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Opposition to the Land Acquisition Bill is as hypocritical as the ordinance

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Kamlesh Singh
Kamlesh SinghFeb 26, 2015 | 10:54

Opposition to the Land Acquisition Bill is as hypocritical as the ordinance

A half-monkey, half-man with metal claws bruised Delhi’s soul way back in 2001. The "Monkey Man" or "Kaala Bandar" had terrorised India’s capital, as clueless cops searched for the elusive creature and residents launched night vigils. Victims kept surfacing at regular intervals with superfluous scratches, to deep gashes and bloody bruises. The Monkey Man also chose his targets well. He terrorised the poor, lower middle class mohallas with houses that opened into narrow alleys, where commotion is the way of life. He would not strike in leafy Lutyens localities or posh neighbourhoods to its south. He would choose people who were already dealing with myriad miseries. Fear finds a way into hearts already fraught with worries. It’s easy to scare the poor, the ones on the margins, clutching on to straws.

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It is easy to scare the masses on the margins and politicians have rallied them around imaginary bogeys for more than six decades. Tell the poor farmer that the greedy industrialists and crony capitalists in cahoots with the government are coming to snatch away your land, pushing you from occasional beggary to beggary. The farmer with the smallest holding, who’s better off without it, will be the first to be frightened. That fright is easy to convert into fury. People scared of the Monkey Man turned into vigilantes and battered innocents, fearing they were monkey men. A couple of accidental deaths in the process were blamed on the Monkey Man.

A posse of protesters have descended upon Delhi under the umbrella of a man, with little idea about how the economy of a country the size of India runs. He is a simple, good-hearted man dedicated to social service, who wouldn’t tire of making public his disdain for paksha-party. This time, he has got politicians on board, in a cause that is bogus and dangerous. Even if you do not question his intent, the content is alarmingly spurious.

The Land Acquisition Act of 2013 is a bad law. Period. It is designed to benefit politicians and the politics of rent-seeking, and stifle growth. The BJP was party to it, and Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Sumitra Mahajan and Vinay Katiyar were partners in that crime against common sense. That law needs to change, and whether it is done in this session or the next sessions, will be decided when India discovers what it has inflicted upon itself. The Opposition’s unity in favour of a bad law is as flawed, fraudulent and hypocritical as the hurried ordinance, now a bill, pushed by the government.

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A perception is being created that compensation for land is not the key, but the consent of 80 per cent of land owners is. The 80 per cent consent is just a twist to the age-old rent-seeking tactic of politicians and influential large land-holders. In fact, chief ministers, even those belonging to the Congress, wrote to the Centre, saying that this will make impossible all their infrastructure projects, forget about encouraging private industry. This consent clause creates a playing field for middlemen who can exploit the artificial scarcity of land and profit from it. The farmers will not get any richer. They have not in the last 60 years. Just look at India’s villages and its cities, and the uneven distribution of industry. It has come to this because industries need infrastructure and land. Land is cheaper in rural areas than it is in urban areas, but the rural areas have no infrastructure. The result is that all our major cities are encircled by industrial areas, choking their arteries in all senses of the term.

The parallel industry of fear continues to flourish and keep the rural population at bay in the name of protecting them. Samajwadi, Janata Parivar, Sangh Parivar, Lefties, metro liberals all unite to fight in the name of the marginal farmer, who is pushed further to the margins as the years go by. If they commit suicide, it’s all the better for the poverty porn-peddlers.

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This fakery of faux-farmers has kept the rural-urban gap as wide as ever. For the overall and sustainable growth of a country and its villages, the twain shall meet. Those who say the twain shall not, are lying for their vested interest. Where we are today, they meet at the outskirts of the city. This meeting point has to shift towards the rural from the urban.

The blocking of the bill or its summary rejection is no less abominable than the promulgation of the ordinance. Both the houses of parliament need to discuss it objectively and understand the purpose of this legislation. From just two points.

a. It is to facilitate clean, corruption-free acquisition of land for common good. It can be a new industrial corridor, a dam, roads or public buildings.

b. It is to compensate; in fact, overcompensate the farmer, based on a solid, universally agreed-upon social impact study.

The industry cannot wait for years for consent and pay the influence-peddlers to buy consent. The farmer cannot sell the land at market price only to realise that the simple land use change made the land worth ten times of what he got. It is as simple as that. Stop exploiting the poor farmer in the name of exploitation of the poor farmer. No monkeying around.

Last updated: February 26, 2015 | 10:54
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