We need to be fair to farmers
Land acquisition is done from farmers for a variety of purposes. Besides the usual development needs, such as building roads, railway tracks, institutional buildings that will serve the community, industry, or water channels, in recent times land has also been acquired for housing to be sold to townspeople.
Farmers are usually not against selling their land for development, for they also get served by that development. Their children get employment and the value of their land improves. The problem lies in the latter case.
Governments sell the land purchased at cheap rates from farmers (sometimes in the name of industrial development, as we saw in Greater Noida, but in reality not so) to builders at many times the price they originally paid to farmers. This is the first stage of profit-making. Then builders charge house buyers hundreds of times the original land value, making a huge killing.
When the farmer sees this, he is left wondering. He has been divested of his property that sustained him, while others skim off the milk. This is the root cause of current problems. Unlike in the case of community or industrial development projects, in the case of builders being the eventual buyer, farmers derive no benefits, in terms of employment or otherwise. If hard market conditions hold sway today, the farmer cannot be left out of the gains that accrue from it. That is the base point. This is at the heart of the thinking that land bought from farmers for different purposes — development versus profit-making by builders and contractors — should fetch him different prices or compensation package.
The government of India is thinking of changing the land acquisition law framed as long ago as 1894. It should factor in the conditions of today. Either have two separate laws for the two kinds of cases outlined above, or in the same legislation, make two clear-cut provisions to cater to the different situations. This will be in the interest of fair play. Our farming community should not be taken for granted.
Land acquisition is a complex issue which has to be legislated on keeping in view the larger impact on the livelihood of our farmers since it often paves the path for unemployment.
To prevent the exploitation of farmers by the builders or state governments, two separate provisions will offer better safeguards. In Bhatta-Parsaul, there has been a clear exploitation of farmers. In appropriate instances, the land acquisition laws should also be linked to rehabilitation of farmers.
ANOTHER:
It is a policy of divide and rule
The issue of land acquisition has become an issue of land-grabbing — whether this is for urban housing (through which the builder lobby gains), or for mining, highways and factories.
In both cases big businessmen and corporate houses gain and poor farmers lose. So, because it is a case of one issue of exploitation, the paradigm should be treated as one issue of land justice.
To split one issue of land grab into two separate issues will be to enforce a divide and rule policy while the point is that farmers are being killed because they are defending their land. Therefore, the question of land acquisition has become a life and death issue for farmers. It is the farmers who feed the country. So, what they are defending is not just right to their land but their right to feed the country. This cannot be lost sight of.
The issue is not just of land sovereignty, but also food sovereignty and food security. At a time when 215 million people are starving, the government is promising a food security act; it is promising 61 million tonnes for feeding the poor. At the same time, through the land acquisition policies, the government is making sure that there will be no food for the poor. If the government is serious about the right to food, it must be serious about farmers’ right to land without which there can be no food.
As far as food production is concerned, it is the fertile land around the city that is being grabbed for land acquisition for urban expansion. When you realise this, it becomes clear that you are hitting the food security base of the country and the livelihood base of the farmers. Therefore, there is no reason to treat the question of land acquisition for urban housing as a separate category. The recent case of Bhatta-Parsaul shows that the builder lobbies are no different from the mining lobby.
Both are willing to have people killed to get land. In a democracy, there is no place for such injustice and violence. The government is promising to bring an amended land acquisition act in the Monsoon Session of Parliament. This is recognition that the old law has become the source of injustice and conflict. Whether the amended act will ensure justice to farmers depends on whether they, their occupation (agriculture) and the food question get priority. Remember, land is the basis of our society and civilisation. It is not a commodity.
Friday, July 15, 2011
No trains to safety .....by sh. SUNANDA K DATTARAY
The Kalka Mail’s tragedy holds sharp personal anguish for someone who was brought up on the railways in another age of travelling in comfort and security. Sunday afternoon’s derailment in Uttar Pradesh might possibly be due to sabotage (like that of the Guwahati-Puri Express the same day) but my instincts say this is yet another consequence of the mismanagement that marks an India that is trundling to the moon in a creaking bullock cart packed with diseased and undernourished people.
Great things are being done for India but not for Indians. The impermanence to which the permanent way — nearly 65,000 km of track — is being reduced matters more than 2G and Commonwealth Games scams or the fuss over a Lokpal.
It was with a stab of pain that I read amidst harrowing tales of death and suffering that the derailed train has fallen to fourth place in the pecking order. Time was when no train in Kolkata was grander than the Delhi Mail which went on to Kalka. As a child, I looked on it with awe for a very personal reason — my father’s saloon couldn’t be attached to it; he wasn’t an important enough railway official to add to the length and weight of a train that had sped the viceroy to Shimla. The main platform at Howrah used to be ablaze with the movers and shakers of the world when the Kalka Mail with its smart dining car run by Kellner (Spencer handled catering on southern routes) set out for Delhi each evening.
That august train now follows humbly in the wake of upstarts of the railroad like the Rajdhani and Duronto and Poorva Expresses. The Rajdhani certainly isn’t half as splendid as the Kalka Mail used to be. Its downfall probably began unnoticed when the original sitting room was lopped off. Recently, I had to take it from Patna, and noticed how my first class airconditioned coupe was only a stark box of splintering plywood without many of the fittings (wash basin, wardrobe, etc.) that had been there only a few years ago. One might argue that a stark wooden box can move just as smoothly and safely on the rails as the viceregal saloon used to, but if trains have been so downgraded, it’s likely that so have the rails and supporting infrastructure.
Each new political adventurer who bags the railway portfolio only seeks personal fame and a place in posterity by adding a new train. That is all that public life in India is about nowadays. It’s the same in the professions, even in my own trade of stringing words together. Everyone is selling something and that something is himself (or herself). Only, railway ministers do it at the cost of public life and safety. Lal Bahadur Shastri was the only incumbent to have had the decency to acknowledge that. The others are out for what they can get.
“I am the minister of state, not the railway minister,” Mukul Roy is quoted as saying after Sunday’s calamity. “I will go to the spot if the PM tells me.” The remark betrayed his discontent at not being given Cabinet rank and his anxiety for an opportunity to push himself to the notice of Manmohan Singh and, even better, Sonia Gandhi. Why else should he bother with loss of life and property? It’s not his life or his property! Perhaps Mr Roy had already got wind of the rumour — now reported as fact — that like a medieval empress rewarding subservient courtiers, Mamata Banerjee has decided to bestow the portfolio not on him but on Dinesh Trivedi.
Trains were always on time in a childhood spent in railway colonies when we were not romping in a saloon shunted in the sidings in some distant station or in retiring rooms with the knowledge that a good restaurant with khansamas in crisply beplumed turbans and gleaming brass medallions was available just down the stairs. The last time I had to spend a night in a retiring room was in Arrah because I was visiting the Sonepur fair in the 1970s. The bed linen was so filthy that I reclined all night in a long cane planter’s chair. I should imagine that handsome piece of teak has either been chopped up for firewood or graces some official’s residence.
Trains were on time because engines were well maintained, the tracks perfectly in order with sleepers and fish plates so spaced as to cause the minimum bumps, and no signalman was ever caught napping on his watch. It would offend his izzat and there was no greater insult than that. It was fascinating to watch the signalman at the end of the platform deftly fling the wire ring to the engine driver who caught and flung it back with equal adroitness. The exchange signalled the all-clear.
The inspector in his sola topee on a trolley wheeling along the track under blazing skies or in torrential rain was another indicator of the importance attached to safety. Four bearers pushed and pulled the platform for a while and then jumped on it to remain seated while the momentum lasted. The trolley’s smooth passage ensured that the train following had nothing to fear from missing segments of track, worn-out sleepers, loose fishplate screws or other dangers. The sola-hatted inspector and his bearers literally put their lives on the line for passengers.
Maoism has come as a tremendous boon. The consequences of substandard material (everyone takes a cut on every purchase), shoddy workmanship, poor maintenance and negligent inspection can be blamed on saboteurs. What would all our public services do without those armed rebels? It recalls the principality of Monaco cabling Paris after the end of the Second World War asking for some Communists. Monaco didn’t qualify for Marshall Aid otherwise.
It’s a hell of a way to run a railroad, as the old American saying goes. It’s also a hell of a way to run a country.
Great things are being done for India but not for Indians. The impermanence to which the permanent way — nearly 65,000 km of track — is being reduced matters more than 2G and Commonwealth Games scams or the fuss over a Lokpal.
It was with a stab of pain that I read amidst harrowing tales of death and suffering that the derailed train has fallen to fourth place in the pecking order. Time was when no train in Kolkata was grander than the Delhi Mail which went on to Kalka. As a child, I looked on it with awe for a very personal reason — my father’s saloon couldn’t be attached to it; he wasn’t an important enough railway official to add to the length and weight of a train that had sped the viceroy to Shimla. The main platform at Howrah used to be ablaze with the movers and shakers of the world when the Kalka Mail with its smart dining car run by Kellner (Spencer handled catering on southern routes) set out for Delhi each evening.
That august train now follows humbly in the wake of upstarts of the railroad like the Rajdhani and Duronto and Poorva Expresses. The Rajdhani certainly isn’t half as splendid as the Kalka Mail used to be. Its downfall probably began unnoticed when the original sitting room was lopped off. Recently, I had to take it from Patna, and noticed how my first class airconditioned coupe was only a stark box of splintering plywood without many of the fittings (wash basin, wardrobe, etc.) that had been there only a few years ago. One might argue that a stark wooden box can move just as smoothly and safely on the rails as the viceregal saloon used to, but if trains have been so downgraded, it’s likely that so have the rails and supporting infrastructure.
Each new political adventurer who bags the railway portfolio only seeks personal fame and a place in posterity by adding a new train. That is all that public life in India is about nowadays. It’s the same in the professions, even in my own trade of stringing words together. Everyone is selling something and that something is himself (or herself). Only, railway ministers do it at the cost of public life and safety. Lal Bahadur Shastri was the only incumbent to have had the decency to acknowledge that. The others are out for what they can get.
“I am the minister of state, not the railway minister,” Mukul Roy is quoted as saying after Sunday’s calamity. “I will go to the spot if the PM tells me.” The remark betrayed his discontent at not being given Cabinet rank and his anxiety for an opportunity to push himself to the notice of Manmohan Singh and, even better, Sonia Gandhi. Why else should he bother with loss of life and property? It’s not his life or his property! Perhaps Mr Roy had already got wind of the rumour — now reported as fact — that like a medieval empress rewarding subservient courtiers, Mamata Banerjee has decided to bestow the portfolio not on him but on Dinesh Trivedi.
Trains were always on time in a childhood spent in railway colonies when we were not romping in a saloon shunted in the sidings in some distant station or in retiring rooms with the knowledge that a good restaurant with khansamas in crisply beplumed turbans and gleaming brass medallions was available just down the stairs. The last time I had to spend a night in a retiring room was in Arrah because I was visiting the Sonepur fair in the 1970s. The bed linen was so filthy that I reclined all night in a long cane planter’s chair. I should imagine that handsome piece of teak has either been chopped up for firewood or graces some official’s residence.
Trains were on time because engines were well maintained, the tracks perfectly in order with sleepers and fish plates so spaced as to cause the minimum bumps, and no signalman was ever caught napping on his watch. It would offend his izzat and there was no greater insult than that. It was fascinating to watch the signalman at the end of the platform deftly fling the wire ring to the engine driver who caught and flung it back with equal adroitness. The exchange signalled the all-clear.
The inspector in his sola topee on a trolley wheeling along the track under blazing skies or in torrential rain was another indicator of the importance attached to safety. Four bearers pushed and pulled the platform for a while and then jumped on it to remain seated while the momentum lasted. The trolley’s smooth passage ensured that the train following had nothing to fear from missing segments of track, worn-out sleepers, loose fishplate screws or other dangers. The sola-hatted inspector and his bearers literally put their lives on the line for passengers.
Maoism has come as a tremendous boon. The consequences of substandard material (everyone takes a cut on every purchase), shoddy workmanship, poor maintenance and negligent inspection can be blamed on saboteurs. What would all our public services do without those armed rebels? It recalls the principality of Monaco cabling Paris after the end of the Second World War asking for some Communists. Monaco didn’t qualify for Marshall Aid otherwise.
It’s a hell of a way to run a railroad, as the old American saying goes. It’s also a hell of a way to run a country.
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