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The macro costs of forced displacement of the farmers in

India:

A micro level study

Journal: European Journal of Development Research

Manuscript ID: EJDR-2012-0030-REG.R2

Manuscript Type: Original Paper

Keywords: Political/Legal, Anthropology

Keywords (user supplied): Development caused displacement, Benefit sharing, Land acquisition,

Resettlement and rehabilitation, Financing for development

URL: http:/mc.manuscriptcentral.com/fedr

European Journal of Development Research

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The macro costs of forced displacement of the farmers in India: A

micro level study

Introducing the problem: the macro-level scenario

India is not only a country of great cultural diversity, it is also a country in which

majority of her people depend on land and forest and most of these people are poor.

Quite perceptively, these people have been characterised by the ecologically oriented

scholars as ‘ecosystem people’ that is they collect and procure the basic items of their

survival directly from nature (Gadgil and Guha 1995). Any attempt towards

development that does not take into consideration the ways and means to safeguard

these people from the risks that usually follow development efforts is bound to be

disastrous and invariably spread discontent and mistrust among them towards the

State and its system of governance. Development initiative by the Indian State since

liberalisation in 1991 in the form of inviting foreign and domestic private investments

is proceeding at a much faster rate than ever before. As a result, the investor-friendly

development approach has created a very high demand for land (Mathur 2009), and

with the adoption of liberalisation policy, more land acquisition for the private sector

became the official stand of the Indian government (Fernandes 2011). Ironically, in

the absence of any legal prohibition, it is mostly the agricultural land which is

acquired for the installation of private industries in India. The acquisition of land for

various development projects for the sake of economic growth also entail loss of

livelihood of the people who depend upon this vital natural resource. Depriving

people from their immediate means of livelihood (e.g. land) for the sake of long term

economic growth (e.g. better employment opportunity) without provisioning adequate

rehabilitation and resettlement leads the displaced families to conditions worse than

before(Mathur and Marsden 1998 and Mathur 1999; Cernea 2000; Downing 2002;

Oliver-Smith 2009). Impoverishment also causes widespread social and political

movements by the people against the State. (Shiva and Jafri 1998; Asher 2007; Sahu

2007; Guha 2007). The recent move of the Indian government to create Special

Economic Zones (SEZs) within which the export-oriented industrialists and big

business groups would be given land has become another front of battle over land

between the State and the civil society in India. While the government was quick

enough to pass the SEZ Act 2005 in the Parliament, it is equally lackadaisical to enact

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a law for ensuring resettlement and rehabilitation for the people who would be

severely affected by development projects(Guha 2011:336-357).

The democratic and independent government in India still acquires farmer’s land for

private industrialists by employing the colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894, which

despite some amendments, does not contain any provision for the full reconstruction

of the damaged livelihood of the dispossessed ; it only enables the land titleholders to

receive monetary compensation at the market rate. The value of the land to be

acquired is usually determined by an average of the last three years land sale data of a

particular area, which is a historic price of the land. It is very difficult, almost

impossible, for the farmers to challenge the justification of land acquisition against

the eminent domain of the state in a court of law. Recent research has shown that the

judiciary in India even after Independence of the country has largely failed to protect

the poor farmers from the onslaught of forcible land acquisition by the government.

(Gonsalves 2010:37-42). Furthermore, the loss of livelihood and pauperization of a

large number of people in the absence of governmental social security measures in the

colonial law, the pro-poor and egalitarian legislations, like land reforms and

empowerment of decentralised local self-governments (panchayats) adopted during

the post-colonial period are also being pushed back in the era of globalisation (Guha

2006b ). All these development demands reform and change in the spheres of policy,

legislation and governance.

In the following sections of the paper we would present a case study from West

Bengal, which is not only one of the most important states of India in terms of its

post-Independence achievements in implementing land reforms and local governance

with fair amount of success (Lieten1996; Dreze & Sen 2002) under a democratically

elected government led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) which ruled the

state for thirty-four years at a stretch. Interestingly, West Bengal is also the state,

which in the era of globalsation became committed to invite huge capital investment

at the cost of farmers under the communist government. The acquisition of fertile

farmland for private industries in the state in the recent past had given rise to violent

struggles between the people and the government over the issue of land acquisition

which among other reasons, finally led to the massive electoral defeat of the

communist government in the 2011 West Bengal Assembly elections.

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Development caused forced displacement and rehabilitation (DFDR) in West

Bengal: An Overview

The first thing which struck the author in the field of DFDR was the virtual absence of

any micro level intensive study in West Bengal. This of course did not mean that

displacement and rehabilitation were non-existent in West Bengal, which in the pre-

Independence period, was the leading state in terms of industrialisation, and where,

after Independence, large industries and thermal power plants had been built up

displacing many families (including tribals) from their agricultural land and homes. In

an article published in 1989, Walter Fernandes and his co-workers, quoted from

government sources to show that for the Durgapur Steel Plant in Bardhaman district

of West Bengal 6,633.44 hectares of land was acquired, which displaced 11,300

persons, 3.39 percent of whom were tribals (Fernandes et al. 1989). Although, the

West Bengal Human Development Report did not contain any chapter or even a

section on development caused displacement in West Bengal (WBHDR 2004).

On the other hand, the West Bengal scenario did not figure in any substantial manner

in the academic literature with respect to land acquisition, development caused

displacement and rehabilitation prior to the substantial resistances by the farmers

against land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal during 2006-7.

During 1995-2000, four special volumes of important Indian journals devoted

exclusively to displacement and rehabilitation were published, but none of them

contained any case study or policy oriented paper on West Bengal. These journals are

Social Action (Vol. 45, No. 3, 1995, July – Sept.), Lokayan Bulletin (Vol. 11, No. 5,

1995), Economic and Political Weekly (Vol. 31, No. 24, June 1996) and Eastern

Anthropologist (Vol. 53, Nos. 1-2, January-June 2000).

The same was true as regards research based monographs published during 1989-

2000. The monographs were Development Displacement and Rehabilitation edited

by Walter Fernandes and Enakshi Ganguly Thukral (1989) The Uprooted (1990)

edited by V. Sudarsen and M.A. Kalam and Development Projects and

Impoverishment Risks edited by Hari Mohan Mathur and David Marsden (2000). Prior

to 2006, the only field based empirical research on the impact of land acquisition in

West Bengal was done by the author of this paper and his co-workers (Guha et.al.

1996; Guha 2001; Guha 2004).

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The scenario however changed after the massive resistance of the farmers against

land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram during 2006-7. During this short period a

large number of articles, interviews, opinions, debates and news items were published

(and it continued) in the newspapers and journals on the development caused forced

displacement in West Bengal. Leading economists (including the Noble Laureate

Amartya Sen), journalists, social activists (like Medha Patkar) and politicians began

to write and talk vociferously on the displacement and rehabilitation of farmers by

land acquisition for private industries in West Bengal. Editorials and several articles

by academicians and political commentators were published in Economic and

Political Weekly, which is one of the of the most widely circulated journals of the

country during 2006-7(Lahiri&Ghosh 2006; Banerjee & Roy 2007; Banerjee 2007;

Fernandes 2007; Patkar 2006; EPW Editorial 2007; Banerjee et.al 2007; Bhaduri

2007; Sarkar 2007; Bose 2007; Patnaik 2007; Bhattacharya 2007; Da Costa 2007; The

Telegraph 2007).Websites named sanhati.com and counterviews.com were launched

in the cyberspace. Development caused forced displacement and resettlement in

communist ruled West Bengal state of India became the national and international

agenda for debate and discussion.

Despite the spurt of literature on development caused displacement in West Bengal

after the Singur and Nandigram episodes, there was no field based intensive account

of the short and long term impacts of land acquisition in any location of the state. In

the following sections of the article we would present a micro level field based

anthropological study of displacement in the context of the pro-farmer policy of the

then left front government of West Bengal After that, we would again place our

anthropological findings in the broader context of a more humane resettlement and

rehabilitation policy of India.

The wider context of land acquisition in West Bengal

West Bengal is an agriculture-dependent state, which occupies only 2.7% of the

India's land area, though it supports over 7.8% of Indian population, and is the most

densely populated state in India. West Bengal had been ruled by the Communist Party

of India (Marxist)-led left front government for three decades, making it the world's

longest-running democratically-elected communist government. The LFG in West

Bengal claimed its uniqueness among the Indian states not only in staying at power

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for the last 34 years through Parliamentary democracy, but also for implementing a

pro-poor land reforms programme with fair amount of success (Mukarji and

Bandopadhyay 1993). The key to this success lay in involving the poor peasants of

the vast rural areas in the execution of the governmental land reform policies related

to their empowerment. (Leiten 1996)

It would be relevant here to mention that the district planning committee (the first of

its kind in West Bengal) of erstwhile Medinipur visualised the whole process of

development by putting the poor peasants at the centre of all kinds of planning

process. The DPC published a small monograph entitled Village based district

planning process: an outline of methodology in September 1985 that described and

analysed in detail how relevant socio-economic information on every village could be

collected by the panchayat workers for using them in this micro planning process.

Among many pro-poor planning elements, the document gave much importance to the

(i) identification of the nature and amount of agricultural land as well as their

improvement through ecologically sustainable use and (ii) exploration of the

possibilities of developing industries in terms of local demand, raw material and/or

skill (District Planning Committee 1985:14-15).

In the late eighties and particularly in the wake of liberalisation in 1991, the focus of

the development policy of the LFG has radically shifted. The government which was

fully committed to land reforms started to invite capital intensive and technologically

sophisticated private industrial entrepreneurs including multinational corporations in

the state. Quite interestingly, the success in land reform in the state was cited in a

report by the government as one of the justifications for huge industrial investment

(West Bengal: Industry News Update 2000:44). But contrary to what has been dubbed

as a ‘success’ in order to justify industrialisation, an earlier report of the government

devoted to the evaluation of the panchayats in West Bengal observed that land

reforms is still an incomplete programme(Mukherji and Bandopadhyay 1993:41).

The West Bengal Human Development Report published in 2004 noted with concern

the landlessness among rural households. In pages 39-42, under the second chapter of

the report Land Reforms a ‘disturbing feature’ was noted, which referred to the

increase in landlessness among the rural households in the state despite land

distribution and registration of bargadars (sharecroppers without ownership right on

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the land)[WBHDR 2004:40)]. In spite of these findings, the Government of West

Bengal pushed its agenda of industrialisation in the era of globalisation ignoring its

immediate and long-term effects on land reform and the farmers. This forms the wider

policy context under which we would look into the consequences of the establishment

of heavy industries within an agricultural setting in Paschim (West) Medinipur

district.

The micro-level study

Socio-economic consequences of land acquisition for Tata Metaliks

Before describing the socio-economic consequences of land acquisition for Tata

Metaliks, a brief outline of the area from where the sample households have been

selected from the affected villages are provided along with the methodology adopted

for this particular fieldwork.

The Area

Under this background, anthropological field investigations were conducted by the

author and his research students during 1995-97, and 2006-8 in some of the villages

within the Kharagpur subdivision of Midnapore district. The area lied in western

Midnapore and was characterised by undulating lateritic soils and the rural people

mainly subsisted on a combination of monocrop agriculture and collection of forest

products. The specific area of our study was situated on the bank of the river Kansai

which was the largest river of the district. Cultivation of paddy (staple of the district)

in the villages under study depended primarily upon rainfall and no systematic

irrigation facilities have yet been developed by the government. The villagers residing

on the south-eastern bank of the river cultivated a variety of vegetables on the land

adjoining their homesteads owing to a very good supply of groundwater from

traditional dug wells. Just west of the South Eastern railway track, the groundwater

level was not congenial for cultivation of vegetables. The main agricultural activity on

this side of the railway track centred round rain fed paddy cultivation, which took

about four to six months of the year. Land for four private industries had been

acquired by the government on this side during 1991-1996. Among these four, three

had already started production and these were: (i) Tata Metaliks [TML] (it

manufactured pig iron), (ii) the coke oven unit of the Wellman Company (which

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supplied coke coal to the Tata Metaliks) and (iii) Bansal Cement factory. The fourth

was a proposed pig-iron plant owned by the Century Textiles group, for which fertile

agricultural land was acquired in 1996 but no industry was built up on this land till

2004 since the Company finally withdrew its project. Interestingly, the West Bengal

Government had acquired agricultural land for all these industries despite the fact that

a huge uncultivable undulating lateritic terrain (“wasteland” in the official jargon) lay

just by the side of these agricultural lands on both sides of the railway track that

extended almost up to the highlands on the bank of the river. It may be noted that no

member of the landloser families got permanent job in those industries although, the

local left political leaders created an notion that at least one member of those families

would be given employment.

Selection of Households

The selection procedure of the households for this study followed a combination of

purposive and opportunity sampling. At the outset, the main aim of the researcher was

to locate the households whose farmlands have been acquired for the establishment of

the Tata Metaliks. Instead of searching through the records of land ownership kept in

the Land and Land Records department of the district, this investigation depended

directly upon fieldwork by following the traditional anthropological method of

intensive interviews of the project affected people. Apart from knowing the current

status of land ownership, (which are not promptly made up-to-date in the Land

Records Office) micro-ecological variations and local level political movement

centering round land acquisition it was possible to know from the active members of

the political movement, the names of the villages whose inhabitants have been

affected by the acquisition of agricultural lands for the industries. Later, at the time of

conducting the household survey, snowball sampling was taken recourse to, wherein

the affected households gave the names of family members whose land have also

been acquired. Household survey had to be completed within a period of three months

owing to time constraints and as a result not all the affected households could be

covered. A rough estimate about the total number of households affected by the

acquisition of land was made available for us by the leaders of the farmers’ movement

who took the help of the Congress party. They estimated that about 200 families have

been affected by the acquisition. Within the stipulated time, a total of 144 households

(72 per cent of the estimated total) belonging to different landholding categories, caste

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and community affiliation as well as families residing in the two micro-ecological

niches on both sides of the South Eastern Railway track have been covered by the

survey. In the following section, the findings on some consequences of land

expropriation have been described.

Landlessness

The foremost consequence conforms to the observation of Michael Cernea which he

mentioned in his series of publications on the “eight major risks” involved in

involuntary displacement caused by development projects all over the world (Cernea

1991; 1995; 1997). Industrialisation in the liberalisation decade in Midnapore has led

to dispossession of the small and marginal farmers from their principal means of

production.

Through fieldwork in the area we have found that the villages situated on the eastern

side of the railway track have been affected more in terms of the number of families

who have lost their farmlands. The people of these villages were excellent farmers

who keep themselves engaged throughout the year in agriculture. Besides paddy, they

also grew almost all kinds of vegetables like green chili, lady's finger, mustard, water

gourd, pumpkin, bitter gourd, brinzal, potato, cabbage, cauliflower and radish.

These vegetables were grown in lands adjoining their homesteads not acquired by the

government. The villagers mainly sold these vegetables in the local markets which

fetched cash. On the other hand, the families who lived in the village on the western

side of the railway track, belonged to the Kora tribe. Many of the Kora women and

men now work as temporary unskilled labourers in the coke oven industry. The

majority of the affected households in the study area belonged to a middle ranking

Hindu caste group named Sadgope, who happened to be one of the enterprising

agriculturist castes of southwest Bengal, while the scheduled tribe and scheduled

caste families( e.g. Lodha and Kora) comprised almost a quarter of the total number

of affected households. Despite the presence of various Constitutional safeguards and

job reservation for the scheduled communities, there is no special provision for

rehabilitation of these groups affected by state sponsored displacement in India. In

this region too, these communities have become further marginalised due to the

establishment of industries on their farmland and no step has yet been taken either by

the State or the Central Government to rehabilitate these groups under Constitutional

safeguards.

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In the following two tables we have made an attempt to present the pattern of

landlessness caused by the acquisition of land among the affected households in the

study area.

Table 1A

Pre-acquisition Agricultural Landholding Pattern of Sample Households Affected by

Land Acquisition for TML.

Size category of holdings (in

acres)

Number of households Mean household

size

Landless Nil -

≤ 0.5 19 (13.194) 4.73

0.5 – 1.5 58 (40.277) 6.43

1.5 – 2.5 32 (22.222) 8.84

2.5 – 3.5 13 (9.027) 8.60

3.5 – 4.5 8 (5.555) 8.86

4.5 – 5.5 6 (4.166) 12.6

5.5 – 6.5 Nil -

6.5 – 7.5 8 (5.555) 13.3

Total 144 (99.996) 5.76

Table 1B

Post-acquisition Agricultural Landholding Pattern of Sample Households Affected by



acres)


size

Landless 22 (15.277) 6.36

≤ 0.5 35 (24.305) 5.48

0.5 – 1.5 51 (35.416) 8.25

1.5 – 2.5 14 (9.722) 7.57

2.5 – 3.5 13 (9.027) 12.07

3.5 – 4.5 5 (3.472) 9.20

4.5 – 5.5 3 (2.083) 10.33

5.5 – 6.5 1 (0.694) 15.00

6.5 – 7.5 Nil -

Total 144 (99.996) 5.76 Figures in parentheses represent percentages

In the pre-acquisition stage, there was no landless family within the sample

households and 75 per cent of these families belonged to the size category of 0.5 – 4.5

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acres. According to the latest standards set by the Government of West Bengal, these

families should be regarded as marginal and small farmers. The pattern of landholding

among the same families after land acquisition shows that 15 per cent of the families

have become landless and the number of households belonging to the lowest

landholding category (≤0.5 acres) increased from 19 to 35. On the other hand, the

number of households within the size category 3.5 – 7.5 acres, declined from 22 to 9

only. Landlessness had another interesting dimension. The post acquisition phase

showed that the project affected families were forced to support bigger families with

lesser amount of agricultural land. The following story of a farmer (name changed) in

BOX I represents a typical case of a landloser family affected by governmental

acquisition of farmland in the study area.

BOX I

Sukul Choudhury is a middle aged man of Gokulpur village in the study area, who owned 0.54 acres

land from his father. He has read upto class-VI and his main occupation was agriculture. But after the

acquisition his main occupation is vegetable selling. He used to till the land with his family members

and got 2800 kg paddy per year. He cultivated different traditional varieties of paddy (Rupsal, Patnai

etc.) which are usually planted in the rainy season.

He came to know about acquisition of the land from a notice, which came from land acquisition office

of Midnapore. After receiving the notice he however, attend meeting but never submitted any objection

in writing. After a short period of time like other farmers of Gokulpur, he agreed to give away his land

with the hope that a member of his family will get a permanent job in the industry. He got

compensation of Rs. 4000/- for giving 0.22 acres land (located in the Pritimpur mouza) which was

acquired for the Tata Metaliks Company. His other piece of purchased land located in the Amba mouza

amounted to 0.32 acres, was acquired by the Government for the Bansal Cement Company in the year

1995. He got compensation of Rs. 48000/- for giving this land. He saved the money in the local State

Bank.

The land which he possesses, now cannot supply food for his family throughout the year. He now has

to purchase paddy from the market for two- three mounths of the year. He and his son also sell

vegetable grown in his homestead land.

He stated that the most adverse and immediate effect of land acquisition in his family was scarcity food

and fodder for he cattle. (Majumder & Guha 2008)

Apart from the owner cultivators, land acquisition also badly affected the

sharecroppers who constituted one of the most vulnerable categories of farmers in

rural Bengal. In Bengali language they are known as ‘bargadars’. They are the

farmers who are not the owner of the land but used to cultivate it in exchange of a

portion of the crop, usually 50 percent of the total produce in a season. Before the

introduction of the Land Reforms Act in the post-Independence period, there was no

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legal security for the bargadars if they were evicted from the land by the landowners.

Even after the promulgation of the Land Reforms Act in 1955, the landowners

continued to exploit the bargadars in various ways by using their superior position in

the existing socio-political hierarchy. The left political parties in West Bengal played

a crucial role in upholding the interests of the bargadars by organizing peasant

movements and through the implementation of the legislation under a specific

governmental programme named “Operation Barga” taken up after the Left Front

Government came to power in 1977. In the initial years this programme recorded

spectacular success in terms of the number of registered bargadars.The registration of

the bargadars provided them legal protection against eviction by the landowners. The

West Bengal Human Development Report published by the Development and

Planning Department of the Government of West Bengal reported that the total

number of recorded bargadars in the state in 2000 was 1.68 million, which accounted

for 20.2 per cent of the agricultural households. The report further stated that the land

covered under the cultivation of registered bargadars is 8.2 per cent of the arable land

in the state. (WBHDR 2004:30-32). But ironically, the eviction of bargadars by the

government took place under the colonial Land acquisition Act in Midnapore.

In our sample population although there were 11 registered sharecroppers (7.63

percent of the total number of affected families) who lost land by the acquisition but

the overall policy implications of their dispossession are immense. Because, no

attention to the inevitability of the risks of this vulnerable category of farmers was

paid by the government while acquiring the land. In this connection, it may be

mentioned that even the administrative procedures for monetary compensation to the

sharecroppers made them weaker in terms of the amount as well as the delay towards

its payment (Guha 2006a:219-233). The new industrial policy of the Government of

West Bengal did not contain any provision to protect this category of farmers from the

adverse impact of land acquisition for industrial projects. The following news report

depicted the plight of a typical bargadar family in the study area.

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BOX II

Operation Sharecropper comes a cropper

The Statesman 5 May 2008 (page 1)Shiv Karan Singh

KOLKATA, May 4: “As soon as I heard about the camp, I ran to get our name recorded”, said Mr

Singho, remembering the events of 1984, when the effects of Operation Barga first reached his

village, Liluakola, in West Midnapore. Mr. Singho remembers Land Reforms under the Left Front as

a “good thing”, because under Operation Barga, his father, Sumanto Singho, a sharecropper, was

protected from being evicted by the landowner and guaranteed a 75% share of the .3-acre area

cultivated. This protection gave food security to the Singho family.

However, for Mr. Singho, the benefits of Operation Barga have long expired. His father passed away.

And, in 1991, the state government acquired the land that he and his four brothers continued to

sharecrop in Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat to establish a Tata pig iron factory. The compensation was

less than Rs. 2,000. Now, with but a small adjoining homestead plot where they grow vegetables and

sesame, the Singho brothers are another example of the lakhs of beneficiaries of land reform that have

been subsequently dispossessed of food, income, and status by state land acquisition. For, although

land reform protected the sharecropper from the whims of the absentee landlord, it has been powerless

against the whims of the state government armed with the Land Acquisition Act (1894).

Utilisation of compensation

While the policy makers of the government thought that their task of rehabilitation

ended with the payment of compensation, the project affected families tried cope with

the crisis through the spending of the compensation money. In the following table we

have made an attempt to quantify the coping strategies of the farmers in the study area

which revealed a pattern.

Table 2

Profile of Utilisation of Compensation Money by the Land loser Households

Compensation

category in

rupees

Number of household under the various categories of utilisation

Purchase

of

agricultur-

al land

Purchase

of shallow

tubewell

House

building

and/or

repair

Domestic

consumption

Marriage

purpose

Repayment

of Loan

Bank

deposit

Business

investment

1,000 – 10,000 6 - 9 31 9 2 18 6

10,000 – 20,000 5 5 5 12 9 1 16 3

20,000 – 30,000 - 1 5 5 4 2 6 1

30,000 – 40,000 - 1 5 5 5 1 6 2

40,000 – 50,000 1 - 1 4 1 - 4 -

50,000 – 60,000 - - 1 1 1 - 2 -

60,000 – 70,000 0 0 0 2 1 0 1 -

70,000 – 80,000 - - - - - - - -

80,000 – 90,000 1 - - 1 1 - 1 -

90,000 – 1,00,000 - - 2 1 - - 4 1 Total 13 7 28 62 31 6 58 13

(9.027) (4.861) (19.444) (43.055) (21.527) (4.166) (40.277) (9.027)

Figures in parentheses represent percentages

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At the outset, it should be mentioned that all the 144 households received one-time

monetary compensation, although many land losers during the field investigation

reported that they were yet to get the full compensation money. Secondly, all the

families utilised the compensation money in more ways than one. Eight categories of

utilisation of the compensation money by the villagers could be identified, which

were then arranged into ten compensation categories. But as the household members

have spent the money under more than one utilisation category, so any row total

achieved is the result of addition of the same household more than once under

different categories. Understandably, the sum of all the row totals equaled to the total

number of households in the sample. However, each column total represented the

actual number of households out of 144 under any particular utilisation category. This

gives a fair idea as to how the villagers tried to compensate their loss of land. The

maximum number of affected households spent some portion of the compensation

money in domestic consumption, while the second highest number of households

deposited a part of the money in bank. But if spending on marriage of the family

members and house-building and repair were also considered to be domestic

consumption then clearly the latter item predominated in the compensation utilisation

process. The reason behind the spending of money for domestic consumption by a

greater number of households was mainly caused by the sudden loss of the main

economic asset, that is, land. Because, the moment a landloser received compensation,

he made attempts to recover the economic loss by spending to satisfy the basic needs

as was done before the acquisition and that put him under further downward spiral of

poverty.The lower frequency of households who spent the money for agricultural

purposes (for example, purchase of arable land or shallow tube wells) marked the

beginning of the process of displacement of these small and marginal farmers from

their traditional occupation and agricultural way of life. It can be concluded that by

and large, in the absence of any sustained mode of rehabilitation package, the way this

group of dispossessed farmers utilised their compensation money have led them to

incur more risks on the economic front.

Food insecurity

A grim scenario as regards food security was revealed during our second phase of

fieldwork carried out in 2007 in one of the villages in the study area. It should be

noted in this connection that in standard macro-economic theory and practice, food

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security is measured in terms of bigger administrative and political boundaries, viz.

the state or the country. Thus, in 2006 when about 1000 acres of the three crop land of

Singur in West Bengal was acquired by the government for building an automobile

factory of a private company owned by the Tatas, Dr. Abhirup Sarkar a distinguished

economist of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, in one of his articles

‘Development and Displacement: Land Acquisition in West Bengal’ in the prestigious

journal Economic and Political Weekly argued:

Suppose West Bengal requires 1, 00,000 acres of land for building up infrastructure, industries and a

modern services sector. That will be less than 0.7 percent of the total agricultural land in the state. It is

highly unlikely that if this miniscule amount of land goes away from the agricultural sector, total

foodgrains production of the state is going to be substantially reduced( Sarkar 2007:1438).

This kind of macro-economic approach failed to distinguish between food security of

a state and the food security of the farmers’ household.

Dr. Abhirup Sarkar in his article from which we quoted, however sensed the pitfall

of his own argument regarding the risks of food insecurity caused by land acquisition

for the establishment of industries in West Bengal. Just after few paragraphs while

championing the necessity of industrialisation for development he stated:

There is, however, a very serious microeconomic problem. Acquisition of land entails displacing

people from their land and livelihood and therefore if the acquisition exercise is not handled properly,

social and political unrest will emerge which will gravely endanger the industrial process itself (Ibid).

In the rest of his article, Dr.Sarkar could not produce any data to elucidate the ‘serious

microeconomic problems’ he referred to in the above sentence; he only alluded to

‘social and political unrest.’

Our field data clearly revealed that the farmers dependent on crops produced by them

were suffering from food shortage. In order to understand the magnitude of food

insecurity at the household level we have collected data on the purchase of staple food

crop (rice) by the villagers from the market since it is one of the most important

indicators of food shortage in a farmer household. We relied on the views of the

affected people as regards the ‘cause’ of the food shortage, being fully aware of the

fact that there may be other factors, like fragmentation of large families causing

family labour shortage. But it is also true that fragmentation of families in this area

was found to be associated with land acquisition (Majumder & Guha 2009:77-84).

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From our field observations and interviews we learnt that almost all the farmers of the

studied village used to consume the paddy they grow in their land. We have not come

across any farmer who sold their paddy in the market. Purchasing rice for

consumption was viewed by the members of a farmer family as derogatory and was

regarded as a dishonourable act for a chasi (farmer). Owning cultivable land was

viewed as socially prestigious for the farmer families of this area. A ‘good farmer’ in

this area was one who could feed his family with the paddy grown in his field

throughout the year. A popular maxim in this area which we collected during

fieldwork was ‘Arthe maan / Khote dhan/.Freely translated it meant: ‘Money gives

prestige/‘Fertilisers yield paddy.’ In almost all our conversations the members of the

landloser families always blamed acquisition of land by the government as the ‘root

cause’ (mul karan in Bengali parlance) of food shortage. They also expressed

hopelessness whenever they talked about the number of months during which they

purchased rice from the market for domestic consumption. The table shows a larger

number of families in the post-acquisition period. This was owing to the fact that a

number of families in the pre-acquisition period had been fragmented over time.

Table 3 Changing Pattern of Dependence on Staple Food (paddy) in the Market

among Land loser Families

Months

Number of the families

Pre acquisition period Post acquisition period

0 28 (56) 45 (45.45)

1-4 22 (44) 11 (11.11)

5-8 - 31 (31.31)

9-12 - 12 (12.12)

Total 50 (100) 99 (100)

Figures in parentheses represent percentage out of column total.

Let us return to our original point. We found that in the pre-acquisition period 56

percent of the total number of the cultivator families was self-sufficient in terms of

domestic paddy consumption while this percentage declined to 45.45 percent in post

acquisition period. Furthermore, in the pre-acquisition period there was no family

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who purchased rice for more than 5 months in a year. But in the post-acquisition

period, we found 43.43 percent families had to purchase rice for 5-12 months of the

year. This showed that expropriation of rain fed, monocrop land acted as one of the

major causes of domestic food insecurity among the majority of landloser families in

the village 15 years after the land acquisition for the Tata Metaliks( Majumder and

Guha 2008: 121-133 ).

Endangered land reforms

The empirical and theoretical studies on displacement through the acquisition of land

by the government for development projects have so far focussed on the direct and

immediate adverse consequences of land acquisition. Most of the analytical as well as

the descriptive accounts of the immediate consequences of land acquisition for

development projects draws heavily from Michael Cernea’s ‘impoverishment risk

model’, which broadly enumerated eight ‘risks’ or ‘dimensions’ of development

caused displacement. (Cernea 1991).

But apart from these direct and immediate effects of land acquisition there are more

subtle and indirect effects of this coercive and centralised legal procedure, which have

a bearing on various decentralised and participatory democratic processes like land

reforms (Guha 2006b). This point however has not yet been focussed in the literature

of displacement and rehabilitation. Michael Cernea in his ‘Foreword’ to the book

written by the author of this paper has recognised this contribution. (Cernea 2007: vii-

xiii).

In India, both land acquisition and land reforms are legal and administrative actions

to be undertaken by the government. These again are issues, which relate to

governance and allocation of power. But there are crucial differences between land

acquisition and land reforms in terms of the allocation of power to the different

segments in the ladder of governance. Through land acquisition, the government

acquires legally owned private land for a public purpose. Land Acquisition Act cannot

be employed to confiscate land beyond the limits of ceiling which is done by land

reforms law. Land and Land Reforms Act empower the poor and the landless while

the Land Acquisition Act disempowers the farmers by employing the power of the

eminent domain of the State.

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The land reforms process start at the district level and it takes place in collaboration

with the democratically elected local self-governments, i.e. panchayats. The land

acquisition on the other hand primarily starts at the highest level of the administrative

structure, i.e. at the level of the Ministerial Secretariat and sometime at the cabinet

level in the state capital. From this perspective, it may be stated that land acquisition

is a centralised and top-down administrative process while land reforms operate in a

decentralised and democratic manner.

Under this background, let us now look into the processes of land acquisition and land

reforms in the administrative block in which we conducted our fieldwork.

The area of our study belonged to the administrative jurisdiction of Kharagpur-I block

of the Paschim (West) Medinipur district. The occupational profile of the block

revealed not only the dependence of the population on agriculture but also the poor

economic condition of the people. Out of 41,124 main workers 16,180 i.e. 39.34 per

cent were landless agricultural labourers while 11,509 (27.98%) cultivators. These

two categories constituted 67.32 per cent of the total main workers of this

administrative unit of the district (District Statistical Handbook, Medinipur 1998). In

terms of a number of development parameters, like literacy, villages electrified, small

savings collection and aman paddy(most important rice crop in Bengal which is sown

in May-June and harvested between November and December) yield, the Kharagpur-I

block presented a rather backward picture when compared with the adjoining blocks.

For example, the literacy percentage of this block was only 58.38 (the average for the

erstwhile Medinipur district is 81.27) whereas Narayangarh, Kharagpur-II and

Keshiary registered 70.06, 64.02 and 61.84 percentages respectively. Again, since a

substantial segment of the economy in this region is dependent on the cultivation of

aman paddy it may be worthwhile to look at the production data of this particular

crop. The production data showed that although the yield rate as well as the total

production of aman rice increased considerably over a period of one year, the land

area under cultivation of this crop declined from 191.5 thousand hectares in 1996-97

to 158.8 thousand hectares in 1997-98. The area under aus paddy cultivation also

declined in case of these two blocks over the period 1996-97 to 1997-98. The area

under boro paddy (a rice crop in Bengal sown in November and harvested in February

and March) cultivation however increased in this block during the same period (Ibid).

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Let us now come to the Gram Panchayats (the lowest tier of statutory local self

government in India) under Kharagpur-I block. There were seven Gram Panchayats in

this block. The Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat contained our study villages and it stood

second in terms of the population strength while as regards the scheduled tribe

component of the population this Gram Panchayat occupied the fourth position

(23.11%). The most striking feature of these Gram Panchayats was the staggering

number of families living below the poverty line. According to the survey conducted

by the Block Development Office in 1997-98, more than 70 per cent of the families in

the Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat lived below the poverty line (BDO Office

Kharagpur-I, 1997).

The last point to be mentioned in this connection is that according to the directives

issued by the Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment, Govt. of India, an operational

list of poor families was to be prepared out of the total number of Below Poverty Line

(BPL) families living in all the Gram Panchayats of the block. The objective behind

the preparation of the operational list was to generate various employment schemes in

order to push them up from the poverty level. In Kharagpur-I, this operational list was

prepared and sent to the District Rural Development Agency by the BDO in

November 1997. The operational list contained 8,157 BPL families, which was only

43.84 per cent of the total number of families who lived below the poverty line in this

block. This was the ground reality of poverty alleviation in the field site where land

acquisition for industries took place in the wake of liberalisation.

Under the above background of poverty let us now consider the case of Kalaikunda

Gram Panchayat where plots of fertile agricultural land was acquired by the State

Government for two pig iron industries. But before describing the case of acquisition

we would consider the distribution of land to the landless in this Gram Panchayat,

which is predominated by families living below the poverty line.

The figures reveal that from 1993 to June 1995, at about 300 acres of land was

distributed to 1500 families inhabiting within the Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat

(Smaranika, Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat 1994-95). Interestingly, the Annual Report

of the Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat for the year 1992-93 also gave statistics on land

reform in its last page, which published figures of land distribution during the period

1978-1992. The figures show the same number of families (i.e. 1500) who were given

land. It meant that during the period 1992-95 no landless family in the Kalaikunda

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Gram Panchayat was given land (Smaranika, Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat 1992-93).

The rate of land distribution in this area during 1978-1992 (i.e. 15 years) turned out to

be 20 acres per year.

Let us now consider the rate of land acquisition in the Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat

for two big industries, viz. (i) Tata Metaliks and (ii) Century Textiles. For these two

industries, the amount of land acquired during the period 1986-2000 (i.e. 15 years)

was about 759 acres (233 acres for the Tata Metaliks and 526 acres for Century

Textiles), i.e. the rate of land acquisition was 50.6 acres per year, i.e. more than 2½

times the rate of land distributed by the Government through land reforms during

1978-1992.

In the light of the above comparison, the case of Kalaikunda Gram Panchayat brought

out an important implication for the development policy of the state. The distribution

of land to the landless families in this area, which operated through the involvement

of the elected panchayat, was a much slower process than land acquisition for large

industries. Furthermore, land acquisition caused dispossession of small and marginal

farmers and disempowered the bargadars and pattaholders (those who were given

land under the land reforms programme of the government) who, despite all their

efforts and resistances ultimately failed to achieve empowerment.

During our fieldwork, whenever the elected panchayat members were asked about the

rehabilitation of the farmers whose lands have been acquired for the industries, the

only answer which came to us was: ‘It is not the business of the panchayat. It is the

duty of the government.’ The panchayat members were not even interested to conduct

any household level survey to find out the number of families (including scheduled

tribes) who had lost their rights over land owing to acquisition for the two big

industries, within their jurisdiction. The empowerment of small farmers achieved

through land reforms in the Kalaikunda area was reversed owing to the acquisition of

huge chunks of fertile agricultural land for industries.

The macro implications of land acquisition

The case study of land acquisition for industrialisation described in the preceding

section is neither isolated nor unrepresentative in terms of the impoverishment of the

farmers’ family under the colonial land acquisition law, which the present Indian

government proposed to reform in its Land Acquisition and Resettlement and

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Rehabilitation Bill ( hereafter,LARR) 2011. The LARR, if passed in the Indian

Parliament would definitely be an improvement on the colonial law since it included

clauses for rehabilitation of the displaced apart from monetary compensation and

social impact assessment of development projects which would entail large-scale

displacement of farmers as described in our case study(Govt. of India 2011: 1-38 + i-

viii). The Schedule II of LARR was titled ‘List of Rehabilitation and Resettlement

Entitlements for all affected families….’ enumerated fourteen kinds of R&R benefits

for the project affected families, which included among others, replacement of house,

land(only in case of irrigation projects), annuity, and most importantly, mandatory

employment. But the proposed law has no provision for ‘financing for development’

and ‘benefit sharing’ which have been already come into existence as one of the best

practices in a number of developed and developing nations like Norway, Japan,

Brazil, and China (Cernea 2007: 1033-1046; 2008 : 15-98; 2009: 7-62). LARR did

not also contain any provision which could prevent the acquisition of land from

farmers who had been given land by the government under the land reforms

programme, although the bill recognised under section 2(c) (iv) in its expression

‘Affected family’ as individuals, ‘those who have been assigned land by the State or

Central Government under various schemes’ (GOI: 2011).The bill also did not have

any clause on corporate social responsibility nor any provision regarding the punitive

measures which could be taken against the profit making companies who would fail

to provide job or skill development to the displaced. In case of such failures, the new

law only said that a lump some monetary compensation would be given to the

displaced family (Ibid 2011: iii-iv).

Financing for development used the classical economic concept of rent which was

defined as the surplus return over and above the value of invested capital employed

to exploit natural resources, like land, water etc. (Trembath 2008; Nakayama and

Furuyashiki 2008). Michael Cernea, who is one of the most vigorous proponents of

the concept of ‘financing for development’ argued from the practices adopted in

various countries that a fraction of the rent earned could be shared by the dispossessed

for the long-term reconstruction of their livelihood damaged by development projects.

It is high time that in the proposed Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and

Resettlement Bill 2011 of India the twin concepts of financing for development and

benefit sharing should be included for the full reconstruction of the livelihood of the

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displaced as depicted in this article and also in hundreds of such cases in different

parts of the country.

Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to the anonymous reviewers of EJDR who successively read the first

and the revised drafts of the paper and provided useful suggestions towards its improvement.

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West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation. (2000). West Bengal: Industry

News

Update. Calcutta: WBIDC.

West Bengal Human Development Report. (2004). Development and Planning

Department, Govt. of West Bengal.

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Table 1A

Pre-acquisition Agricultural Landholding Pattern of Sample Households Affected by



acres)


size

Landless Nil -

≤ 0.5 19 (13.194) 4.73

0.5 – 1.5 58 (40.277) 6.43

1.5 – 2.5 32 (22.222) 8.84

2.5 – 3.5 13 (9.027) 8.60

3.5 – 4.5 8 (5.555) 8.86

4.5 – 5.5 6 (4.166) 12.6

5.5 – 6.5 Nil -

6.5 – 7.5 8 (5.555) 13.3

Total 144 (99.996) 5.76

Table 1B

Post-acquisition Agricultural Landholding Pattern of Sample Households Affected by



acres)


size

Landless 22 (15.277) 6.36

≤ 0.5 35 (24.305) 5.48

0.5 – 1.5 51 (35.416) 8.25

1.5 – 2.5 14 (9.722) 7.57

2.5 – 3.5 13 (9.027) 12.07

3.5 – 4.5 5 (3.472) 9.20

4.5 – 5.5 3 (2.083) 10.33

5.5 – 6.5 1 (0.694) 15.00

6.5 – 7.5 Nil -

Total 144 (99.996) 5.76 Figures in parentheses represent percentages

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Table 2

Profile of Utilisation of Compensation Money by the Land loser Households

Compensation

category in

rupees

Number of household under the various categories of utilisation

Purchase

of

agricultur-

al land

Purchase

of shallow

tubewell

House

building

and/or

repair

Domestic

consumption

Marriage

purpose

Repayment

of Loan

Bank

deposit

Business

investment

1,000 – 10,000 6 - 9 31 9 2 18 6

10,000 – 20,000 5 5 5 12 9 1 16 3

20,000 – 30,000 - 1 5 5 4 2 6 1

30,000 – 40,000 - 1 5 5 5 1 6 2

40,000 – 50,000 1 - 1 4 1 - 4 -

50,000 – 60,000 - - 1 1 1 - 2 -

60,000 – 70,000 0 0 0 2 1 0 1 -

70,000 – 80,000 - - - - - - - -

80,000 – 90,000 1 - - 1 1 - 1 -

90,000 – 1,00,000 - - 2 1 - - 4 1 Total 13 7 28 62 31 6 58 13

(9.027) (4.861) (19.444) (43.055) (21.527) (4.166) (40.277) (9.027)

Figures in parentheses represent percentages

Table 3 Changing Pattern of Dependence on Staple Food (paddy) in the Market

Among Land loser Families

Months

Number of the families

Pre acquisition period Post acquisition period

0 28 (56) 45 (45.45)

1-4 22 (44) 11 (11.11)

5-8 - 31 (31.31)

9-12 - 12 (12.12)

Total 50 (100) 99 (100)

Figures in parentheses represent percentage out of column total.

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For Peer Review O

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Name: Abhijit Guha

Institutional Affiliation: Associate Professor,

Full Address: Department of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University,

Midnapore-721102, West Bengal, India.

E-mail: [email protected]

Tel. No. 91-03222-263217

Keywords: Development caused displacement, Land acquisition, Resettlement and

rehabilitation, Financing for development, Benefit sharing.

Acknowledgements: I am greatly indebted to the anonymous reviewers of EJDR who

successively read the first and the revised drafts of the paper and provided useful suggestions

towards its improvement.

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