 10 years. About 80 per cent of them did so because of forcible land takeover. Lawmakers in India therefore need to be doubly concerned about the resulting socio-economic unrest.

Actually, the commodification of land is part of a global design. Globally, an area equivalent to the cultivable area of China and India has already been acquired by private capital. For India, it was in 1996 that the World Bank had asked to move 40-crore people – twice the combined population of UK, France and Germany – from the rural to the urban areas in next 20 years, by 2015. In 2008, the World Development Report of the World Bank had asked India to hasten the demographic shift by going in for land rentals. It is primarily for this reason that agriculture is deliberately being starved of resources, and farmers’ income is being kept low to force them to abandon farming and migrate.

Pitting agriculture against industrial development is a faulty debate. At a time when jobless growth is the norm anywhere and everywhere, industry cannot absorb even a fraction of the growing workforce. In past 10 years, between 2004 and 2014, only 1.5 crore jobs were created despite a high growth rate. Encouraging entrepreneurship in the rural areas and providing land to the landless is therefore the only sensible way to revitalize the economy. If the drought-prone village of Hibre Bazaar in Maharashtra can now boast of 60 lakhpatis, I see no reason why it can’t be the norm in the rest of the country. #

Unseasonal rains: Let's insure each acre of farmers crop

Unseasonal rains and strong winds that lashed the entire north-western region have done immense damage to the standing crops. Ministry of Agriculture has estimated damage to standing crops in 50 lakh hectares in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Coming after an extended season of dry monsoon, the freak weather has played havoc with farm fortunes.

Reports of at least seven farmers committing suicide, and one farmer who suffered an instant heart attack on seeing his flattened wheat crop, have come from Uttar Pradesh.

In Punjab, Haryana and as far as Vidharbha in Maharashtra the situation is no better. Especially coming at a time when the standing crops gave an impression that the rabi season would perhaps offset the losses suffered on account of a shortfall in monsoon rains in the kharif season. According to the Directorate of Wheat Research in Karnal about 20 per cent of the standing wheat cop and 30 per cent of mustard crop has been damaged. That is why agriculture continues to be unpredictable and a highly risky proposition.

Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal has sought a relief of Rs 700-crore for the damaged crop in at least 7 lakh hectares. He has also demanded the upper cap on the compensation limit of Rs 3,600 per acre to be increased to Rs 10,000 per acre. “Current amount does not even justify the money spent by a farmer on the seeds he sows per acre, let alone other input costs,” he wrote to the Minister of Agriculture. This certainly is an unfair compensation regime given the soaring input prices over the years.

And that brings me to an issue that continues to be discussed for over three decades now, but for all practical purposes remains a non-starter. I am talking of the need for effective crop insurance scheme for farmers. Successive governments have failed to work out a crop insurance model for farmers, especially small and marginal farmers who cannot pay the monthly premium, to save them from the tyranny of a hostile weather. I have always wondered why the governments have failed over the years to implement a fool-proof system of insuring every acre of cultivable land. The answer is simple: it lacks political will to bailout farmers in distress.

As far as I know there are a number of schemes introduced on crop insurance, including for weather-related crop insurance. But all these suffer from the basic fault – the insurance is done on an area basis where the average of a village or a taluka is what determines the losses suffered. If 10 acres of a village is lashed by hail and the crop is completely damaged, the farmer will still not be able to get adequately compensated for his loss. The reason is simple: the average of the village does not reflect the severe damage few farmers were inflicted with.

The insurance schemes have been prepared keeping drought in mind. But crop weather insurance goes beyond drought, and farmers need to be adequately covered to offset any as well as all damage.

This is the reason why Punjab has rejected the draft crop insurance scheme that the Ministry of Agriculture has come up with. The latest draft suggests an indemnity of 70 per cent for the sake of insurance compensation. Considering that the natural disasters do not operate on the basis of a village, and there are times when one portion of a village lands gets affected while the rest remains undamaged, the new insurance policy will be no different than what was existing all these years. Moreover, a premium of 10 per cent of the total crop value is too high. It needs to be replaced with a fixed premium on per acre basis depending on the agri-ecological regions the farm is located. For instance, the premium will be different for rainfed areas and the irrigated areas. . 

I have never understood why every farmer cannot be insured individually. At a time when technology is being used to determine and evaluate crop sowing and crop harvest, why can't the same technology be used for measuring the losses each farm household suffers? After all, if you are living in a city and your house catches fire, the insurance company is not going to determine the loss based on the average of the colony. It is always the individual loss that is insured for, and not an average of the colony or ward in a municipality.

Insurance companies have been reluctant to do so for the simple reason that it is too much work. They don't want to add on to their operational costs. And knowing that farmers are unorganised and are nowhere on the economic radar screen of the country, they have so far managed to stay out. This is grossly unfair. If only the government had made it obligatory for the private insurance company to at least devote 40 per cent of their turnover to agriculture, ensuring that the policy is farmer-centric, many farmers who took to the suicide route could have survived.

I have a suggestion. Since Narendra Modi's government has opened up for 49 per cent FDI in insurance why not make it mandatory for those companies entering the insurance sector in India to provide at least 40 per cent coverage to the farming sector on a household basis. Unless the government demonstrate that it means business and makes it mandatory for the insurance companies to work out an insurance plan for each farmer I don't think any foreign company would be interested in going rural. But if they are keen to have a chunk of the vast Indian market, it is also time to make the foreign companies deliver on the social needs of the country. There is no need to allow them into India unless they commit to provide crop insurance to farmers. They will initially hesitate and blackmail, but that has been the usual strategy.

What use is FDI in insurance if it fails to reach out to the largest section of India’s population – 600 million people engaged in farming? #