It’s Not Only A Question of Land!

Newsclick interviewed Prof. Surajit Mazumdar, an Economist in the Jawaharlal Nehru University, on the controversial Land Acquisition Bill. Surajit strongly criticised the Bill, and said that it is against the rights of the farmers and meant only for the benefits of few corporates, with the likes of Gautam Adani benefitting the most.  Surajit talked about the structural issues related with the development model that successive governments have chosen. He said that the state, in the name of development, has ignored the agricultural sector. This has led to the large number of  farmer suicides that we see today. This so called development has not even resulted in industrial growth, which remains stagnant due to the low purchasing power of the people. Government needs to focus more on the issues of bringing parity between the two sectors rather than focusing on one, and ignoring the other

Pranjal: Hello and welcome to Newsclick. Today, we are going to discuss about land acquisition act which current NDA government is bringing in. It has been tabled in Loksabha while pending in Rajya Sabha. To discuss about the  issue we have with us Dr. Surajit Majumdar who is Professor in Jawaharlal Nehru University. Hello Surajit. There was a colonial land acquisition act in 1894. UPA government brought it in 2013. Now, the current NDA government is bringing it again with different changes in it. So what are these changes which this current government has brought in the land acquisition resettlement and rehabilitation act.

Surajit: Basically, the changes are in the nature of weakening of provisions, already limited provisions are existed protecting the inerest of those whose land was being acquired because they have increased the number of kind of projects in which land acquisition which will not be governed by social impact assessment, will not be required the consent of 80 percent of the people whose land is being taken. So basically there are set of measured that are being taken but the measures are weaken, the protection for those who are loosing land. Whereas the issue of the land acquisition is need to amend the act arose of a reality that the experience that people had with giving up land through the land acquisition process that experience was running into, led to a situation becoming increasingly politically charged. There were political constrains that were arising in the process of land acquisition and the original land acquisition bill was essentially designed to try and continue the land acquisition process while somehow trying to address some of the political constrains on that. In essence, it was remained limited because they were not addressing the fundamental sources of problem of land acquisition but even whatever limited protection that act offered, the current government is seeking to dilute this provisions.

Pranjal: It's also been there has been talk about the earlier bill which was there it talked about acquiring the barren land while the current bill which has been proposed it talks about acquiring even the agriculture land which is available.

Surajit: Yeah, the restrictions on the acquisition of the fertile land have been also been weakened in this process so basically, wherever the land is desired, you can acquire irrespective what is the nature of the land, what is the quality of that land which is not a very wise thing to do particularly  as far as agriculture is concerned, while it is true that employment-wise people have to move out of agriculture to non agricultural activities that is necessarily a requirement. Well that I true, it is not true that India does not need to produce more agricultural output and produce more food. So to convert fertile land into other uses, should be the last option normally and avoided as far as possible.

Pranjal: But also government is saying it is ready to pay four times the cost of the land which it is acquiring . So what do you have to say about it?

Surajit: You have to know what is the cost of the land and in any case, the issue is.. if one looks at the issue only in terms of what is to be paid as compensation, then that is not a complete picture of the real problems. The real problems arise from the fact that you have a growth and development process in which those who are engaged in agricultural activity are facing increasing difficulty in their livelihood difficulties because agriculture is becoming increasingly inviable for them. At the same time, non-agricultural activities which would offer them reasonable steady employment activities are not becoming available. In a sense, despite the fact that agricultural is not necessarily viable for them it remains their only security, an only source and therefore, there would be naturally reluctance on their part to give up their land for other activities. On the other side, those who are acquiring this land and that's the  experience of last twenty years it's not a problem which has arisen without a background. The people have seen that twenty years of this process land has been got cheap by large corporate houses and they made big killings on that, big profits on that but there has been no return to society in terms of providing employment opportunities to large number of people outside agriculture. So if people look at that experience, then what has happened to people who have lost their land. And what has happened to those people who have gained that land. Asymmetry in that situation is naturally going to lead to questioning of this whole process of acquisition of land. Pranjal: The way you are telling there is problem of unemployment, there is a problem like agriculture is not giving the output the way it should give. So the way this land acquisition is being brought, government is also saying that it will increase the investment in the market, it will install more industries  and it will result in more employment. So what do you have to say about it?

Surajit: That's what I said. There is a background of actual experience what it shoes in terms of what employment opportunities ever is. There is a relationship between that and problems in agriculture. You have to  ask this question industry in normal case for every rupee of output require less land than a rupee of agriculture output required. Urban living, normally per person would require less land than living in villages because much more concentrated living takes place in urban sectors. So in the normal course, if you ever shift taking place from agriculture to industry from the countryside to towns and cities if the work force of the population is moving in this direction, then there should not be such a population about land because the requirement of the land for production is much less. But here you have a situation where actually industrial production is not growing. Industrial output is stagnating. You are not having a situation where there is a great degree of urbanization taking place, we are still one of the most rural countries in the world. So what exactly is happening. What exactly is happening is this is that your development trajectory on the side creates this crisis in agriculture. Now, the crisis in agriculture is something that there is an impact of industrial development itself by virtue of the fact, number one large number of people their purchasing power in the market depends on what they earn in agriculturebecause it is the largest employer in the country. Secondly, when people move out from agricultural to non-agricultural activities what opportunities they have in agriculture determines their ways they can bargain for in  non-agricultural activity. So if agriculture incomes are generally depressed, then large majority of Indian population will suffer the problem of depressed incomes. If large majority of Indian population suffers from depressed incomes, then industry faces a problem of not finding a market. Because they are not able to find a market, investments are not profitable and that is the reason why investments tend to collapse and that's the kind of problem that we are facing at the moment. If you look at the investment projects that are actually stalled, very few are stalled on the problem on account of land. Instead, we have a situation when there is a land amount of land that has been acquired but not actually been used. So land is not the real constraint on Indian industrialization. What instead is happening is that you are getting a tendency where corporate interests are seeking to make a profit out of  simply been able to buy less basically making profit out of buying cheap selling expensive rather than producing. If you actually invest in an industry bring about technologically productivity increases and you make profit from that,  it is easier, if you let some land do real estate project or do something then tell people that these prices are going to appreciate you buy. We have a large of real estate projects like that across the country in which actually people are not having stake. They are just investments that people are making. If this is the process if one set of people are going to make huge killings on the basis of this acquisition of land. On the other side, people who are looser of that land were not going to find any opportunities outside of that, then naturally there will be resistance to that process of land acquisition. No matter the problems with the changes in the land acquisition act is that it is making it in a legal sense easier to acquire land but that does not mean that the political resistance to the land acquisition is going to disappear simply because you are going to make an act. So it is a misplaced emphasis that's not where the real problem is.

Pranjal: Keeping aside the problem of land acquisition in the current scenario if you look behind, if you look at our history you have seen cases of farmer suicide continuously emerging after the new economic reforms after new economic reforms come into place. Vidharbha has been one of the region which has seen tremendous rate of farmer suicide. What are the reasons behind it? Why is it happening India being an agricultural based economy and government trying to bring in various policies which promote agriculture. So why it is happening?

Surajit: Well, the real story of the last 20-25 years has been the massive neglect of the agricultural sector. The kind of investment that was required in the agriculture from the part of the state has fallen victim to keeping all taxes low and keeping expenditure low so that deficit can be low. So that's been the policy for last 20-25 years which has resulted in a serious agrarian crisis which has lead of course to a very high rate of inflation even in food prices. Even whatever little benefits of that inflation trickled down to the agricultural sector now, things are turning once again particularly with unseasonal rain the prospects of a bad monsoon the agrarian sector and agrarian incomes are already under great stress and farmer suicides have actually gone up quite significantly in the last year than in the first few months of this current year. So the crisis of agriculture is very deep and the crisis in agriculture has to be addressed not just because large number of people depend on agriculture but the whole process of development in industrialization which would offer to the majority of the Indian people are root out of low income work is contingent upon dealing with the agrarian crisis. If you are able to address the agrarian problem, then that effects on just agricultural incomes but wages outside agriculture will create the conditions where it is possible for a broad based industrialization process to take place which will offer opportunities of employment for people who move out of agriculture. What we have at the moment is we have a small section of India population which is rising incomes, which can buy all kinds of things what it tends to buy relatively luxury products whose production generates less employment and high amount of imports. So that demand is not adequate to generate the kind of industrialization process that this country actually needs and if that problem has to be addressed then agriculture, people sticking to agriculture, people wanting to retain agricultural land is not the problem.

Pranjal: Lastly, if you see at the current government and they have given 5 percent relaxation in corporate taxes and the way it is bringing various FDIs in privatization in different sectors, so what's the way ahead for the farmers for the movements which are there in the ground? How to resist this entire policy which the current government is bringing.

Surajit: The large segments of the population whether they are employed outside the corporate sector or within the corporate sector because even those who are employed within the corporate sector are not getting the benefits of rapid corporate... Most of the benefits are being cornered by profits. If you look at even wages in the corporate sector,  they have remained stagnant in twenty years. So most people in that sense are looser in this very process of all these processes and what's important then is for is different segments to come together to resist these kinds of changes that are taking place. So government's increasingly are operating when in government at the behest of the large corporate sector or foreign financial interests which is why you see that when you look at Indian parliament when any of these issues come for discussion you can see that. So FDI in insurance I have one position when I am in opposition and I think everything depends on that when I am in government. So that kind of thing reflects at what governments do is being controlled by a very narrow set of interests and that is the fundamental thing that has to change. But it then becomes basically the India people can not expect deliverance from such governments. The Indian people themselves have to take the business of making their life in their own hands.

Pranjal: That's the time that we have today. We will be coming back to you on such issues. Thank you. Thank you for watching Newsclick.