IN May 2004, there was a widespread sense of euphoria and victory as people across the country gave a stinging rebuff to the BJP-NDA’s arrogant ‘India Shining’ claims. It was clear that people were not prepared to pay the price of steeply rising prices, hunger and starvation, rampant unemployment and farmers’ suicides in order to keep corporate India ‘Shining’. Riding the wave of this popular resentment against neo-liberal economic policies and the communal fascist regime of the BJP-NDA was the Congress-led UPA and the official Left. The Left achieved their highest ever tally in Indian Parliament. The UPA scripted a ‘Human Face’ agenda – and the CPI-CPI(M) made many claims to be the watchdogs who would guarantee that this agenda was met. At the same time, the corporate media raised alarmist cries of ‘neo-liberal reforms in danger from the Left’.
In the three years since, the ‘Human Face’ mask that tried to pull wool over people’s eyes has unravelled fast. Batons and bullets rained on the Honda workers in Gurgaon, the people of Manipur, the tribals of Kalinganagar, the farmers of Dadri – and eventually on the peasants of Singur and Nandigram. The courts mocked at most of those who came in hope of some justice – be it the slum dwellers in virtually every metropolis or the people of the Narmada Valley. The chilling death toll of suicides in Vidarbha and the ever-expanding empire of hunger and starvation under-lined the bleak fact that no band-aid could help a nation haemorrhaging from the offensive of imperialist economic policies. Land grab (especially by corporates) has proved to be the issue that above all has galvanised people into sustained protest - and all over the country, massive protests by peasants facing displacement have made eviction from land the burning issue of our time.
Three years after May 2005, Assembly elections in state after state are showing a dramatic turning of the tables, with the BJP-NDA making a comeback in Uttarakhand and Punjab and seemingly set to make gains in UP as well, Shiv Sena sweeping BMC corporation polls in Mumbai and BJP, the MCD polls in Delhi. Further, back, the Congress and UPA had already lost Bihar and Karnataka to the BJP-NDA. On the one hand, we are seeing a fresh wave of very remarkable resistance struggles and people’s movements, and on the other, discredited right-wing forces are reaping the harvest of the widespread sense of betrayal. The Congress-UPA regimes have made a virtual gift of comeback issues to the highly discredited BJP-NDA. In West Bengal too the warning bells are ringing; the Industries Minister from the CPI(M) has had to admit that a weak and discredited rightwing Opposition has managed for once to lay hands on a genuine issue of loss of land and agrarian distress. For the progressive and democratic forces, it is a challenge to intensify the people's resistance and prevent a rightwing consolidation on these issues.
Through this booklet, we aim to facilitate the campaign against SEZs and corporate land grab. The spectrum of ruling parties and the mainstream media, for the most part, frames the debate on SEZs in terms of anachronistic anti-industry opponents of development vs Development, Progress, Modernity and so on. At best, there are occasional cautionary notes about the need for some safeguards and safety nets for the displaced, in the way of rehabilitation and compensation. The material in this booklet attempts to provide a handy profile to the concept of SEZs, and also to reframe the debate on ‘development’. It also attempts to challenge many of the prevalent myths that are propagated about SEZs.
This collection of articles devotes much attention to the question of the role of the Left vis a vis SEZs and corprate land grab. There are many reasons for this. Naturally, it was the Left which was expected to be at the forefront of the resistance to corporate land grab and SEZs. Unfortunately, the official Left led by the CPI(M) has instead emerged at the forefront of the repression. At the same time, the Left masses of poor peasantry at Nandigram have quite objectively blazed a trail in the resistance to corporate land grab and forced the ruling establishment to beat a partial retreat.
Against the growing clamour to scrap the SEZ Act, the CPI(M)-led official left camp has in fact taken on the mantle of defenders of SEZs, arguing for amendments to the SEZ Act that they claim will safeguard the rights of peasants and working class and prevent SEZs from being a mask for real estate speculation. At the same time, the very same arguments that the ruling class had launched – that the anti-SEZ movement was ‘antiindustry’, ‘anti-development’ etc...are being recycled and presented in a ‘Left’ garb. All those who decry corporate land grab at Singur and Nandigram are being branded as ‘Narodniks’ and Luddites, and a ‘TINA’ (There Is No Alternative) factor is being invoked vis a vis the SEZ policy itself and land acquisition of fertile land is being posed as a necessary evil.
The SEZs and corporate land grab itself is being projected as part of the inevitable and welcome transition in which peasants must turn into industrial proletariat. The mainstream media and the entire right-wing neo-liberal camp from Manmohan to Modi have gleefully welcomed this ‘Left’ legitimisation for their agenda, and the potential for a right-wing revival in West Bengal, capitalising on the erosion of CPI(M)’s credibility amongst the peasantry is a serious cause for concern. There is an urgent need for the Left forces to champion the movement against SEZs and corporate land grab, and to ensure that peasants rally behind the Left banner. Left ranks who are part of struggles against corporate land grab feel an urgent need for a theoretical and political engagement with the official Left’s devious distortion of Marxist theory in defence of corporate land grab. We hope this booklet can go towards fulfilling that need.
The booklet, for the most part, consists of a collection of articles and features that have appeared in Liberation, as well as some brief outlines of prominent struggles against corporate land grab.
IF 2006 had begun with the massacre at Kalinganagar, 2007 has dawned with the uprising at Nandigram. At Kalinganagar, land had been acquired more than a decade ago and all that the land-losing people had since been demanding was increased ‘compensation’ – a euphemism for the pittance they got in lieu of their land. Yet what they got were bullets and barbaric state repression that did not even spare the corpses of the victims. The people of Nandigram knew about Kalingnagar, they also knew about Singur where despite heroic local protests the state government forcibly acquired nearly 1,000 acres of fertile farmland. At Nandigram, the peasants therefore rose in revolt the moment they learned about the government’s sinister plans to acquire their land. The message from Nandigram has thus gone out loud and clear. The people would not give up their land without a war.
Did the CPI(M) smell another Naxalbari at Nandigram? While the police had to beat a retreat in the face of powerful mass resistance, the CPI(M), in the words of one of its Central Committee members, threatened to “make life hell” for the people of Nandigram. A threat that was widely televised and carried out to clinical precision even as the administration watched in dutiful silence – it had presided over a “peace meeting” a few hours back – and the Haldia Development Authority which had issued the land-grab fiat remained busy with its annual “Haldia Utsav” festivities. But the mayhem has only made the message ring louder across the country. Having failed in wishing away the whole issue of the land acquisition notice as a ‘conspiratorial rumour’, the Chief Minister has had to eat humble pie. He now calls the notice a blunder and wants it shredded into pieces. The Prime Minister who earlier asked everybody in Bengal to give a free hand to Buddhadeb in his campaign for development has now begun advocating a ‘humane approach’ to land acquisition. And his government has now announced a temporary halt to fresh approvals for SEZs. Evidently the Congress cannot afford another Nandigram before the impending Assembly elections.
The crisis over Nandigram may temporarily be ‘managed’ by withdrawing one controversial notice. But what Nandigram really demands is a complete end to the state-sponsored corporate land rush that is becoming increasingly irrational, desperate and brutal. The ‘pieces of paper’ that really need to be shredded are those ‘laws of the land’ that have emboldened governments to intensify the present corporate war on peasants and uproot them from their land and livelihood, even their hearth and home. Yes, the colonial Land Acquisition Act 1894 and its post-colonial inheritor, the SEZ Act 2005 will have to go.
The 1894 Act allows the state to acquire any land in the name of ‘public purpose’ without caring for the consent of the land-owner. The latter only has a limited right to file objections to the acquisition but the state has every authority under this law to overrule all such objections. If the 1894 Act has thus been used since the colonial period as the greatest weapon by the state to reduce people to ‘development refugees’, the SEZ Act 2005 – the draft bill was introduced by the NDA government – has been nothing short of declaration of a total war by the corporate state on the land, livelihood and liberty of ordinary Indians. The government that swears by the aam aadmi is busy grabbing land to build special enclaves for the preferred people.
Nandigram has forced the powers that be to beat the first partial retreat in this war. The corporate raj must now be pushed further back. Let the powers that be make no mistake – the people who have nurtured their land with generations of care and labour cannot be made to sacrifice their land and their say. Neither at gunpoint nor through smooth talk.
[Liberation editorial, January 2007]
ALREADY notorious as special eviction (for the “development refugees”), exemption (for the investors) and exploitation (for the workers) zones, SEZs call for a closer examination from the perspective of people’s resistance against this latest technique of rapacious capital accumulation.
An SEZ will be almost a foreign enclave in our homeland, the bigger ones like islands of prosperity in this sea of poverty. You’ll have to have a passport or special identity card to be there. Peasants who once tilled that very land will now have to show ID cards to stand on it. A good many laws of the land will be partly or wholly inapplicable in these zones. The Constitution of India gives us the Panchayati Raj and the right to self-governance, but here much of that power is delegated to the Development Commissioner, who is to be appointed directly by the Central Government. According to of the SEZ Act 2005, the development authority of an SEZ will mainly comprise “the Development Commissioner, three officers of the Central Government, not more than two nominees of entrepreneurs.” None of these persons are elected by the people, but they have the mandate to develop infrastructure within the zone, provide water and sanitation services, levy “user charges” and collect property “fees” (the word “tax” has been avoided!). This means, in place of a democratically elected body of local self-government we will have a professionally (read bureaucratically) administered and thoroughly depoliticised apparatus that will be answerable not to the local people but to the Central Government and the corporate bosses.
Those who develop these zones or set up shops there are exempted from a big bunch of economic and fiscal regulations. For instance, 100% FDI, including in units manufacturing SSI-reserved products is allowed, and so is free repatriation of profits. There will be full exemption from income tax for the first five years and for the next 10 years it will be charged at greatly reduced rates. (For details, see 'SEZs: the Paradise of Capitalism' by Sundaram, Liberation, August 2006). On the other hand, workers in SEZs are systematically deprived of many of their rights, including the right to strike (see ibid).
It is not the concessions alone, or the license to hire and fire labour at will, that attract capital to an SEZ. The latter also doubles up as a covert means to grab land. If speculation in stock and money markets is the most favoured destination of big finance today, probably the second place is occupied by real estate and infrastructure development: building apartments, shopping malls, hotels, electricity generation and so on. All this requires land — lots and lots of it. And that is a resource which is in absolutely limited supply and which one cannot manufacture or find an alternative to. So, go get it. Get as much as you can, and before others do, before prices shot up. This is the universal craze among lords of capital growing into a new breed of landlords or corporate landlords.
But there is a hitch. The owners of investable surplus know that people will raise an alarm if they say they are going to evict the peasants, adivasis and the urban poor for building things like entertainment parks. To grant this will be rather embarrassing for the government too. So the cunning of capital has combined with the shrewdness of our smart politicians to project a sure shortcut to development: the SEZs. The nation needs industries and infrastructures, IT units and hospitals with state-of-the-art technologies, we are told, but in this age of global competition we must offer the entrepreneurs very special incentives and lots of land at prime locations. And how do we provide all this if not in the shape of SEZs?
The SEZ road helps capital in numerous ways. For one, the state governments vie among themselves to rope in the Ambanis, Mittals and their ilk to develop SEZs and take upon themselves all the hassles of acquiring land. In some cases the former keep an amount as commission or cut money, paying the owners of land less than what they take from the developers, yet the latter always end up paying less than the market price. The government may even take less from the developer than what it pays those whose lands are acquired. In Singur for instance, the State government reportedly handed over the nearly 1000 acres of prime farmland to the Tatas at Rs. 20 crore, to be paid back over the next five years at an annual interest rate of 1%, effectively making the land price just about Rs. 12 crore, whereas the government will be paying around Rs 150 crore to those whose land is being acquired.
Secondly, in the case of single product zones, the developer (a private, state or joint entity) is required to earmark only 50% of the total land area for the “core process”, that is, the basic economic activity (not necessarily manufacture, any activity generating regular cash flow satisfies this condition). The rest of the acquired area the developer is free to use for construction of anything from apartments to swimming pools. If it is a multi-product zone, the SEZ Act 2005 (which came into force in February 2006) is even more liberal. Here as much as 75% of the acquired land can be used up for such non-core processes — for real estate business in plain language. Moreover, it is easy to start with a small single product zone and then expand into a multi-product one. This is what is actually happening.
For instance, Mahindra Gesco, which originally got the government’s formal approval for a 49-hectare IT/ITes (IT-enabled services) SEZ in Jaipur, has now received an in-principle approval to expand it into a 1,000-hectare multi-product SEZ. Even Reliance Industries Ltd has got a similar approval to expand its 440-hectare petroleum and petrochemicals SEZ in Jamnagar into an over 1,000 hectare multi-product SEZ. Obviously, much of the more than 750 hectare free land will be used for real estate development, maybe part by part.
Real estate business via the SEZ route is especially attractive because here you get duty-free raw materials while the state government arranges for guaranteed supply of water and electricity. Thanks to the transport and communication revolution, it is a smaller world now, and even the land market has become globalised. According to Merrill Lynch the Indian realty sector will grow from $12 billion in 2005 to $90 billion by 2015. Lots of foreign money is therefore flowing into the Indian realty sector. By mid-2006, Morgan Stanley invested $68 million in Mantri Developers, a midsized construction firm in Bangalore, and Merrill Lynch $50 million in Panchsheel Developers, a regional builder. Real estate funds set up to invest only in India have already raised more than $2.7 billion. And new funds worth as much as $4 billion are being planned by J.P. Morgan, Britain’s Knight Frank, and other foreign investors.
The SEZ bonanza is being eyed by the tourism industry too. Talks are on for building special tourism zones having the following special attractions:
China achieved spectacular success by following the SEZ route and so will India, it is often claimed. Without going into an assessment of the pros and cons of the Chinese policy, let us first see how far the Indian trajectory is at all comparable to the former.
China’s SEZ initiative is government driven and ownership of land remains with the state. In India the private sector will develop most of them and a limitless amount of land is being handed over to the corporate houses for this purpose.
Compared to only six SEZs in China, India is going to have some 300, according to an estimate of the commerce ministry. There the zones measure 40,000 hectares or more, while the average size of Indian zones approved so far is only 420 hectares. The annual exports from Shenzhen alone surpass India’s total (not only from the SEZs, but of the country as a whole).
China’s SEZs are strategically located in the southeast, three of them in Guandong province alone. These export-oriented industrial areas are close to ports and trade partners like Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. In India there is hardly any long-term perspective regarding location: capital- ists are free to set up zones wherever they like.
In China incentives differ from zone to zone and are based on the number of years of operation, use of advanced technologies, extent of exports and the type of activities. For example, companies involved in building infrastructure get special tax benefits. In other words, it is a give-and-take affair. What concessions an enterprise gets are closely linked to what it contributes to the national economy. India offers tax incentives across-theboard to all companies.
Two things are clear. One, what we are doing here is simply a caricature of the Chinese SEZ initiative. There it is the government which is in the driver’s seat; in India that seat is occupied by corporate houses while the government serves merely as the “helper”, so to say. This is but natural. China achieved independence two years later than we did, but it achieved swaraj with socialism, as Bhagat Singh had dreamt of in India. So it could take quicker strides forward and overtook us in building a self-reliant economy with a big home market and a strong industrial infrastructure before cautiously embarking on an open door policy in late 1980s. What such a nation can do with SEZs, an underdeveloped country like India — which remains very much dependent on imperialism — simply cannot expect to. All talk of India emulating the Chinese SEZ ‘model’ is, therefore, plain political chicanery indulged in, interestingly, even by people who claim to be Marxists.
While the entire spectrum of ruling class parties and politicians — the ruling Left not excluded — basically agree on the curb-labour-woo-capital principle of SEZs, on two points there is considerable opposition from within the ruling elite. One, excessive exemptions would cost the exchequer too much and make it difficult to balance budgets. This concern was forcefully expressed by the finance ministry in the late August 2006 meeting of the empowered group of ministers which decided to lift the cap on the permissible number of SEZs in our country (for details see Let the Working Class Rally Against the SEZ Subterfuge by Arindam Sen, Liberation, October 2005). The FM’s stand was supported by the RBI, which observed that big tax incentives were justified only if SEZ units established strong “backward and forward linkages with the domestic economy” — a very doubtful proposition. On September 14, the IMF research director Raghuram Rajan described India’s SEZ policy as a tax “give-away” that was likely to shift Indian production to SEZs rather than create new economic activity. He criticized it for offering “often misdirected subsidies, guarantees, and tax sops that a stretched budget can ill-afford”.
The other opposition is not on economic grounds; it stems from the survival instinct of politicians. Chief ministers and state party bosses, including those from the Congress and other UPA partners, are afraid of the probable electoral backlash from peasants and others being evicted in the name of development. Their concern was articulated by none less than the Congress president and UPA chairperson, following which the commerce ministry had to issue a notification to State governments containing a few restrictive guidelines. As far as possible, it was directed, agricultural land should not be touched, but if it has to be taken it should not exceed 10% of the total land acquired for an SEZ. Bourgeois ideologues like VP Singh also raised their voices, and by late 2006 large-scale eviction of peasants and related police highhandedness turned the whole issue of SEZ into a matter of national debate.
It was just at this juncture, when the demand for repeal of the SEZ Act 2005 was growing popular and powerful, that the junior partners of the ruling dispensation — who had offered crucial support to the passage of the said Act — came forward with suggested “corrective steps”. The more important among these are:
No transfer of land ownership to the private developers. The latter should only be allowed to take land on lease or build infrastructure on a BOT basis. A provision limiting the acquisition of agricultural land should be built into the SEZ Act itself.
Ensure the livelihood security of the displaced families in addition to providing adequate compensation. Frame a National Rehabilitation Policy. Suitable amendments to be made to the Land Acquisition Act.
Specify separate caps for the total number of multi-product and sector specific SEZs.
The Central Government should consider setting up of SEZs through public investment in those States where private investment is not forthcoming. This is important from the point of view of regional balance.
The processing area of SEZs should not be less than 50%. Further, 25% of the non-processing area should be dedicated for infrastructure development. Building of residential and commercial complexes should be permitted over 25% of the total land area. The SEZ Rules should be suitably amended in this regard.
The Government should revisit the tax concessions.
Protect Worker’s Rights (e.g., concretely address the issue of housing facilities for the workers in the giant SEZs).
Prevent Enclaves of Speculative Finance.
(From “Note on Special Economic Zones” issued from the CPI(M) headquarters on behalf of the Left Front on 19 October 2006)
Does not the whole set of proposals read like those offered by wellmeaning bourgeois economists and the RBI? They exude that spirit of ‘constructive criticism’ which has always marked the social democratic approach to bourgeois policy. It is not surprising that this ‘Left model’ of SEZ with a human face, which the CPI(M) leaders claim to be implementing in States under their rule, has earned kudos from many Congress and BJP leaders.
In addition to the proposals, at the meeting of the fourth consultative committee (attached to the finance ministry) meeting held last year, Left members of the panel asked the Finance Ministry to create a mechanism within the Board of Approval (BoP) to verify the State Governments’ claims, because the latter often allot fertile farmlands for SEZs but claim otherwise. (Needless to say, this did not apply to the Left-led governments, which are always truthful and correct, as in the case of Singur!)
The dualism does not end here. The CPI(M) has suggested amendments to the Land Acquisition Act 1894, but it had no qualms in applying the same in a most barbaric manner in Singur. Meanwhile, the West Bengal government is running full steam ahead down the SEZ Road, or rather, it was, until Nandigram happened (see below) and forced Buddhadev Bhattacharya to change gear and slow down. In addition to the three SEZs — Falta, Manikanchan or Gems and Jewellery and Wipro — which have been operational for some time now, seven more have received final approval and another sixteen have got “on principle” approval; nine more are in the queue seeking approval.
As against this ambivalence and opportunism, our position is straightforward: we don’t want SEZs in our country, repeal the anti-people SEZ Act and the colonial Land Acquisition Act. This is also the slogan of the lakhs of people whose land and life are threatened by this organised onslaught of the obnoxious nexus of corporate power and state power. The principal points of our objection are:
Large-scale eviction resulting from what historian Sumit Sarkar has called the “biggest land grab movement in the history of modern India”.
Moreover, we cannot but reckon with comparable international experience, such as in Malaysia, the Philippines etc, which is far from encouraging. The social cost of the Chinese success is also considerable, as the Chinese Communist Party itself has recognised. In India too, the record of EPZs, the forerunners of SEZs, is dismal, as reported in the 1998 CAG report (see Sundaram’s article in Liberation, August 2006).
This principled opposition of ours many people try to misrepresent and obfuscate in terms of a spurious “agriculture versus industry” controversy. We are Marxists, we are a party of the working class. We cannot be against industrialisation. What we strongly oppose is the big lie that SEZs are the only available or desirable path of industrialisation, against the fraud that evicted peasants will find jobs in the high-tech industries/IT centres/entertainment complexes etc. to be built up in the zones. As many economists have pointed out, if in the overall interest of development it became necessary to encourage particular branches of industry or sectors of the economy, or if it is believed that all new entrepreneurship should be encouraged and so on, all this could well be done in the country as a whole. Why should, some particular entrepreneurs be awarded special privileges in the name of special economic zones? Does this not amount to a sort of indirect protection proposed by theorists of free trade and level playing field?
Moreover, the SEZ path would perforce accelerate the process of concentration and centralisation of capital. It would thus strengthen the grip ofmonopolies on our lives and enhance regional disparities. It is also feared that new ways of corporate corruption will open up. For example, it would not be difficult for companies having units both within and without SEZs to manipulate accounts and show much of the profits earned elsewhere as accrued in an SEZ and thus reduce or eliminate the income-tax burden. As mentioned earlier, bourgeois economists have pointed out many other ills of this strategy.
So if the government of India — or a State government for that matter — is really serious about industrialisation, it should first try and fulfil the primary conditions: radical land reform followed by extensive agrarian and rural development measures and creation of a robust home market. If this is avoided and the SEZ shortcut pursued, the masses will suffer even as the privileged few prospers. This is why we are agitating for total rejection of the very concept of SEZ.
This position of ours perfectly represents the popular spirit in the country. Peasants everywhere are up in arms against schemes of pseudo-development. Their fight is against the Tatas, Reliances, Salems and even more against the State governments which, as capitalists’ henchmen, send the police to rob them of their dear land at gunpoint. But for the State governments, this would have been at least legally impossible. The involvement of governments makes even the most inhuman and unjust eviction just and legal because our courts of law then treat the whole thing as an exercise in ‘people’s interest’ or ‘national interest’. Thus peasants in Jamnagar, Gujarat, challenged the acquisition of their farmland for building an SEZ. Defeated in the High Court, that appealed to the Supreme Court, but again in vain.
With all components of the state machine united against them, the masses facing eviction are building various forms of resistance throughout the country. Kalinganagar and Jagatsinghpur (Orissa), Dadri (UP), Barnala (Punjab), Raigad ( Maharashtra), Singur and Nandigram (WB) have emerged as new hot spots, to name a few. Myriad organisations and coordinating bodies are coming up at local, State and national levels to unite the broad masses in these agitations cutting across party lines. A number of people’s movements against eviction met in a convention late last year at Bangalore under the NAPM banner to coordinate the struggles at the national level. In Haripur (WB) a broad platform has been formed to roll back the nuclear power plant project. Expert teams sent by the central government failed to visit the area and had to go back several times in the face of massive agitation. In many places, for instance at Poonamallee (30 kilometres from Chennai) people are fighting to roll back a scheme of building housing complexes on farmlands.
The power of people’s movements is also making itself felt in intensified contradictions within the ruling cliques. Recently agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh sent letters to the commerce minister Kamal Nath urging restrain in the matter of SEZ approvals. In West Bengal, growing dissension of junior partners of the Left Front, intense pressure from the CPI(M)’s rural base and most importantly the revolt at Nandigram (see details elsewhere in this issue) have combined to force the State government beat a temporary retreat from its eviction-for-industrialisation drive.
Thus it is that the land question has once again come up as the central issue of class struggle both at the grassroots and in national politics. If 2006 began with Kalinganagar (January 2) and ended with the horrifying state repression at Singur (December 2), 2007 begins with the upsurge at Nandigram and it is very significant that the Bengal bastion of social democrats has emerged as a forward post in this all India movement. Evidently, peasants of India and other sections of the working people are in no mood to let the SEZ challenge go unanswered.
[Liberation February 2007]
-- Kavita Krishnan
DEFENDERS of the SEZ policy propagate many myths about SEZs. Let us examine some of them.
The most favourite argument offered by SEZ fanatics is that these are inevitable and necessary for industrialisation – this is the only path to development and growth. Is this true?
The fact is that Western European countries, USA, Japan and many other developing countries achieved growth without any ‘special’ pro-corporate legislation. Even in countries like China which have gone for SEZs, there are only 6 SEZs – all state-owned and Government-driven. Industrialisation in most countries has taken place without the kind of incentives and huge concessions being given to corporates in SEZs.
After all, why should industry need such huge hidden subsidies, so many ‘special’ rights? Even the Finance Minister of India has estimated that the exchequer will lose Rs.100,000 crore in the next four years as a result of the tax and duty exemptions given to the SEZs – and that is not counting other massive sops like cheap land. If such huge amounts were directly invested by the Government in industrialisation rather than in pampering corporates in SEZs, would it not be a less painful and surer way of achieving industrialisation?
Obviously, the primary purpose of SEZs is not industrialisation at all. What, then, is the real agenda?
Corporates are greedy for land for real estate purposes. To grab land and other resources for the sake of amusement parks or golf courses and so on would invite a public outcry and would be difficult for Governments to justify. SEZs are the mask for such activity. We need industry, infrastructure, IT sector, we are told – and if we don’t give the investors special incentives and prime land, we will lose out on such investment.
In the bargain, what the corporate investors get is what they wanted in the first place – virtually permanent ‘colonial-style’ control over exhaustible natural resources (far more dangerous than just a one-time cash transfer) and the freedom to do what they like with such invaluable resources.
According to the SEZ Act 2005, only 35% of the land need be for manufacturing, while the remaining 65% can be used for recreation centres, housing, swimming pools, etc. In the case of multi-product zones, as much as 75% of the acquired land can be used up for such non-core processes.
Moreover, even this minimum of ‘manufacturing’ activity in SEZs need not necessarily mean productive industry. As per the Act, the definition of “manufacture” is extremely catch-all – capable of denoting activities such as aquaculture, animal husbandry, floriculture, horticulture, poultry, mining etc...Thus, even a township with 35% of the land covered with flower gardens or parks can qualify for an ‘SEZ’.
Agriculture is indeed in severe crisis in India, and farmers are committing suicide. Does this mean it’s time for peasants to give up their land for SEZs and corporate houses?
The basic crisis in agriculture emanates from the senseless endeavour to promote capitalist farming without first clearing the soil of the deeply entrenched survivals of feudalism. Today some 60 per cent rural house-holds still have access to only 15 per cent land, while the top 20 per cent layer of the of the rural society continue to control more than two-thirds of the total land under cultivation. Rather than providing land to the tiller, which proved to be the key to democracy and development in socialist as well as developed capitalist countries, successive governments at the centre and the states depended on a narrow base of kulaks and landlords for rural development. The “green revolution” was precisely such a strategy of “betting on the strong” and it was bound to fail.
And then the WTO-inspired remedy of liberalisation-commercialisation- corporatisation further exacerbated the basic crisis. So much so, that now even sections of erstwhile well-to-do farmers are caught in the net of insecurity and vulnerability. To make matters worse, the central and state governments are cutting agricultural subsidies as well as investments on agrarian infrastructure; withdrawing the minimum support price (MSP); refusing to waive debts and ensure relief for debt-ridden farmers; and shackling our farmers to MNCs and huge companies for seeds, pesticides, etc. The question is: why does the Government deem it necessary to dole out massive concessions and waive taxes for big corporate houses, while refusing to guarantee MSP and waive debts for peasants?
Isn’t agriculture crucial for ensuring India’s self-reliance in food grains productivity? Won’t jeopardising agriculture render us prone to colonialera famines? Why can’t the Government promote agricultural productivity and labour-intensive agro-based industry, which could be an asset for our economy?
By all accounts, employment in agriculture is declining. This phenomenon is often cited as a rationale for SEZs and corporate takeover of land.
The question is: can those who are losing their livelihood in agriculture, expect to find jobs in industry? Take a look at the state of employment in Indian industry:
“At various times in the past, all the countries in the developed world passed from being predominantly agricultural economies (in terms of the share of agriculture in national income and in employment) to being pre-dominantly industrial economies. It was only after industry had brought these entire economies (including their agriculture) under its sway, commodities became vastly more plentiful than in the past, and the economic surplus grew massively, that these economies could sustain growth in the share of services. Today, industry accounts for the largest share of GDP in the economies of China, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, as much as 51 per cent in the case of China. In India’s case, however, the share of industry is low — just 26.4 per cent in 2001. Industry has never been the dominant sector of the Indian economy. Moreover, its share of GDP has not been increasing, but is stagnant or shrinking. And Indian industry’s share of employment is just 17.6 per cent... And while the services sector has led growth over the past two decades, so that it now accounts for 57 per cent of GDP, much of the services sector (e.g. Growth of police and armed forces, the explosion of financial sector and real estate activity) has no tangible benefit for the people at large.” (From Aspects of the Indian Economy, Vol. 41, December 2005)
So, jobs in industry for those displaced in agriculture is a mirage. Land continues to support, albeit at a subsistence level, a range of livelihoods (not just those of landowners, small and marginal farmers but also those of agricultural labourers and artisans and non-farm rural workers). There has never been any systematic calculation of the livelihoods lost in agriculture through land grab, as compared to the jobs generated on the same area of land by corporate houses.
There are several claims about SEZs’ capacity to generate jobs. The Haryana CM himself has promised that the Reliance SEZ in Jhajjar-Gurgaon will generate 5 lakh jobs.
But consider this fact: according to the Government website on SEZs, till March 31, 2005, the 11 SEZs in the country had managed to employ only 100,650 people, including 32, 185 women – and this includes what were formerly called EPZs.
As for the much-touted IT sector – it has generated only 5-6 lakh jobs, while the BPO service industry employs just 2 lakh people. The IT sector is applying in a big way for SEZs – this will not mean any fresh generation of jobs, just that existing IT units will shift their operations to an SEZ. Further, corporates are notorious for belying the promise of employment generation. Take the case of Pepsico’s entry into Punjab in the 1980s. The MNC promised to create 50,000 jobs. In reply to a 1991 Parliamentary question, the Ministry of Food Processing acknowledged that the company had created only 482 jobs, of which 210 were unskilled workers.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has promised that some hundreds of Singur residents will receive training so that they can sew uniforms, run canteens, or be absorbed in the Tata car plant - “It is not easy to become a worker from having been a peasant – but that is how progress takes place.” The fact is that this transition from peasant to worker cannot be ‘fast-track’, short-circuited by some ad hoc “training” for a handful. It is obvious that displaced agrarian labour/small farmers will not be absorbed as workers in factories – at best they can become domestic labour, chaiwala, chowkidar etc., finding a place in low paid, low-end insecure jobs in the services sector. Without developing social development indices like education in rural areas, the agrarian poor are bound to remain misfits in industry.
Further, Singur is the best illustration of the fact that corporate land grabs are not confined to regions where agriculture is unproductive. Contrary to all claims, observers have seen that Singur has among the most productive, fertile, multi-crop land in West Bengal – supporting thousands of people quite comfortably. Singur is not a zone of agrarian crisis. No wonder the poor of Singur are totally unwilling to buy into the promise of trading their present security in land for the mirage of future employment in Tata’s factory!
As can be seen in the SEZ Map of India, SEZs are all located around metropolises and areas that are already highly developed. There have not been any applications for SEZs in backward states like Bihar, nor in the backward areas of other states. Clearly, the claim that SEZs will promote ‘development’ is a lie. Rather, the purpose of SEZs is to ‘cash in’ on development – by setting up zones of affluence around cities, where even civic amenities like water, power, roads etc. can be profitably privatised.
It is claimed that eviction from land is a necessary evil but SEZs can be humanised as long as adequate compensation is given. However, experience shows that cash – even at market rates – can never be adequate or fair compensation for those whose livelihood depended on land. One-time cash compensation cannot sustain an individual, never mind a family, for a life- time. Prior rehabilitation on suitably located fertile land can be the only real compensation. And what about all those who have not owned land but laboured on it and depended on it for survival? These are never factored into ‘compensation’ or ‘rehabilitation’ packages.
Faced with peasant protests all over the country, the UPA Government has announced that approvals to SEZs will be on hold until a National Rehabilitation Policy is in place – it has also been indicated that this policy will be based on the principle of ‘rehabilitation and resettlement’ prior to land acquisition displacement.
But past experience flies in the face of such declarations. The rehabilitation package in the Sardar Sarovar project, guaranteed by the Supreme Court, had spelt out that complete resettlement on alternative fertile land must be complete a year before any raising of the height of the Dam. But in practice, the height of the dam was raised after mere cash compensation was forced onto the project-affected people – and the plea of the MP Government was that fertile land was simply unavailable. Despite this naked subversion of its own word, the Apex Court upheld the decision to raise the dam height.
In all cases of corporate land grab, we are told that farmers have ‘consented’ to giving up their land. Now what is ‘consent’? Consent can have meaning only if the affected people are taken fully into confidence at every stage of decision-making; if every possible alternative to minimise displacement were fully explored; and if no land were ever acquired without the informed consent of the entire Gram Sabha. What happens in real life is the exact opposite. The colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894 allows Governments to acquire land in the name of ‘public purpose’ and hand over that land to lords of capital. Even formal consent is not mandatory in the case of this Act.
And where letters of ‘consent’ are acquired, how much meaning do they have? It is as though someone were to muscle their way into one’s home, hand over some cash, and force one to leave the house at gunpoint and give up all legal claims to it in future. When peasants are in a helpless and vulnerable situation, they very often see no option but to “consent”.
Peasants in this set up have about as much democratic right to ‘consent’ as a daughter of a feudal father. The corporate company comes to choose one plot of land from amongst others; just as a groom comes to ‘see’ several women and pick out one. The woman has little choice but to ‘consent’ to the marriage, though she has had no say in whether she wants to get married at all!
AS regards economic essence, the eviction of peasants and other toilers from their natural socio-economic habitat is best understood in the Marxian framework of “primitive accumulation of capital”: "The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they can realise their labour.” Involved here is “a process that transforms, on the one hand, the social means of subsistence and of production into capital, on the other, the immediate producers into wage labourers.” This “historical process... appears as primitive, because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital...” (Capital, volume one, Part VIII, Progress Publishers, p 668). The separation, however, is not completely achieved in one stroke. Petty production lingers on even under capitalism and the process of separating the labouring people from the means of production has to be continued or "reproduced” again and again: "As soon as capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains the separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scale.” (Ibid, p 668) In a mature capitalist economy this is achieved mainly through the market mechanism but occasionally, barbaric extra-economic coercion is also utilised. In semi-feudal/backward capitalist countries, where market forces by themselves are not powerful enough to effect the complete separation by overcoming the primary producers’ economic and cultural attachment to their means of production and subsistence (e.g., forest dwellers’ dependence on forests, landless villagers’ dependence not only on common pastures, but on various indigenous or alternative occupations related to agriculture), capital aided by the state has to take recourse to the cruder methods of primitive accumulation much more decisively and regularly.
It should be noted here that whereas capital accumulation in general involves creation of new wealth, primitive accumulation does not; the latter only means transfer of titles from direct producers to usurpers. Hence this has been called “accumulation by dispossession”, “accumulation through encroachment” and so on.
And this is what we see today. Fresh reinforcements of predatory big capital arrive on the horizons of India “dripping from head to foot” — as Marx observed — “from every pore, with blood and dart.” It is an aggressive campaign jointly carried out by Indian monopoly capital and international finance capital, spearheaded and administered by the Indian state (the legislature, administration and judiciary working in perfect synchronisation in this regard) and all the ruling parties from the Congress and BJP to the SP and CPI(M). At the receiving end stand the true sons and daughters of the soil, whose traditional access to and rights over rivers, forests, grazing grounds are arbitrarily taken off; who are suddenly dispossessed of the lands they have been cultivating over generations. In the whole course of primitive accumulation, Marx regards as most basic "those moments when great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled as free and “unattached” proletarians on the labour market....” (ibid, p 669). He describes how at a certain point “law itself becomes... the instrument of the theft of the people’s land.” (ibid, p 678) and adds, “The history of this expropriation, in different countries, assumes different aspects, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession, and at different periods.” (ibid, p 669 - 670; emphasis added). As noted here, such expropriation assumes different forms, features and orders of succession depending on peculiar socio-historical conditions in different countries. Thus in post-independence India we saw the first wave of this in the shape of Jawaharlal Nehru building the “temples of modern India” and things like the river dams; we witness another wave today in Raigad and Jamnagar, Barnala and Singur, with the archaic Land Acquisition Act 1894 being freely used for the theft of people’s land. The contexts and features vary, but the essential economic implications remain largely the same; and so do the conditions of the different generations of development refugees.
While describing the “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist”, Marx also takes note of various other forms/levers of primitive accumulation such as “the discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in the mines of the aboriginal population”, slave trade, piracy, pillage of colonies by European powers, “the system of public credit, i.e., of national debts” (governments taking loans from members of the public as treasury bonds), the “international credit system ...”, the modern system of (over-) taxation and so on and points out the basic commonality: “... they all employ the power of the state....” (Ibid, p 703)
As the Indian experience shows, when primitive accumulation returns in the era of, and as an instrument of, neo-liberal globalisation (such instances of the most modern utilising the services of the pre-modern should surprise only those who are blind towards comparable developments like “green revolution” in Punjab, Haryana and Western UP reinforcing and thriving on extra-economic (caste, gender) coercion and semi-feudal bondage.), it does so with a vengeance. And to be sure, expropriation of the agricultural population is accompanied by a whole range of other modern levers such as the debt trap and the WTO regime.
As far back as in the middle of the 19th century, Marx took note of “the identity between national wealth and the poverty of the people” (Ibid, p 678). In our time, the role of parasitic, decaying finance capital has made
the contrast between the shining top and the darkening base of the social pyramid even more manifest. Whatever progressive role capitalism played in its initial period cannot be expected to repeat itself in the era of imperialism/neoliberal globalisation, when ‘development’ for the few has become coterminous with ruin or destitution of the broad masses.
But in any case, should not Marxists support/promote any measure — such as the proletarianisation of the peasantry — that speeds up the transition from feudalism to capitalism?
To say this would be an outrageous vulgarisation of Marxism. As one makes one's way through Part VIII of Capital (volume one) devoted to primitive accumulation and related issues, one cannot but feel the heat of a noble rage against the original sin of capital. Karl Marx never taught the working class to support the eviction and lumpenisation of its most dependable ally, the toiling peasants, any more than he supported British colonial rule in India simply because in certain respects it helped remove the Asiatic obstacles to the development of capitalism. His closest associate Friedrich Engels discussed the question in greater detail:“What, then, is our attitude towards the small peasantry? How shall we have to deal with it the day of our accession to power? ...we foresee the inevitable doom of the small peasant, but ... it is not our mission to hasten it by any interference on our part. Secondly, it is just as evident that when we are in possession of state power, we shall not even think of forcibly expropriating the small peasants (regardless of whether with or without compensation), as we shall have to do in the case of the big landowners. Our task relative to the small peasant consists, in the first place, in effecting a transition of his private enterprise and private possession to cooperative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example and the proffer of social assistance for this purpose. ...We, of course, are decidedly on the side of the small peasant; we shall do everything at all permissible to make his lot more bearable, to facilitate his transition to the co-operative should he decide to do so, and even to make it possible for him to remain on his small holding for a protracted length of time to think the matter over, should he still be unable to bring himself to this decision. We do this not only because we consider the small peasant living by his own labor as virtually belonging to us, but also in the direct interest of the Party. The greater the number of peasants whom we can save from being actually hurled down into the proletariat, whom we can win to our side while they are still peasants, the more quickly and easily the social transformation will be accomplished.” (From The Peasant Question in France and Germany, our emphases to mark out positions the CPI(M) deviates from).
Clearly, Engels’ basic concern here is to strengthen the revolutionary unity of workers and peasants even after the proletariat seizes power; in a similar vein Lenin stressed the decisive importance of strengthening worker-peasant alliance against landlords and capitalists even during the NEP period. Before seizure of power, and the more so in a peasant country like ours, the very core of proletarian class line must be to actively promote the militant alliance with the toiling peasantry. This is what the CPI (ML) is consistently doing all over India even as the official 'Marxists’ join the Tata-Salem bandwagon in the basic form of primitive accumulation of capital – the forcible separation of the rural poor from their means of production and subsistence — and that before the seizure of state power!
[Liberation April 2007]
-- Tapas Ranjan Saha
THE CPI(M) MPs in Parliament quietly voted for the shameful SEZ Act. But when farmers’ protests at Kakinada, Dadri, Navi Mumbai, Singur and Nandigram exposed SEZs as a national shame, CPI(M) started demanding “amendments” to “improve” SEZs on the lines of the “Bengal model”. Well, let us take a look at their proposed ‘amendments’, and compare them – both with the Central SEZ Act 2005, and with the West Bengal SEZ Act 2003 and the WB Government’s )brochure“Doing Business In West Bengal:Policies, incentives, Facilities” published by WestBengalIndustrial Development Corporation(WBIDC).
WHY did its MPs vote to pass the SEZ Act 2005 in Parliament in the first place?
Does CPI(M) believe that it is necessary to create ‘special’ zones of ‘FOREIGN TERRITORY’ on Indian soil in order to promote ‘industrialisation’?
Does CPI(M) believe that industrialisation is NOT possible without giving corporates a ‘special’ license to evade taxes and laws, evict peasants and grab land, and super-exploit labour without allowing it the minimum protection available under trade union rights and collective bargaining?
CPI(M) claims SEZs are a necessary evil forced upon us by the Congress-BJP etc, and all we can do is to ‘amend’ them slightly. But if this is the case, how does CPI(M) explain the fact that its West Bengal Government’s ‘Doing Business in Bengal’ brochure distributed amongst industrialists proudly advertises that “West Bengal is one of the early States to implement the SEZ concept...” and that West Bengal has passed its own SEZ Act in 2003 itself?
Central SEZ Act 2005: “the promotion of exports”
CPI(M)’s Proposed “Amendments” : Nil
West Bengal SEZ Act2003: “to accelerate economic reforms”
Comment: CPI(M) claims its amendments will put the brakes on neo-liberal economic reforms, but two years before the Central Act, they passed their own SEZ Act in Bengal with the self-proclaimed purpose to “accelerate reforms”!
Central SEZ Act 2005: SEZs declared ‘Foreign Territory’ for customs purposes
CPI(M)’s Proposed “Amendments” : Nil
West Bengal SEZ Act: Same as above
Comment: An assault on India’s sovereignty and people’s inalienable rights. This (and the following two related points) is the most dangerous aspect of the SEZ Act, which the CPI(M) does not even try to ‘amend’.
Central SEZ Act 2005 : Section 49 empowers the Government to exempt any or all SEZs from the operation of any central law through a notification. Further, Section 48 protects any SEZ official from any “suit, prosecution or legal proceeding” for “anything done or intended to be done in good faith” under the SEZ Act.
In addition, SEZs are judiciaries unto themselves: Section 23 provides for ‘Special Designated courts’ to try civil and other offences within SEZs.
CPI(M)’s Proposed “Amendments” : Nil
West Bengal SEZ Act 2003: Sections 30-31 identical to Sections 48-49 of the Central Act.
Comment : Corporates freed from the Constitution and laws of free India – nothing short of corporate colonialism.
Central SEZ Act 2005 : Local elected governance (in the form of municipality) replaced by privatised parallel governance, by a Corporate ‘Developer’ and ‘SEZ Development Authority’ (SDA) consisting of representatives of the corporate ‘developer’ as well as bureaucrats nominated by State Government (including Development Commissioner) (see Chapter VII of the Act). The ‘Developer’ and the SDA are supposed to “develop infrastructure” (i.e, provide civic amenities like water supply, electricity, roads, education, sewage, etc...) and have the right to “levy user charges” for the same. This clause is a violation of the 75th Amendment which ensures people’s participation in local governance. Amazingly, the Developer is even entitled to collect taxes! This means that the right to water, power, roads, schools etc. have been turned into saleable services inside SEZs, which the corporate ‘Developer’ can sell for profit. And there is no accountability since the SDA is not an elected body; there is no provision of any penalty in case the Developer fails to provide these services.
CPI(M)’s Proposed “Amendments” : Nil
WB SEZ Act 2003: Chapters IV and V vest the corporate “Developer” and the SDA with similar powers.
Comment: These clauses completely violate people’s democratic right to accountable, elected governance, making SEZs the ‘paradise of neo-liberalism’, where all basic civic amenities will be privatised commodities.
Central SEZ Act 2005: The writ of the State Labour Commissioner to hear labour disputes will not run within SEZs; instead the ‘super bureaucrat’ Development Commissioner will perform this function. State Governments can declare SEZs ‘Public Utility Services’, where workers will be denied the right to strike.
CPI(M)’s Proposed “Amendments”: These rules be amended but, as the UPA government points out, labour is a state subject.
West Bengal SEZ Act 2003: SEZs to be Public Utility under the Industrial Disputes Act (Section 29); powers to administer labour laws conferred on the Development Commissioner [Chapter III, Section 4, (2) (c)]. Further, the “Doing Business in West Bengal” Brochure (Section 6.2.2, page 98) proudly declares that “Certain Key Benefits In West Bengal For SEZ Units” include that “All units in SEZ declared as public utility services”, and “Development Commissioner to be the Reconciliation Officer for all Labour Disputes in SEZ...”.
Comment: Why did the West Bengal SEZ Act 2003 (without any compulsion from any Central SEZ Act) include the same anti-worker pro- visions that the CPI(M) claims to oppose in its proposed amendments? Since labour is a State subject, surely the CPI(M)-led government could and should have refrained from availing of these anti-worker provisions?
Central SEZ Act 2005: State Governments are empowered to allow Development Commissioners to grant environment clearance, bypassing the lengthy process of ‘Environment Impact Assessment’ which also involves a mandatory public hearing among the local population.
CPI(M)’s Proposed “Amendments”: Nil
WB SEZ Act 2003: Chapter VII gives the Development Commissioner the power to grant environmental clearance.
Comment: The last vestige of “people’s voice” in protecting their environment falls prey to corporate devastation. Monopolization of clearance authority by one individual to lead to massive corruption.
Central SEZ Act 2005: Thousands of hectares of land grabbed from peasants in the name SEZs, mostly used as a mask for real estate business rather than productive industry. Use of the colonial Land Acquisition Act 1894 by Governments to forcibly acquire land in the name of ‘public purpose’ to hand over to corporates for private profit. No reha-bilitation, no alternate fertile land or livelihood, only one-time cash compensation, that too usually far below the market price.
CPI(M)’s Proposed “Amendments”: Ceiling on land area, limited acquisition of agricultural land, include model compensation and rehabilitation criteria on Singur-model in SEZ rules, recycle land blocked in closed units, frame National Rehabilitation Policy, amend Land Acquisition Act, limit infrastructure activities to 25% of SEZ area.
Land Area: For the SEZ at Nandigram, the proposed area is close to 12, 000 acres. Similarly, other proposed SEZs in the State are equally massive or even larger.
Agricultural land: Even at Singur (not an SEZ), the Government claims land acquired was single-crop, but fact-finding teams led by lifelong Leftists like Prof. Sumit Sarkar have vouched for the fact that most of the land was highly fertile multi-crop land. In five districts around Kolkata, there are 41,000 acres of land lying locked in closed mills, factories and sick units – but rather than put these to industrial use, the LF Government is preferring fertile land.
Compensation and Rehabilitation: The ‘model’ compensation package at Singur has, according to the State Government’s own status report, provided an average of Rs. 83, 000 per farmer. Sharecroppers dependent on the land have been promised a mere 25% of the compensation while the absentee landlord gets the lion’s share. (Under the LF Government’s own land reforms, the principle was that the sharecropper was entitled to 75% of the produce, giving only 25% as rent to the landlord. The compensation package turns that principle on its head.) At Singur, there is NO compensation for the landless labourer.
Jobs, Productive Industry: As for jobs, some ‘training’ is promised in the package, but Sumit Chakravarty, editor Mainstream and a member of the above-mentioned fact-finding team, said that in response to repeated queries about jobs created in the Tata car plant, the State Government’s response was “We don’t know.” (Times News Network, 3 February, 2007). Another member of the same team, Prof. Tanika Sarkar, pointed out that “several other projects at Haldia and Jellingham have failed to do anything for the displaced people”. She cited the way the earlier Jyoti Basu government acquired 32 villages at Rajarhat and ousted all dwellers for commercial projects, asking “Why didn’t the government put the Rajarhat land to productive use (industry) instead of allowing unproductive uses like five-star hotels?” (Indian Express, January 31). So even without the SEZ Act, the WB Government has chosen to use agricultural land for real estate business like 5-star hotels, rather than for job-generating industry.
Consent and Force: At Singur and Nandigram, the overwhelming majority of farmers have refused consent, as vouched for by the abovementioned fact-finding team which declares that theirs is a genuine peasant struggle. It is the same colonial Act of 1894 that the WB Government used, declaring Tata’s car factory as ‘public purpose’.
Actual Implications: On PAPER, the Sardar Sarovar Project in the Narmada Valley has the best rehabilitation package possible – but the ground reality, as the protesting NBA activists tell us with elaborately documented evidence, is that not a single promise of this package has been met. The reality of Singur too demonstrates how “consent” is manufactured on websites and enforced with guns on the ground! The UPA Government should first REPEAL the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 and clear its national rehabilitation backlog before talking of any ‘humane’ rehab policy!
Central SEZ Act 2005: The very definition of SEZs is that of a “duty-free” zone. Even out and out neo-liberals like P. Chidambaram, Union Finance Minister, say that “As per ministry estimates, the exchequer will lose Rs 1,00,000 crore in the next four years owing to tax and duty exemptions for SEZs”. So even the ‘economic benefits’ in neo-liberal terms are not justified.
CPI(M)’s Proposed “Amendments”: Various relaxations in the degree of incentives and concessions proposed, but the concept of SEZs as a “duty-free zone” remains untouched.
WB SEZ Act 2003: identical concessions to the Central Act. The “Doing Business” brochure proudly promises a range of massive concessions and incentives as ‘bribes’ for potential investors in SEZ.
Comment: It is typical of the anti-people neo-liberal logic that Governments refusing to waive debts or assure minimum support price for suicidal farmers are bleeding public exchequers dry to pamper corporates. Instead of rejecting such an anti-people policy, CPI(M) is playing the same field.
[Liberation March 2007]
IS there at all any case for a debate and agitation over Singur? The CPI(M) leadership would like us to believe there is absolutely none and that the people questioning the great Singur model of industrialisation and rehabilitation are either stupid or mad or driven by ulterior motives. Some members of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau and Central Committee have even attributed the parentage of the whole campaign to defend the people’s right to their land and livelihood to corporate rivals of the Tata group. For the Left Front government of West Bengal, the campaign is of course just another law and order problem that the state must crush by all means. The Chief Minister has proudly declared that nobody would be allowed to touch the tip of a single hair on Tata’s head. Singur has been sealed off from the rest of West Bengal by an unprecedented extension of Section 144 to cover every road that could remotely be suspected of ‘approaching’ Singur and stop all persons who seemingly have ‘malicious intent’ writ large on their faces!
Beyond West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, wherever the CPI(M) is not in power, it asserts its right to question and oppose attempts by various state governments to forcibly acquire agricultural land in the name of setting up industries or SEZs. No problems with that, but should not the CPI(M) then tell us how it is following a different course in states where it is in power? Before Singur, the CPI(M) said it would indeed follow a different course.It would not acquire fertile agricultural land. And before acquiring any land, it would take not only the landowning peasants but also other landless toilers whose livelihood depended on the concerned plot of land into confidence. Singur has proved each of these assurances absolutely hollow.
Singur in Hooghly district lies at the heart of the green revolution belt of West Bengal; it is precisely the kind of area that the Left Front government showcased till the other day as the biggest success story of agriculture under Left Front rule in West Bengal, in fact industrialisation was supposed to proceed by consolidating the gains achieved on the agricultural front. But now the CPI(M) tells us that it is imperative to sacrifice the fertile farm land of Singur at the altar of industrialisation simply because the Tatas have chosen this area. To downplay the extent of loss to agriculture, the state government is claiming that more than 90 per cent of the land acquired is monocrop. That is of course some concession to the truth, for the powers that be could just as well declare the whole land barren and fallow! But what do the sharecroppers and agricultural labourers of Singur have to say about this? They will tell you that it is mischievous to talk about such generously endowed land producing just one crop a year. The truth is that the area has excellent irrigation facilities and produces four or even five crops a year, has as many as four cold-storage centres and attracts agricultural labour even from neighbouring Bardhaman district during days of busy agricultural operations.
As for taking the concerned local people into confidence, we know it from none other than Jyoti Basu that the local peasant association secretary of the CPI(M) was literally caught napping at home when the local women chased away the combined team of government officials and Tata Motors representatives. The mammoth CPI(M)-led peasant organisation with a claimed membership of 1.5 crore in West Bengal alone and the celebrated panchayati raj machinery of West Bengal were nowhere to be seen on the ground ‘convincing’ the agricultural population of Singur that the time had come for them to move on from the drudgery and misery of agriculture to the comfort and security of living off interest income by depositing the jackpot of ‘compensation’ in a bank! Even according to the status report released by the West Bengal government it is clear that out of 997.11 acres of land acquired by the government, ‘prior consent’ for 586 acres was obtained only on the day the land was fenced off while for another 411.11 acres no consent had been obtained till the publication of the report (Times Of India, 16 December, 2006).
And how was this partial ‘consent’ manufactured? Meetings with land-owners started only on 27 May 2006, after the whole world had known and even seen how the peasant women of Singur – ‘armed with brooms’ – had sent out ‘the wrong signal’ by chasing away the Tata team. The meetings happened first at the DM’s bungalow and the venue was later shifted to Kolkata, but nothing concrete emerged from these meetings and the ‘consent’ could only be obtained in the ‘benign and gracious’ presence of the police, who were incidentally raining lathis and firing tear gas shells and rubber bullets. A two-year-old girl detained in police custody and implicated in criminal cases, women harassed and tortured, sixty-year-old peasants beaten up and humiliated, not to mention the injuries suffered by student and peasant activists, and now this ghastly rape and murder of a young woman that even the state government has been forced to refer for a CBI probe – is this the CPI(M)’s model of participatory democracy at work at the grassroots?
The Land Acquisition Act of 1894 which the West Bengal government has invoked to acquire the Singur land authorises the state to acquire land in public interest and in national emergencies (the colonial rulers needed to set up military cantonments, among other things, following the shock of 1857). It is nothing short of a legal fraud to invoke this Act to acquire land for the purpose of setting up private industries. To camouflage such fraud all state governments use State Industrial Development Corporations as a middleman and the West Bengal government too has done the same thing. But Buddhadev Bhattacharya has surely gone one step ahead by describing the proposed Tata plant as an epitome of public interest. The CPI(M) in power seems to have become oblivious of any demarcation between private interest and public utility!
Reports have it that the CPI(M) now contemplates marketing Singur as a great model in terms of rehabilitation of the displaced and even empowerment of women. Ganashakti, the Bengali daily of the CPI(M) is full of stories telling us how the rural women of Singur are being trained on a war footing to enable them to stitch uniforms for workers of the proposed Tata Motors plant and prepare snacks and fast food to be served at the factory canteen! The CPI(M) ideologues do not however bother to tell us how many land-losers of Singur, if at all, will be absorbed directly as workers in the Tata plant! If we insist on an answer, they might well give us a few lessons in economics and remind us that the job of an industrialist is to maximise his profit and not to create jobs for every Tom, Dick and Harry. Bored with complaints regarding the role of the police, the CPI(M)’s peasant leader and Central Committee member Benoy Konar does something similar. He gives us lessons in statecraft and tells us about the job of the police: “The work of the police is not to make drawings or teach in schools and colleges. The police are the instrument of repression.” (People’s Democracy, December 10, 2006). Well, could Benoybabu tell us what the job of a peasant leader is? Is it just to lure peasants away from their land and agriculture by telling them that the sale value of their land if deposited in bank would yield them an interest income “10-15 times more than that from land.” (Konar in PD, 10.12.06)?
Indeed, the biggest claim of the CPI(M) regarding Singur revolves around the compensation package which we are told is the best on offer to people facing eviction and takes care of all those who are dependent on the land for their livelihood. In her article 'Singur: Just The Facts, Please' published in The Hindu (December 13, 2006), Brinda Karat tells us that the compensation package covers not only the landowners and registered share-croppers, but even the case of unregistered sharecroppers “is under consideration”. As advised by Brinda, let us look at the facts as furnished by the December 4-10, 2006 issue of People’s Democracy in its editorial 'Singur: Myth and Reality' (Facts submitted before the people’s tribunal held at Singur and collected by non-CPI(M) investigators through extensive interaction with the local people are often at variance with the CPI(M) version of the story, but one guesses that in Bengal in 2006 the CPI(M) alone has the ‘moral’ and political monopoly over the real facts – facts backed by state power and endorsed by major sections of the corporate media – just as perhaps the Congress can be credited to have had its historical monopoly ovr facts in the state in the fifties and sixties when every election used to return it to power!).
The PD editorial tells us that 12,000 landowners and sharecroppers are entitled to receive compensation the total quantum of which has been declared at Rs. 130 crore. The average amount works out to a little over Rs. 1,08,300 – hardly the kind of money that if put away in fixed deposits can yield an interest income “10-15 times more than that from land”! The claim made by Benoy Konar could of course be somewhat realistic for the big absentee landowners (Konar tells us that there are actually two families living abroad), whose current income from land is confined to the 25 per cent share he gets from the sharecropper. But what about the small and marginal farmers and sharecroppers? A sharecropper who is much more attached to and dependent on the land than the absentee landowner will be entitled to only 25 per cent of the compensation received by the latter. If ‘Operation Barga’ saved the sharecropper from being evicted by the land-owner and limited the landowner’s share of income to 25% of the produce, the compensation package has now completely reversed the terms. The state evicts the sharecropper and gives him only 25% of what it gives to the landowner! And as for the toiler, the agricultural labourer who puts in the greatest efforts to produce the crop, he becomes even more ‘free’ than before – he is freed from all his erstwhile occupational ties with the land, and in place of the agricultural wages he now gets the consolation of a promise of an alternative avenue of future employment! So the old slogan of ‘land to the tiller’ has now boiled down to land to the buyer, hefty compensation to the absentee owner, token ‘severance’ money for the actual tiller and empty promise for the toiler.
Indeed, there are facts and facts, but there is also something called the truth which has to be sought out on the basis of the facts. And worse still, in a class-divided society, the truth is also divided – the ruler’s truth is often at loggerheads with the truth experienced by the ruled, the gainer’s truth ‘triumphs’ at the expense of the losses suffered by the loser. The truth of the tillers and toilers of Singur cannot be the same as the truth of the Tata Motors and of Buddhadev Bhattacharya who is behaving more like a CEO of the Tatas than an elected Chief Minister of West Bengal. It may be easy to equate the interest of the Tatas (the fact that they want 1,000 acres of fertile farm land at Singur to set up their plant) with the interest of industrial development of West Bengal (industry calls for more and more of private investment and if a big name like the Tatas can be shown to have been ‘attracted’ by West Bengal, it will have a demonstration effect on other potential investors), pit the combined weight of the brand power of the Tatas and the state power wielded by the CPI(M)-led government and paint the opposition put up by the affected people of Singur as an anti-Bengal attempt to halt the progress of the state, but this is a dangerous logic that may boomerang on the very forces of reason and progress.
The CPI(M) has tried its level best to discredit the entire movement over Singur as the handiwork of the Trinamool Congress, as a desperate and disruptive move by a politically frustrated and defeated opposition to foment trouble. By ransacking the Assembly, the TMC MLAs have also provided the CPI(M) with considerable opportunities to try and divert public attention away from Singur. Indeed, the state government made a veritable spectacle of the TMC vandalism in the Assembly encouraging the people to come and see the broken chairs on display even as it sealed off Singur and all the signs of police brutality and the people’s lived experiences behind the protective wall of Section 144! But the courage and determination displayed by the people of Singur in the course of their sustained struggle has been far too powerful to be brushed aside as TMC tantrums against the Tatas or the CPI(M). It is this strength of the popular resistance in Singur which has evoked such widespread public response in West Bengal and beyond.
The CPI(M) is extremely peeved by the solidarity evoked by the Singur struggle. From Medha Patkar to Mahashweta Devi, anybody and everybody questioning the government’s move on Singur – the systematic violation of democracy coupled with complete lack of transparency regarding the terms of the state government’s deal with the Tatas and implications for the local people – has been dubbed an ‘outsider’ and his or her credentials have been subjected to vulgar and vitriolic comments. The nomenclature is indeed quite interesting – for the Left Front government Ratan Tata is an insider while Medha Patkar is an outsider! Sitaram Yechury and Brinda Karat have all the credentials to represent West Bengal in the Rajya Sabha, but Mahasweta Devi who has spent her whole life defending democracy and the struggles and rights of the oppressed and the marginalised becomes an ‘outsider’ to be greeted with a disdainful ‘who-is Mahasweta’ by the CPI(M) top brass in West Bengal!
The CPI(M)’s constant propaganda regarding ‘outsiders’ raking up trouble in Singur is best rebuffed by field reports from the site of struggle. Of the 54 people arrested in early December on charges of ‘attempted murder’ for their attempt to resist the police and stop the forcible fencing off of the land, as many as 47 are local peasants. There are also reports of murder and rape of local people – Rajkumar Bhul succumbed to injuries sustained during the police attack in late September and the charred body of young Tapasi Malik, brutally raped and killed by the CPI(M) ‘night guards’ in league with the police was discovered in the early hours of December 18. The CPI(M) and the State government of course describe the first incident as a case of natural death and the latter as a suicide! And who are the ‘outsiders’ beaten up and arrested by the police at Singur? They are all known political activists, including Comrades Tapan Batabyal, a state committee member of the CPI(ML)(Liberation) and Bilas Sarkar, an activist of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) from Jadavpur University. What business can Jadavpur University students have in Singur, ask the CPI(M) leaders. The CPI(M)’s paradigm of politics now revolves only around state power and its twin pillars – capital and coercion – and its leaders will surely find it hard to understand why student activists should stand by the people of Singur. We are however proud of our comrades who have held high the revolutionary tradition of Indian communists and braved police repression to forge strong ties of fighting solidarity with the people of Singur.
The CPI(M) should remember that beyond the borders of West Bengal, the ‘outsider’ argument could well boomerang against it every time it might try and raise its voice against another Gurgaon-type assault on workers or Gujarat-type genocide of Muslims. And should power change hands in Bengal, the same might well happen right in West Bengal. History is replete with examples of how opportunist sins of the Left end up paving the way for the revival of right reaction. To understand the implications we need not go any further than West Bengal itself. Some forty years ago peasants in many parts of West Bengal had embarked on a militant struggle to establish their rights over their land. Revolutionary sections within the CPI(M) had sought to raise this struggle to the level of a protracted war for bringing about a revolutionary change in agrarian relations and to usher in, on this basis, a new kind of people’s democracy in India. Naxalbari emerged as the storm centre of this brewing agrarian revolutionary campaign. The CPI(M) as the leading partner of the United Front government then in power in Kolkata played the leading role in unleashing severe state repression on that movement. And soon the reins of repression had passed on to the hands of the Congress and the repression, initially directed against revolutionary communists, generalised to let loose a veritable reign of terror against all Left, progressive and democratic forces. Subsequently, this policy of state terror and repression developed and perfected by the Congress in the laboratory of West Bengal was extended to the whole of the country and democracy was pushed into a state of coma as India experienced her first encounter with Internal Emergency for as many as nineteen months from June 1975 to January 1977.
Singur 2006 is of course vastly different from Naxalbari of 1967. During the Naxalbari days, the whole of West Bengal was passing through a period of upswing in the Left movement. The CPI(M) crushed Naxalbari by saying that peasants had no business linking the question of land to revolution and their demand for land could very well be fulfilled by a Left government in West Bengal. Back in power in 1977 after the semi-fascist interlude of the Emergency, the CPI(M) de-revolutionised the agenda of agrarian reforms and consolidated its grip over governance by implementing a three-point package of reforms and democracy for rural Bengal (redistribution of ceiling-surplus land, Operation Barga and Panchayati Raj).
Things have now come a full circle in West Bengal. The small peasants and sharecroppers of Singur are not demanding a revolution. All that they want is to retain their land and their right to earn their livelihood and live their lives with dignity. But like Naxalbari, Singur too is being crushed by the CPI(M) led state government. During the Naxalbari days, the CPI(M) wanted peasants to stay as peasants and not dare to dream and fight for a revolution. In Singur, the CPI(M) wants to depeasantise the peasantry by making them passive and dispossessed participants in a process of industrialisation that has little connection with the vast untapped and underde-veloped home market lying beyond the islands of urban affluence.
CPI(M)’s land reform and Operation Barga campaigns have long run out of steam in West Bengal. The new agenda is reversal of land reform, depeasantisation, corporate farming, SEZs ... Over the last two decades as the Left Front government of West Bengal has steadily moved towards the neo-liberal agenda, and we have seen signs of unrest among the rural poor, agricultural labourers, and the urban working class engaged in the unorganised and organised sectors of Bengal. We have also seen this disillusionment turn into electoral resentment and this has contributed considerably to the rise of the TMC as a political force and trend in West Bengal. The CPI(M) may have managed to stem the tide by weaning away a section of the Congress base and the upwardly mobile middle class, but the Left Front has clearly lost much of its ‘left’ appeal among large sections of its old support base. Now Singur signals the beginning of the alienation of sharecroppers and small and middle peasantry from the CPI(M), an alienation that clearly has the potential of upsetting the CPI(M)’s three-decadeold applecart in West Bengal. In the West Bengal Assembly, Singur is represented by a TMC MLA, and the TMC being the main opposition party in West Bengal – the fact cannot be wished away even if Buddhadev ridicules it for its small size with a patronising small-is-beautiful certificate – lost no opportunity to cash in on the Singur issue.
Like a power-obsessed ruling party, the CPI(M) may only choose to see Singur as a TMC-inspired conspiracy to destabilise its government, but revolutionary communists cannot but see the simmering and potentially quite explosive peasant discontent that lies underneath. When Ratan Tata becomes an insider for the CPI(M)’s house of power and the dissenting people of Singur are dubbed outsiders, peasants in West Bengal cannot miss the irony of the whole situation. How long will the Bengal peasantry agree to play the role of political extras in a script that revolves around the ‘Buddha-Tata bhai-bhai’ equation? The revival of the land question, albeit in a changed context and on quite different terms, has its obvious implication for the political landscape of Bengal. In Rabindranath’s immortal poem Dui bigha jomi (Two Bighas of Land, written in June 1894, the year the colonial land acquisition act was passed) the ‘Babu’ landlord buys off indebted and impoverished Upen’s last two bighas by exercising his feudal power and reduces him to a pauper. Today the Singur peasants are fighting to save their ‘Do Bigha Zameen’ from the ‘babudom’ driven by the growing Buddha-Tata bonhomie. But if Singur fails, how long will the CPI(M) be able to hold on to its political ‘landholding’ among the Bengal peasantry? For revolutionary communists, the question is not whatever might or would happen to the CPI(M) and its political fiefdom in West Bengal. The point is to radicalise the anger of the peasantry and shape a communist resurgence in West Bengal. Far from making common cause with the TMC, revolutionary communists must step up their independent initiative and efforts and lead a radical realignment of forces within the broad Left and democratic camp to prevent a possible right resurgence in the state. Too much is at stake in Singur, and revolutionary communists cannot be stopped by either repression or malicious disinformation from discharging their political responsibility.
[ Liberation, January 2007]
(excerpts from Comrade Dipankar’s speech at Singur, 14 September, 2006)
WE have come here to congratulate you for the message of hope and resistance that you have sent out from Singur. Neither the Tatas nor Buddhadev could have possibly imagined that they would run into this kind of resistance in a state where only the other day the CPI(M) returned to power for the seventh successive term with such thumping majority. Both probably believed that they were the undisputed monarch of whatever their eyes could survey and perhaps they had also thought that the people of Singur would start competing among themselves to sell their land and get some compensation.
They could not be more mistaken. The women of Singur chased away the joint team of the Tatas and State Government officials. The jhantas (brooms) of Singur have proved to be heavier for the time being than the combined might of the Tatas and the state government that is prepared to do everything to please the Tatas, Ambanis and Salims. We know Jyoti Basu scolded Buddhadev for not doing enough homework, for not pressing the Party and the CPI(M)-led peasant association into service. Since May 22, they are trying all means – but you continue to hold your fort. This itself is a very big victory and it has set a shining example for all who are trying to save their land in the country from the corporate land sharks.
We salute your readiness for every sacrifice to defend your land. You have said that if the CPI(M) tries to capture your land by force, it will lead to a bloodbath. May I add that if blood flows in Singur, it will wash away the CPI(M)’s seat of power in Kolkata.
The Tatas are talking about setting up a motor vehicle plant on your land. You are not going to ride these cars. But are you going to get jobs in that plant? The Birlas have a motorcar plant in your district, at Hindmotor. Are you going to get the kind of wages and rights like the permanent workers of Hindustan Motors have got? As you all know, this question too does not arise. A peasant leader of CPI(M) has said that you can still find work as domestic workers.
What audacity! They want to take away agricultural land in the name of industrialisation, they say agriculture giving way to industry is the law of history and progress, but they want to turn peasants and agricultural labourers into paupers and beggars. Ask them if agriculture has to make way for industry, why can’t they turn peasants into industrial workers with secure wages and working conditions?
We have been told that some absentee landlords have agreed to surrender their land. These people have no living connection with their land, they use their land ownership to exploit others. This is why the communists have always raised the demand: land to the tiller. Yes, I am talking about communists and not the CPI(M). Those who have turned into agents of corporate houses and multinational corporations, those who look at land from the point of view of real estate business and conspire to turn peasants into paupers have ceased to be communists. But however much the CPI(M) may degenerate, the CPI(ML), the party of revolutionary communists, the party of Naxalbari will always uphold the red flag of communists, of workers and peasants.
I do not know how long and how far the Trinamul Congress will stand by your struggle. After all, Kalinganagar happened in a state ruled by another NDA partner. In fact, when it comes to usurping land from the peasants and adivasis, and pushing the rural poor into suicides and starvation deaths, the attitude and policies of all governments are becoming increasingly similar. Some parties talk in two voices depending on whether they are in power or in opposition. But the CPI(ML) has always spoken in only one voice, the voice of the workers and peasants, the voice of democracy and social transformation. The success of your struggle will make this voice louder. We will always stand by you in carrying forward your struggle to victory.
BOTH Singur and Nandigram are fertile multi-cropped regions with a settled peasantry having deep socio-economic and emotional attachment with land. Both areas boast a tebhaga lineage and sharecroppers, the basic motive force of that historic movement, still constitute a significant section of the peasantry and a major force of the present struggle. An important difference is that Singur is a TMC stronghold with an MLA from that party while Nandigram is – or rather, used to be till recently – a CPI(M)/LF base with a CPI MLA and all panchayat bodies under absolute control of the CPI(M) and the CPI.
This difference, however, melted away in the heat of class struggle when in both areas a very broad, very solid all-party people’s unity emerged on the single-point agenda of “save our farmlands” and became the greatest strength of the movement, the most important source of its spontaneous sweep and sustenance. If in Singur the agitation was formally led by the TMC-dominated Singur Krishijami Raksha Committee (SKRC) or “Singur Save Farmlands Committee”, in Nandigram seasoned CPI(M) and CPI activists themselves took the lead in preparing the ground for and then actually conducting the battle.
Our party did not have any contacts in Singur, but we grasped the great potential of the struggle and got involved from the very inception. Thanks to repeated visits by our organisers from nearby areas, we soon developed a foothold in Gopalnagar village among – and this is very significant – some young activists of the CPI(M) who wished to take active part in the nascent movement but hesitated to join forces with the TMC. From there we gradually developed contacts in other villages under the block. Everywhere we got very warm response from the masses and developed very good rapport with the local leaders of the SKRC, including its convener. But to the latter’s repeated and fervent appeals for formally joining the SKRC, we always politely refused. To resist the pressure was not quite easy, but we persisted. With the very conspicuous presence of Mamata Banerjee, the local TMC MLA and other leaders in SKRC programmes, the political affiliation of this body was clear enough and we did not want to associate ourselves with that.
This approach of ours was shared by the CPI(ML) led by Kanu Sanyal, but it had hardly any work in Singur. The CPI(ML) New Democracy state leadership also agreed with us, but its Hooghly district unit opted for working as a constituent of the SKRC. After some tussle the latter line became their official policy. This was the policy of the SUCI too. They, like ND, agreed with us about the reactionary character of the TMC, but apparently believed that (a) broadest unity within the SKRC was necessary in the interest of the movement itself; and (b) entering the SKRC would enable constituents of the third stream to steer its policy decisions towards a more militant, more consistent course. Our position was (a) broadest unity on the actual field of struggle, a broad people’s front so to say, could and should be developed without entering the said committee; (b) such entry, essentially a joint front with the TMC, would tarnish the image of the militant/revolutionary left without any corresponding advantage, for the latter was numerically or organisationally too weak to positively influence the SKRC decisions. In our reckoning the TMC leadership wanted to mobilise all possible forces in its own struggle against the CPI(M), confident that its command over SKRC will remain unshaken. The counter tactic, if it was to be a Leninist tactic, could only be: don’t fall in such a trap, don’t confuse the masses by mixing up the real fighters with those least capable of fighting; march separately but strike together at the decisive hour.
We accordingly worked to preserve both broad militant unity at the grassroots and our political-organisational independence. Our concern was to develop a distinct revolutionary left stream within the broad movement having heterogeneous forces and thus safeguard the future of the movement after the inevitable betrayal of the TMC. So after some ground work we set up a camp in Singur to expand and intensify agitation with full cooperation of villagers but in the face of criticism from SKRC constituents. On the days of decisive battle (1-2 December; see last issue of Liberation) our comrades mingled with all other forces to face the enemy, but the SKRC actually restrained the masses from taking up a fight. The presence of SUCI and ND comrades within the committee did not help. Thereafter we continued our work and on 9 January this year nearly 50 young activists from Singur participated in our “Save Peasants, Save Democracy” demonstration at Kolkata defying leaders who pressured them to take part instead in the Committee’s own demonstration at Chinsura the same day.
The experience of our friends who worked from within the SKRC was far from encouraging. They could not prevent the derailment of the movement by Mamata Banerjee who after 2 December helped the otherwise discredited CPI(M) by indulging in hooliganism at the West Bengal Legislature followed by a similar incident at the WBIDC office. The theatre of battle was thus shifted from Singur to Kolkata. With Mamata Banerjee going on an indefinite fast and CPI(ML) ND leaders sharing the dais with her along with people like Rajnath Singh and Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, her dramatics grabbed all the attention and the peasant fighters of Singur were effectively backstaged. We by contrast organised a militant “March to Singur” led by party general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya on 8 January. The way our leaders avoided early arrest (Comrade Kanu Sanyal, who was also to participate in the march, was arrested just before the event), the rallyists broke through two police barricades defying heavy baton charge, and a solidarity in blood developed between media persons who were thoroughly beaten up along with the our comrades, visibly strengthened our credentials as politically the most advanced contingent of the movement.
When the usual carrot and stick methods (“we’re giving you a lot, we may consider giving you still more, but if you don’t behave you are doomed”) failed to work in Singur, the main ruling party took recourse to another trick. It raised the bogey of “outsiders” creating trouble. This meant they were not uncomfortable with the TMC, with which a compromise was always possible, but with the few Naxalite or SUCI cadre working there. They were mortally afraid of the politics of agrarian revolution which could detonate the dynamite accumulated in the minds of aggrieved peasants facing eviction, particularly when the vehicle of such politics happened to be young students. This explains why our student comrade Bilas Sarkar was made the number one target in Singur even before and also during the December 2 attack; and why our fact-finding team was arrested even before it reached Nandigram. But all this only helped enhance the Party’s appeal to the fighting masses while the arrest of the team members who went there after due information to district authorities served to lay bare the true character of the Buddha Bhattacharya (BB) government.
But the CPI(M) did not stop here. Even personalities like Medha Patkar and Mahashweta Devi were branded as outsiders and troublemakers. It became clear to all that this term is for CPI(M) what “terrorist/Islamic terrorist” is for George Bush – a pretext to justify state terror and all sorts of authoritarian measures including attacks on the press.
When the spark of Singur started a conflagration in Nandigram, the CPI(M) simply denied the existence of the notice regarding large-scale land acquisition which actually ignited the fire of mass resistance (see the party’s press statement issued from its Delhi headquarters). When this assertion proved false, the Chief Minister ‘ordered’ the notice ‘to be torn up’, inviting the retort: why did he not officially withdraw the same, since tearing up a piece of paper meant nothing in law? After this a tussle went on between the regional boss and the State supremo with the former (party MP and Chairman of Haldia Development Authority Lakshman Seth, incidentally a beneficiary of the Office of Profit Amendment), who had actually issued the notice, openly justified it.
Simultaneously the CPI(M) dished out a theory of “communal conspiracy” behind the trouble. This was a dangerous game that BB, hand in gloves with State party chief Biman Bose, was playing. Nandigram has a large Muslim population occupying, as elsewhere, the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. The vast majority are supporters of the Jamaat-e Ulema-e-Hind, which was (and remains) very active in the struggle against the threat of eviction. Just as Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh sought to prevent Muslims from participating in anti-Bush anti-imperialist protests by raising the bogey of ‘communalisation’ of foreign policy, the CPI(M) leadership used the same sinister theory to silence and intimidate Muslim peasants of Nandigram. And this when Sachar Committee findings clearly reveal that in thirty years of CPI(M) rule, broad Muslim masses have not experienced any improvement in their socio-economic conditions and in terms of basic amenities and development/employment opportunities!
The CPI(M) leadership’s faux passes did not end here. To render their conspiracy theory (‘outsiders’ plus ‘communal forces’) more profound, BB and Biman Bose concocted sensational stories of a multi-storied house not far from Nandigram, which allegedly served as the miscreants’ den, an arms-supply station, a place visited by Medha Patkar, and so on. Very soon all this was proved to be mere rubbish, further discrediting the party and the government. No less damning was CPI(M) CC member and senior peasant association leader Benoy Konar’s villainous comments like “we will surround Nandigram from all sides and make life hell for them”. Widely telecast, these remarks were rightly seen as a criminal act of instigation to violence.
Nandigram is a direct continuation of Singur not only in a general political sense. The people of Nandigram had started preparing for a bold resistance as soon as they came to know, a few months ago, about the government’s plans for an SEZ (a chemical hub) to be set up there. On December 1-2 they saw on the TV screen what land acquisition actually meant for the people of Singur and said to themselves: we won’t give up so easily. They drew inspiration from the positive aspects of the Singur battle (the broadest mass mobilisation, the rock-like unity, the determination to fight to the last, almost bare-handed, against a heavily armed enemy) and learnt from its weaknesses (failure to make practical battle preparations in anticipation of police-CPI(M) attack). They immediately drew up detailed plans on how to cut the roads and blow up the bridges to prevent the entry of Lakshman Seth’s motorbike brigade accompanied by the police. They also armed themselves with adequate means of resistance. Such military prepa- rations did not detract from mass political initiative, but added to its power and sweep.
This was how Nandigram saw a ‘sudden’ mass upsurge that sent shudders down the spines of reactionary classes and ruling parties. In a classic reenactment of Tebhaga-type peasant insurgency, the house of the most hated landlord and CPI(M) leader – the enemy fortress from where the rebellious masses were being fired upon – were burnt down along with CPI(M) and panchayat offices. The hardcore enemies fled while others were neutralised. At the time of writing (third week of January 2007), the masses are still not allowing the police and the administration to enter the core areas of insurgency or to rebuild the roads and bridges, fearing retaliation. Biased, reactionary sections of the press which have been carrying false reports (Ananadabazar, Ganashakti, Star Ananda, 24 Ghanta etc...) are not allowed either, whereas all pro-people media and others are warmly welcomed.
In a word, Nandigram today still looks like a 21st-century version of liberated area in miniature, surrounded by heavily fortified enemy strong-holds preparing to “crush Nandigram”, as Benoy Konar had fumed.
The media today stands polarised between pro-government and pro-people sections. Leading the former is the Ananda Bazar house, which recorded a massive (approx. two lakh) decline in the circulation of its flag-ship daily, even as some other newspapers including a newcomer (Dainik Statesman) witnessed rising sales figures thanks to sympathetic and truthful reporting on Singur and Nandigram. This clearly reflected a sharp division in public opinion and showed where public sympathies lie. And when one goes beyond the literate sections to the broad masses of toilers, one finds the support for the anti-eviction struggle to be much stronger. The intelligentsia got polarised, too. While the overwhelming majority of buddhijivees (from the Bengali word buddhi, meaning intelligence or intellect: those who depend on the intellect to earn a living) – personalities
from the field of art and literature, economists, journalists, educationists and so on – came out openly in support of the fighters, a few showed up as pathetic buddhajivees (a popular nickname for those who display uncritical allegiance to the Brand Buddha gospel of neo-liberal reforms led by a ‘reformed’ Left). Even some otherwise friendly ‘outsiders’ like DU professor Sumit Sarkar visited Singur unnoticed, made investigations, and came out with scathing attacks on the LF government.
The battle initiated in Singur has thus reached a higher phase in Nandigram. Together, rebellious Singur and insurgent Nandigram have set off social and political processes the full impact and potential of which it is too early to measure. But one thing one can safely assert: West Bengal will never be the same again.
Probably the most reassuring message of the current movement is that even after the nearly three decades long domination of reactionary class collaborationism, the peasants of West Bengal have lost none of their spirit
of revolt. Everywhere in rural Bengal today, broad-based Singur-Nandigram-type “save farmlands” or “anti-eviction” platforms are coming up, without any party banner but with different class and political forces contending for leadership. In the months to come it will be very interesting to watch how the battle between the Bengal peasantry and the pro-corporate State government plays itself out. To be sure, our party will be always in the vanguard in this upcoming class war, fearing no sacrifices and learning new lessons.
To conclude, let us sum up the basic lessons of Singur and Nandigram in a line from the immortal Salil Chowdhury song:
Dheu uthchhe, Kara Tutchhe, Pran Jagchhe (Waves are swelling up, prisons are collapsing, the soul is rising from slumber).
Yes, after years of relative calm, mighty waves of mass movement are rising. Prison walls of social democratic politics are breaking down. The soul of Tebhaga-Naxalbari is awakening again.
Red salute to the heroic fighters and martyrs of the new peasant struggle of Bengal!
[Liberation February 2007]
IN May 2006, the CPI(M) had won one of its most spectacular electoral victories in West Bengal. The CPI(M)-led Left Front government returned to power for the seventh successive term. The main opposition party in the state, the Trinamool Congress, had failed to win even thirty seats while the CPI(M) alone had romped home with an absolute majority and the Left Front as a whole had won four out of every five seats. Significantly enough, the CPI(M) had managed to win in a big way in urban Bengal as well, including the traditional Congress citadel of Kolkata. The CPI(M) was quick to claim that the May 2006 victory signified an overwhelming vindication of the party’s central election slogan: krishi amader bhitti, shilpa amader bhabisyat (agriculture is our foundation, industry is our future).
The ‘future’ peeped out quite prominently at the seventh swearing-in ceremony of the Left Front government when big industrial and real estate tycoons made a special appearance for the show. Soon afterwards a beaming Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee addressed a joint press conference with none other than Ratan Tata by his side, telling the whole world that Tata had been gracious enough to gift an automobile plant to Bengal that would churn out cars for the people at a mere Rs. 100,000 apiece. The Birlas and Goenkas had long made Bengal their industrial and commercial home, now the Tatas and Ambanis would also make their presence felt, not to mention the Mitsubishis and Salims from Japan and Indonesia. What greater evidence of ‘industrialisation’ could Bengal ever ask for!
There was a small hitch though. The first corporate requirement for ‘industrialisation’ is the same land that also sustains the much-advertised success story of three decades of Left Front rule: agriculture. But then the countryside is the fabled traditional stronghold of the CPI(M) and who could possibly stop the CPI(M) from ‘convincing’ the peasantry and acquiring farmland as requisitioned by the Tatas and the Salims? There was no bourgeois opposition worth its name. Mamata Banerjee had been reduced to a poor shadow of the powerful rabble-rouser that she had once been and was now widely believed to be the best ‘oppositional insurance’ for the CPI(M)’s continued stay in power. The ‘bourgeois media’ which had been playing an oppositional role till some years ago had also turned into an ardent admirer of Brand Buddha, if not exactly the CPI(M) and the Left Front. Who could then possibly play ‘spoilsport’?
While all calculations seemed perfect on paper and the conditions tailor-made for the launch of a ‘Bengal Shining’ blitzkrieg, the peasant women of Singur appeared suddenly on the stage and did the unthinkable by chasing away the combined ‘inspection team’ of Tata executives and government officials from their multi-cropped farmlands. It was still May 2006 and the focus in Bengal suddenly began turning away from the televised images of Buddha-Tata bonhomie to the simmering anger in the country-side.
Singur has since gone on to become a household name in Bengal and beyond and in January 2007 it found its partner in Nandigram. The air in Bengal today is thick with the slogan: Singur theke Nandigram, pratirodher notun naam (Singur and Nandigram are the new names of resistance).
With the peasants reasserting their presence beyond the tired and fading rhetoric of Operation Barga and Panchayati Raj and defying the stifling regimentation of the CPI(M)’s well-oiled party machine, one can see a new fluidity and dynamism in the otherwise settled environment of West Bengal. For all the talks of students turning apolitical and the entire middle class becoming a strong votary of privatisation and corporate globalisation, we once again see students from Jadavpur University and Presidency College and from across the state siding with the peasants of Singur and Nandigram even at the risk of incurring the wrath of the CPI(M) and the repressive apparatus of the state. Anandabazar Patrika, the highest circulated Bengali daily has suffered a significant drop in its circulation and new newspapers and television channels have made their presence felt riding on the resistance at Singur and Nandigram. Left-leaning intellectuals from within and outside Bengal have raised their voice questioning the CPI(M)’s Singur-Nandigram model of ‘development’ and ‘industrialisation’. The CPI(M)’s partners in the Left Front have also started distancing themselves from the CPI(M) on the issues of Singur and especially Nandigram.
The CPI(M) had certainly not bargained for such a big shake-up. Jolted out of its arrogance and complacence, the party and the government in West Bengal are trying out every option to overpower the peasant resistance and the broad popular opposition. The strong-arm methods – the police repression unleashed on peasants and activists at Singur, the massacre at Nandigram, abuse of administrative power, assaults on journalists and students, detention of members of fact-finding mission, incarceration of protesters in false and fabricated cases, and abuses and insults hurled at whoever questions the Singur-Nandigram ‘model’ – have predictably only boomeranged. The CPI(M) has therefore been forced to beat a partial retreat. In fact, Nandigram has forced the UPA government too to announce a temporary halt to its SEZ campaign.
The Chief Minister has backtracked from his initial version of ‘conspiracy and rumour’ behind the Nandigram incidents, he now talks about the failure of the party and the administration to allay the fears of the peasants at Nandigram. The bill to relax land-ceiling limits has also been deferred for further consultation among Left Front partners. It should be noted that despite major differences within the Front and even within sections of the CPI(M), not to speak of the known opposition of the radical left and the peasantry at large, the Left Front government had been bent upon pushing through this legislation to revert land reforms so as to facilitate its current land acquisition drive.
While the resistance at Singur and Nandigram goes on and revolutionary and democratic voices demanding a complete scrapping of the policy of corporate land grab, in particular the SEZ Act, get louder in different parts of the country, it would be instructive to take a close look at the ‘arguments’ the CPI(M) offers to skirt the real issue and derail the actual debate.
Let us first listen to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and the West Bengal State Committee of the party. For the Chief Minister Singur is just a great symbol of industrialisation and the whole issue is one of transition from agriculture to industry and villages to cities. This he says is the direction of history and the law of civilisation and his government is only serving as a tool of history and civilisation. Regarding Singur all that he would say is that this is the place the Tatas had chosen and his government had to acquire the land lest the Tatas went to Uttaranchal and Bengal lost out on this great opportunity. The propaganda materials produced by the State unit of the party echo all these arguments and portray the protests over Singur as a ploy against Bengal’s development being hatched by corporate rivals of Tata and forces ranged against the Left Front and the interests of West Bengal!
Narendra Modi saw the opposition to the genocide in Gujarat as an assault on the state’s pride and unfurled the banner of Gujarat Gaurav to ‘silence’ his critics. A similar streak of propaganda is at work in Buddha’s Bengal – any opposition to the state government’s deal with the Tatas and the treatment meted out to the peasants at Singur is a conspiracy against West Bengal!
Let us take a closer look at all this talk about industrialisation. The proposed Tata Motors plant at Singur will not be the first industry to be set up on the soil of Bengal. Big industries have been operating in the state for decades – in fact the history of industrialisation in West Bengal goes back to the colonial period. The district of Hooghly, where Singur is located, has long been known as part of the industrial region surrounding Kolkata. The district has been home to an old automobile plant of the Birlas, a rubber plant (Dunlop), and a number of textile, paper and jute mills. The Dunlop plant remained closed for most of the last one decade (in spite of economic liberalisation and the West Bengal government adopting its own version of new industrial policy in 1994), the jute mills have also periodically remained closed and employment in the automobile plant of the Birlas has steadily gone down. What is this new story of industrialisation that Buddhadeb wants to tell the people of West Bengal?
Buddhadeb is talking about a false transition from agriculture to industry. The countries that are industrially most developed are usually also the ones that are agriculturally most developed. Industry never replaces agriculture, it is capitalism that develops both in industry as well as agriculture and this process of capitalist development brings not just developments of technique and machine-induced increases in labour productivity but also a whole range of imbalances, uncertainties and crises. This has been the story of capitalist development even in the developed countries, and the story is all the more painful and perverse in our country because of our specific conditions marked by stubborn feudal survivals and imperialist domination. The overwhelming majority of the people of India have been at the receiving end of this process and hence their refusal to buy the euphoria of deliverance through the dazzling spectacles of corporate development. Hence the electoral debacles that have inexorably befallen the Chandrababu Naidus and the scriptwriters of the ‘India Shining’ opera.
All this abstract talk about agriculture and industry, and industrialisation and development, is aimed at diverting public attention away from the core issue of the West Bengal government’s deal with the Tatas. Defying the Right to Information Act, the government of West Bengal has been suppressing information regarding the actual terms and conditions under-lying the government’s understanding with the Tatas. The facts that have already come to light – and not denied by the West Bengal government – indicate a major bonanza for the Tatas. Just consider the following major points: (a) the Government of West Bengal pays compensation worth Rs. 130 crore to acquire the land requisitioned by the Tatas while the latter pay the government only a paltry sum of Rs. 20 crore over a period of five years, (b) the Tatas will not have to pay any stamp duty on the Singur land and will have complete tax holidays for ten years apart from heavily subsidised, if not free, supply of water and power, (c) the Government of West Bengal has promised to compensate the Tatas for the 16% excise duty exemption that apparently the Tatas are foregoing by locating the plant in West Bengal and not Uttaranchal – an effective subsidy of another Rs. 160 crore, (c) a concomitant real estate gift of 650 acres of prime land to the Tata Housing Development Company at Rajarhat New Town and the Bhangar Rajarhat Area Development Authority for construction of an IT park and residential township in partnership with the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation.
Why do the Tatas who have the financial muscle to buy an Anglo-Dutch steelmaking giant by paying more than Rs 50,000 crore have to be wooed and subsidised by a government that professes to take care of the interests of the working people? This is the million-dollar question that Singur has thrown up and that needs an answer. The government of West Bengal has refused to answer any question associated with the whole rationale of its land acquisition drive in Singur (questions like why Singur where the land is so fertile, and why so much land – 997 acres, that is more than 4 sq. km – when the Tata Motors giant Pune plant covers an area of only 188 acres or less than one-fifth of the land acquired at Singur), by simply ‘justifying’ everything in the name of the Tatas. Clearly, it is not the abstract idea of industrialisation but this blatant appeasement of big business by a government that calls itself Left that is at the heart of the whole debate.
From West Bengal, let us turn to the CPI(M) headquarters in New Delhi. The party’s weekly mouthpiece People’s Democracy has been understandably busy defending the positions of the West Bengal government and the state unit of the party. Week after week, every piece of disinformation and conspiracy theory emanating from Alimuddin Street is being dutifully disseminated by the comrades at AKG Bhavan through the pages of People’s Democracy. In addition, the comrades in Delhi are also trying to give the debate an ideological appearance – and here they of course differ from Advani who now harps on deideologisation of governance!
Writing on Nandigram in People’s Democracy, Prakash Karat seeks to refute the critics who apparently accuse the CPI(M) of double-speak. He then goes on to show that there is no dichotomy in what the CPI(M) says in Delhi and does in Kolkata. Well, you are answering an old ‘accusation’ comrade, which belonged to the NDA period. Who doesn’t know that in the UPA period you are very much bound to the government in Delhi by the threads of a Common Minimum Programme? Who can still fail to see that you are now saying and doing the same things in Delhi and Kolkata, the only difference being your refusal to participate directly in the affairs in Delhi while in Kolkata you are in the driver’s seat?
But could you please spare us this old story of ‘limitations and compulsions of a state government’ and your governments in West Bengal and Kerala being forced into neo-liberal policies by the Centre? When the new policy regime came, the biggest virtue you saw in it was the abolition of the ‘license-quota-permit raj’, which made you considerably free from central control and possible obstruction to pursue your own goals of ‘industrialisation’ and ‘development’ in states where you were in power. You were quick to adapt to the new policies – West Bengal adopted its new industrial policy in 1994, three years after the Central Government had done it. But ten years later it was your government which played the pioneering role in legislating the SEZ policy – you did it in 2003 while Delhi did it only in 2005! So please do not tell us that SEZs are a compulsion ‘imposed’ on you – your West Bengal chief minister is reportedly particularly upset and angry now that the Centre has been forced to put the SEZ policy temporarily on hold?
“At the heart of the matter is these critics’ inability to comprehend the role of a State Government under India’s constitutional set-up and the CPI(M)’s understanding of what governments headed by the Party can do”, says Karat. Now who are these critics? Karat is certainly not talking here about either the Naxalites or propagandists from the right. He is actually talking about sympathetic observers and analysts who never had any problem in appreciating the agrarian reforms in West Bengal or the anti-communal role of the CPI(M) and who surely are not criticizing the CPI(M) for not building sovereign socialist republics in West Bengal or Kerala. Now Karat accuses them of not comprehending India’s constitutional set-up and the CPI(M)’s understanding regarding the role of state governments headed by it. One does not really understand how the Constitution of India comes into the picture in a debate over Singur and Nandigram. (If one has to go by what the judiciary has to say regarding the matter, we know the Kolkata High Court has recently termed the continued sealing off of Singur under Section 144 an abuse of power on the part of the administration.)
The real issue indeed is the CPI(M)’s understanding of the role of governments headed by it. According to the CPI(M)’s own party programme, the role of such governments had been defined in terms of carrying out reforms and providing relief to the people. In the early days of the Left Front government the most common slogan used to be “Bamfront Sarkar, Sangramer Hatiyar” (Left Front Government is an instrument of struggle). And we all know that in 1977 the party had come to power promising to restore democracy in West Bengal. Now if the critics find it difficult to comprehend Singur and Nandigram in the CPI(M)’s declared programmatic framework of relief, reforms and democracy, and Karat blames the critics for their inability to comprehend, how are we to solve this riddle? Marxist literature has dealt with this riddle since almost the inception of Marxism – devoid of an agenda and orientation of class struggle, communist parties entrusted with the running of a bourgeois state are bound to slip into the morass of the worst kind of class collaboration and betrayal of working class interests. This is why the Comintern guideline had insisted that local governments led by communists must constitute part of an overall revolutionary opposition to the central authority of the state.
Singur has exposed this phenomenon with a kind of brutal clarity that cannot be camouflaged by any talk of constitutional compulsions or any interpretation of Marxism. Who got ‘relief’ in Singur? The Tatas got whatever they wanted at whatever terms and the rural poor of Singur lost their land and livelihood without even any pretence of ‘compensation’ for the agricultural labourers and unrecorded sharecroppers. And who enjoyed democracy? Tata executives and government officials conducted ‘bhoomi puja’ on farm land acquired by the government and ‘secured’ by Section 144 while peasants got brutally beaten up, young Tapasi Malik was raped and murdered and the rest of West Bengal and India was not even allowed to go to Singur and express solidarity. If anybody still had some illusions left regarding the role of the ‘Left’ government, Singur has shattered them irretrievably.
ON February 23, 2007, a bench of the Kolkata High Court comprising two-judges and headed by acting Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya responded to a PIL filed in the matter of Singur land acquisition, by declaring that the CPI(M) Government had used fraudulent ways to acquire land from poor farmers. The bench further ordered the West Bengal Government to show its land acquisition policy being used by it in Singur, saying that method of compensation and land acquisition was not transparent.
The court questioned how it was possible that the state government was acquiring lands at the same place simultaneously under two different sections of the Land Acquisition Act 1894.
The affidavit filed in response to the above order by the WB Government on March 27 calls the bluff of the CPI(M)’s oft-touted claim that 96% of the farmers at Singur had consented to the process of land acquisition for industry. The editorial of People’s Democracy dated 10.12.06, for instance had claimed that the “ground reality” of Singur was that “the total land acquired is 997.11 acres. Of this, over 950 acres has the voluntary consent of the owners who have already collected their compensation...”
According to Section 11 (1) of the Land Acquisition Act invoked in Singur, the sellers will have to accept the price set by the government, but they can move court. The additional 10 per cent was offered to those who agreed not to go in for litigation.
The other option before the government was Section 11 (2), which allows sellers a month to voice their opinion on the acquisition, followed by one-to-one meetings with the collector where they can drive a bargain and arrive at a consensus price.
But in its affidavit in the HC, the Bengal government admitted that land was acquired in Singur under a section of the Land Acquisition Act 1894 that does not entertain disputes.
The affidavit, submitted in response to a series of questions posed by the court, says that owners of just 287.5 acres accepted the 10 per cent bonus offered by the government for agreeing to not move the court./p>
This translates to a less than 30 per cent of the total 997.11 acres acquired for the Tata small car plant and ancillary units.
Compensation cheques have been collected for just 650 acres till date. This compensation does not in any way imply consent, since it is being accepted as a last resort after the fait-accompli of acquisition. And even this figure amounts to around 67 per cent, which is still lower than the 96 per cent claimed by the CPI(M).
ON Fenruary 14, the Kolkata High Court struck down the prohibitory Section 144 orders imposed at Singur and observed that it amounted to an abuse of power.
Acting on a writ petition, Justice Dipankar Datta quashed the prohibitory orders issued under Section 144 of CrPC in Singur on February 4.
The court said the orders were predetermined and passed by abusing power. The situation in Singur did not demand the imposition of Section 144 of CrPc and the rights of the petitioners had been infringed on under Article 19 of the Constitution.
“West Bengal will have the basic features of a liberalized capitalist economy. Those who believe that it can be otherwise are only deluding themselves”, warns Karat as though his readers were dreaming of socialism in CPI(M)-ruled West Bengal. But his warning is only a half-truth that goes without saying. The whole truth is that the basic features are not confined to the economy alone and have begun pervading the polity as well. If Singur and Nandigram have shocked people, it is not because nobody expected the Tatas or the Salim group to enter West Bengal, but because of the obnoxious manner in which the state government and the CPI(M) leadership went out of their way to carry out the corporate agenda and suppress every expression of popular dissent.
Within the basic features of a liberalized capitalist economy, Karat tells us that “the challenge for the Left is to see how, in extraordinarily difficult conditions in which State-sponsored economic activities are severely limited, economic development can take place in a manner that benefits the people, particularly the working people and the poor.” Now Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram could well say the same thing in the context of the Indian economy and they do indeed often say such stuff – this is the rhetoric of safety net and reforms with a human face. Let us also note that Karat does no longer talk about the state being made to deliver relief, his context is one in which “state-sponsored economic activities are severely limited”. In other words, he is talking about economic development led by the Indian private sector and foreign MNCs and lenders and he wants us to believe that this development could be made to serve “particularly the working people and the poor” (emphasis ours)! He could well use Singur as a brilliant example – the CPI(M) is getting the Tatas to manufacture cheap cars for the working people and the poor!
While dishing out such pious platitudes and proven fictions as his patented brand of Marxism, Karat brands the critics of the Singur-Nandigram model of industrialisation anti-industry and modern-day Narodniks. He perhaps believes that he can clinch the issue by cleverly presenting the debate as one between anti- and pro-industrywallahs, between those who seek to retard capitalist development and return to pristine pre-capitalist times and ones who recognise capitalist development as inevitable and forward-looking.
This is a sheer opportunist caricature of Lenin’s views on the question. Let us recall what Lenin actually had to say: “that it is capitalism which ruins the peasant is by no means a corner-stone of Narodism, but of Marxism. The Narodniks saw and continue to see the causes of the separation of the producer from the means of production in the policy of the government, which, according to them, was a failure (“we” went the wrong way, etc.), in the stagnancy of society which rallied insufficiently against the vultures and tricksters, etc., and not in that specific organisation of the Russian social economy which bears the name of capitalism. That is why their “measures” amounted to action to be taken by “society” and the “state.” On the contrary, when it is shown that the existence of the capitalist organisation of social economy is the cause of expropriation this leads inevitably to the theory of the class struggle... The Narodniks say that capitalism ruins agriculture and for that reason is incapable of embracing the country’s entire production and leads this production the wrong way; the Marxists say that capitalism, both in manufacturing industry and in agriculture, oppresses the producer, but by raising production to a higher level creates the conditions and the forces for “socialisation.”...”. (All quotations from Lenin are from The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of it in Mr. Struve’s Book: The Reflection of Marxism in Bourgeois Literature, 1894-95, LCW, Volume-I).
So Lenin criticises the Narodnik position from the point of view of class struggle and socialisation, from the point of view of socialism, and not (as Karat appears to) from the point of view of capitalism and the big bourgeoisie. Lenin then draws the conclusion that “it would be absolutely wrong to reject the whole of the Narodnik programme indiscriminately and in its entirety. One must clearly distinguish its reactionary and progressive sides.” When it comes to comparing the Narodnik views with those “abominably crude” ideas that “presume police interference in the economy of the peasants”, Lenin had absolutely no hesitation in pointing out that “from the Marxist viewpoint there can be no doubt that Narodism is absolutely to be preferred in this respect.” “The Narodniks in this respect understand and represent the interests of the small producers far more correctly, and the Marxists, while rejecting all the reactionary features of their programme, must not only accept the general democratic points, but carry them through more exactly, deeply and further”, said Lenin.
When in the wake of Singur and Nandigram, Left intellectuals question and oppose the indiscriminate land acquisition drive, they are by no means echoing Narodnik views. When it turns out that Singur and Nandigram are not isolated incidents but part of a bigger and deeper pattern that would see many more SEZs come up, land ceiling abandoned and nearly 1,50,00 acres of land converted through governmental intervention to industry and real estate business, the question of food security and the livelihood of the rural poor cannot but come up as an issue of major concern for Marxists engaged in class struggle. It is patently cynical and mischievous to dismiss such concerns as Narodnik romanticism for the past or Luddite fear of the mechanised future.
Taking the cue from Karat, his comrades have of course gone further ahead in selling Singur-Nandigram as creative Marxism. In a two-part article titled “Singur, Nandigram and Industrailisation of West Bengal” Nilotpal Basu, a member of the CPI(M) Central Committee, tells us that “In the present age of globalisation, the major direction of neo-liberal policies is aimed at de-industrialisation in third world economies. In the face of this, industrial development, particularly in manufacturing and processing sectors, is, in itself, a struggle against those policies.” Wooing the Tatas to set up an automobile plant in West Bengal is thus an act of struggle against the neo-liberal policies! What a gem of a formulation! But has not the same globalisation also led to a deepening of the structural crisis in Indian agriculture, bringing agricultural growth to a standstill, if not negative, even as the overall economy grows at more than 8 per cent per annum? Has not agrarian crisis been as stark a manifestation of globalisation in India as deindustrialisation? And how would then Nilotpal respond if one said that by dispossessing 12,000 agriculturists (this is the official figure of people who are entitled to payment of compensation and it excludes unrecorded share-croppers, agricultural labourers and other sections of the rural poor) in Singur, the CPI(M) was only pushing globalisation’s agenda of assault on agriculture?
While Nilotpal sells class collaboration as class struggle, Benoy Konar, another CPI(M) Central Committee member, goes another step ahead and describes socialism as a higher stage of capitalism! In a lecture dedicated to the memory of Comrade Abani Lahiri, a legendary leader of the Tebhaga movement who cherished militant peasant struggles all through his life, Konar defended Singur as a service to socialism! The ‘argument’ goes some-what like this: socialism is a project of the future, the way to this future goes through the capitalist present, the present task is to build capitalism, to build capitalism you need to collaborate with capital and so you need closer ties with the Tatas and the Salims ... Have we not heard all this before? Do we not often hear ‘communist’ trade union leaders preach the same thing to workers: workers will exist only if industry exists, and industry will exist only if the industrialist can earn sufficient profit, so in its own interest of survival and progress, the working class and the trade union movement must make sure that capital is not unduly obstructed in its free operations?
Ever since socialism and democratic revolutions have been placed on the agenda of the communist movement, the movement has witnessed serious ideological-political debates and divisions on this line. One line has argued that the question of working class leadership can only come up at the socialist stage, democratic revolutions preceding transition to socialism can essentially be led by the bourgeoisie, any notion of working class leadership at the stage of democratic revolutions can at the most be a joint venture between the working class and the bourgeoisie. Lenin fought precisely against this ‘Menshevik’ line and stressed the need for correct identification of the section of the bourgeoisie with which the working class could work and march together. And he taught Bolsheviks (revolutionary communists of Russia) to discover that bourgeois section within the peasantry – alliance with the peasantry and a combined worker-peasant fight against big capital thus became the hallmark of Lenin’s legacy.
Mao carried forward this distinction and showed that communists could also work with certain sections of the bourgeoisie if they showed an anti-imperialist streak and thus developed the thesis of national bourgeoisie as opposed to the comprador, pro-imperialist bourgeoisie. But central to both Lenin’s concept of worker-peasant alliance and Mao’s notion of a bigger four-class front, which had room for the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie, was the absolute need for proletarian independence and class leadership. Both Lenin and Mao rejected the theory of stages that separated democratic revolution and socialism into watertight compartments and stressed the continuum between the two, the uninterrupted transition of democratic revolution into socialism, and consequently the need for nurturing the socialist component and vision right since the stage of democratic revolution.
What the Karats and Konars are preaching and practising (you are acquitted of charges of doublespeak, comrades!) today is what Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has proclaimed quite proudly and repeatedly: we are building capitalism. And this is capitalism led by the Tatas and their class under the aegis of the bourgeois-landlord state governed by the UPAs and the NDAs, capitalism which works in tandem with imperialism and will never peacefully mature into socialism. And the CPI(M) is using its entire party machinery and the constitutionally circumscribed state power it enjoys in West Bengal or Kerala to coerce sections of the working people into a ‘disciplined’ surrender to this project of the Indian ruling classes. Beyond the defence of land and livelihood, Singur and Nandigram mark a veritable peasant rebellion against this school of capitulation. Herein lies the continuity with Naxalbari and the great ideological significance and political potential of these struggles within and outside the borders of West Bengal.
[Liberation March 2007]
-- Kavita Krishnan
A look at facts about the Nandigram massacre and CPI(M)-sponsored fiction. Quotations from CPI(M) leaders are from Brinda Karat’s ‘Behind the Events at Nandigram’ (The Hindu, March 30, 2007), ‘Some Issues on Nandigram’ also by Brinda Karat, People’s Democracy, Vol. XXXI, No. 13, April 01, 2007, ‘Defeat the politics of Terror’ (PD editorial of March 18), CPI(M) Politburo statement of March 14, ‘Singur: Just the Facts Please’, Brinda Karat, (The Hindu, December 13, 2006)].
‘BEHIND the events at Nandigram’, says Brinda Karat, is no peasant resistance against corporate land grab. It’s not ‘bhumi ucched’ (eviction from land) but ‘CPI(M) ucched’ (evict CPI(M)) that’s up, she says. In a Let us examine the main arguments of Brinda Karat and Co., one by one.
IN Nandigram, since most of the protesting farmers happen to be Muslims, CPI(M) chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya rushed to allege that the protests were being fanned by the communal Jamaat-e-Ulema-i- Hind. Nothing can be more dangerous than such communal stereotyping. Clearly, CPI(M) tried to invoke Islamophobia to whip up deep-seated majoritarian anti-Muslim prejudices to delegitimise the farmer s’ struggle and prevent people from expressing sympathy with the protestors. It is really a shame that a self declared leftist party is now playing the communal card in such a mean manner.
Even CPI(M)’s sympathisers and well-wishers like Prof. Sumit Sarkar and former CPI(M) Finance Minister of West Bengal Ashok Mitra are highly disappointed to find CPI(M) speaking BJP’s language, branding protestors as ‘outsiders’, branding Muslim peasants in Nandigram as ‘communal’ and even providing the coconut and pujari for a ‘bhoomi puja’ ritual by Tata at Singur (see Ashok Mitra’s article on Bhoomi Puja in Telegraph, 2Feb.07). These observers are disappointed and shocked at CPI(M) borrowing from saffron-speak, precisely because they do not equate it with BJP and expect it to stand by secular norms! And to add to their dismay, the party has now floated its own “ Jamaat-e- Ulema-i- Hind” not with an eye to a democratic awakening among Muslim masses, but to counter the Hind.
Brinda Karat argues that there was no raison d’etre for the continuance of the resistance in Nandigram since January 9, since the CM had assured that there would be no land acquisition if the people of Nandigram did not wish it. She adds, “Indeed he is the only chief minister in the country who has made such a categorical statement that a condition for land acquisition must be farmer consent.”
After such a principled declaration by Buddha, why indeed need the movement have continued?
Well, in the first place, let’s ask what price CPI(M)’s ‘facts’ and ‘assurances’? May we draw Brinda Karat’s attention to an article titled
A report by the West Bengal Govt. Home Ministry itself admits that what happened at Nandigram was the result of CPI(M) peasant supporters themselves going against the party because of the land grab. So the protestors were not just ‘insiders’ to Nandigram, they were also ‘insiders’ to CPI(M) itself till recently!(Anandabazar Patrika, 2 Feb. 07)
‘Just the Facts Please’ published in her name in The Hindu after the first bout of police-cadre violence in Singur. In that article she had asserted as ‘fact’ that “Of the 997 acres required, the Government has received consent letters from landowners for 952 acres.” Similar declarations had also been made in an article by no less than the CPI(M) General Secretary in the People's Democracy (10.12.06) editorial titled ‘Singur: Myth and Reality’.
But an affidavit filed in response to an order of the Kolkata HC by the WB Government on March 27 records a different reality. In this affidavit, the Bengal government admitted that land was acquired in Singur under a section of the Land Acquisition Act 1894 that does not entertain disputes.
It further says that owners of just 287.5 acres accepted the 10 per cent bonus offered by the government for agreeing to not move the court. This translates to a little over 30 per cent of the total 958 acres acquired for the Tata small car plant and ancillary units.
It says compensation cheques have been collected for just 650 acres till date. And this compensation does not in any way imply consent, since it is being accepted as a last resort after the fait-accompli of acquisition. And even this figure amounts to around 67 per cent, which is still lower than the 96 per cent claimed by the CPI(M).
All too clearly the lack of consent presented no hurdle for the CPI(M) to go ahead and deliver the land into Tata hands. And neither Brinda nor Prakash Karat felt any qualms about peddling a deliberate falsehood about ‘consent’ subsequently disproved by the WB Government’s own affidavit! Were the people of Nandigram wrong then, to continue with their visible and determined dissent that could not under any circumstances be construed as ‘consent’? Had they not done so, would they have succeeded in preventing the SEZ from coming up on their lands?
We have repeatedly pointed out how the much-touted ‘compensation package’ at Singur inverts the principles of Operation Barga (which allotted 75% of the agricultural produce to the sharecropper and only 25% to the absentee landlord), giving just 25% compensation for sharecroppers. Neither Brinda Karat nor PD have ever bothered to explain the logic for this reversal.
IT is a peasants’ movement in West Bengal : Citizens’Panel from Delhi consisting Profs. Sumit and Tanika Sarkar, Supreme Court Advocate Colin Gonsalves, Mainstream Editor Sumit Chakravorty, Reader in a Delhi University College Krishna Mazumdar. “The State Govt. alleged that there was a communal overtone to the struggle of the people but we found remarkable communal unity on the ground and that people’s protests cut across political differences.” “We found the people’s fury was genuine. It was partly due to lack of transparency. They were not part of any discussion about matters that concerned their lives and livelihood. Singur villagers learnt of the land acquisition for the Tata factory from newspapers. They claim that holders of 360 acres have refused to accept cash compensation. There is no land for land rehabilitation, only cash compensation and that too much below the actual price” (Hindu, 04 Feb. 07)
However, Brinda Karat and Co. may be right that the motive behind March 14 may not be land grab – it was instead a cold-blooded act of retribution on the very people who had been staunch members of the CPI(M) till the other day. It was an act of collective punishment, in keeping with the promise Benoy Konar made in January: “We’ll surround them and make their life hell.” Tanika Sarkar, in her moving and disturbing narration of her visit to Nandigram after the carnage, recounts how villager after villager repeats the threats they receive: “Cross over and join the CPI(M) camp, or else we’ll cut you to pieces”.
But the victims of March 14 were left in no doubt of the nature of the ‘crime’ which had brought such punishment onto their heads. According to Tanika Sarkar, women who show the marks of sexual assault and beatings all over their bodies said that their attackers in police uniform (referred to interchangeably by the villagers as prashasan, cadre and police) accompanied the violence with abuse – “Saali, jomi debi na? Jomi rakhbi?” (Bitch, won’t hand over your land? You’ll keep your land will you?”
√ “The work of the police is not to make drawings or teach in schools and colleges. The police are the instrument of repression. It is for the government to decide whom they shall repress... “
√ “Some forces are trying to indulge in violence and create disorder for lowly and narrow political interest and bring ruination to West Bengal. It is democracy to repress these forces in the interests and security of the people of the state.” – Benoy Konar, CPI(M) Kisan Sabha leader, People’s Democracy, 10.12.06
√ “Human rights are only for citizens...police must be merciless in dealing with ultras” - Buddhadeb addressing a gathering on World Human Rights Day (10.12.06)
√ “When Medha or Mamta visit Singur next, we’ll ask our women to show their backsides” – CPI(M) Central Committee Member Benoy Konar. (See Anandabazar Patrika, 30 Jan 07)
√ “In this season, many snakes come out of their holes; you must take the flag (jhanda) off from the sticks (danda) and use the sticks to crush the snakes’ heads.” – CPI(M) Central Committee Member Suryakanta Mishra, referring to the protestors at Singur and Nandigram. (See Anandabazar Patrika, 30Jan 07)
√ "Central Committee member Benoy Konar, asked about Profs. Sumit and Tanika Sarkar’s visit to Singur and Nandigram: “I can’t do anything if the historians decide to go back in time. ....Their views are anti-industry” (Indian Express, 31Jan 07)
The CPI(M) PB statement states clearly: “It is regrettable that lives have been lost in police firing. But the organised elements who utilised bombs and pipe guns on the police have to take the blame.” So the CPI(M)’s ‘introspection’ about ‘mistakes’ leads it to the same ‘blame the outsider’ conclusion! Brinda Karat and other party leaders have referred to the Nandigram struggle as an a bid to ‘cleanse’ Nandigram of CPI(M) supporters. It is claimed that 2500-3000 such supporters have been driven out, turned into refugees and subjected to terror. What about their human rights, she asks? She adds that “shockingly and sickeningly”, reports by Left intellectuals have not referred to this crime against hapless CPI(M) people, who are also poor peasants just like the victims of police firing. Surely the police had a responsibility to curb the “lawlessness and anarchy”, restore order and ensure these refugees could return?
NOTED Historian Sumit Sarkar, after his visit to Singur wrote in “A Question Marked In Red” (Indian Express, 9 Jan. 07):
“...there is no doubt that the vast bulk of the villagers we met are opposed to the take-over of land and most are refusing compensation.
... we found much evidence of force being employed, particularly on the nights of September 25 and December 2.
...What the villagers repeatedly alleged was that along with the police, and it seems more than the police, party activists, whom the villagers call ‘cadres’ — which has sadly become a term of abuse — did the major part of the beating up..”
No fact-finding report, even the one by Medha Patkar, has referred to the Nandigram struggle as a ‘peaceful’ one. The Nandigram mass was an organised and experienced Left mass, which had witnessed the Singur developments and learnt from them. In Singur, they had seen police and CPI(M) cadres employ terror and succeed in grabbing land. So at the very first sign of land grab (the HDA notification) they lost no time in ensuring that Singur could not be repeated. They quite openly cut roads to prevent police entry, chased out CPI(M) cadres who were terrorising the movement locally, and organised night-watch and crude arms to keep at bay the regular assaults and bombings from the CPI(M) camp in Khejuri.
The question to be asked is: do such tactics amount to “lawlessness and anarchy”, or do they fall under the rubric of a democratic movement?
Eminent Leftist historians have vouched for the fact that the tactics used by the Nandigram peasants are all classic strategies used during the Tebhaga movement and the freedom struggle of which Nandigram was a major centre. History records that Nandigram and Tamluk subdivisions had formed the Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar, or Tamralipta National Government in 1942, with people evicting the British from the area digging trenches to keep police out, and ‘liberating’ the area for months. If the movement of the peasants of Nandigram against forcible land acquisition is ‘anarchy and lawlessness’, so too must CPI(M) term the Quit India Movement, Tebhaga movement and the Telengana movement to be ‘anarchy and law-lessness’!
CPI(M) has been fond of throwing out the accusation that Nandigram was being turned into a ‘Liberated Zone’ by the anti-SEZ protestors. Well, comrades, can you tell us what is an SEZ - if not a Liberated Zone where corporates are free to loot, levy taxes, enjoy massive subsidies, take over the functions of a municipality, and enjoy impunity from many laws of the land?! If people conduct a ‘Quit India’ struggle against such a Liberated Zone where they lose all their freedoms, how can any Communist, or any democratic individual, blame them?
Further, according to the values and standards of the Left, can there be any equivalence between the might of the State’s repressive arm and the cadres of a privileged and dominant ruling party working in close co-ordination with the State machinery, and the ‘violence’ incurred in the course of the resistance of poor and desperate peasantry?
What of the people in the CPI(M) refugee camps? By all accounts, these camps continue to function as base camps for the CPI(M)’s war against the anti-land-grab forces. Villagers told Tanika Sarkar that the terror is far from over; every night there is a rain of bombs from the CPI(M) base at Khejuri. But it is true that the CPI(M) base, whatever remains of it, are in fact poor peasants too. Brinda Karat asks, “Who gains from this division of the poor, from their feelings of insecurity, loss of livelihood?” Well, comrade, isn’t the answer staring in our faces? The corporates stand to gain land, and the CPI(M), their lost dominance, by pitting one section of the poor against another.
We would like to remind Brinda Karat that on March 14, and before too, she and other leaders had claimed that “outsiders” were responsible for the violence, while Nandigram’s own people were all for the SEZ and for the CPI(M). Yechury even on March 14, had declared in a press conference that “Outsiders, frustrated by the lack of support from local peasantry in their bid to whip up false fear of land grab, had attacked the police, necessitating firing.”
Subsequently, however, the CPI(M) has had to admit that CPI(M) supporters had in fact deserted the party and joined the struggle fearing land grab.
Brinda Karat will have to answer: is it really possible that this mass of people, who had voted CPI(M) or CPI to power in election after election, had more faith in discredited Mamata and the weak Naxalites rather than in the assurances of their own MP, MLA, and local CPI(M) leaders? How come they turned against their own party and chased them out, on the ‘instigation’ of those whom they had never before given the time of day? Does the CPI(M) version sound remotely plausible - that this CPI(M) strong-hold was tamely led astray and agreed to view the CPI(M) as an enemy, on some false and baseless fears whipped up by a tremendously weak Opposition?
The answer is self-evident: they were forced to lose faith in the CPI(M) because its cadres and leaders, instead of asking their opinion and respecting it, had declared the decision to ride rough-shod over their refusal to give up land. Overnight, CPI(M) forces had turned into a menacing and organized army, agents of corporates who threatened them to give up land or face eviction by force. “Consent...or else” was the message – but the Left training of the mass kicked in, and they chose the tools of resistance that generations of struggle had taught them.
In other words, was March 14 a mistake or a massacre?
Brinda Karat has taken issue with several fact-finding reports including that of the CPI(ML) team; and has advised that concocting tales of sexual assault will harm the credibility of the women’s movement demand that women’s own statements be accepted as evidence in the absence of any other evidence.
Brinda Karat must be asked a question in return. She is a Rajya Sabha MP, and has been the leader of a highly respected women’s organisation.
The CPI(ML) report relies very little on hearsay – and more on the clear evidence of those who lay injured in hospitals, whose injuries have been recorded medically, and who can definitely be taken to have been on the spot on March 14. In that report, it is mentioned that one woman in Tamluk Hospital who has indeed filed a complaint of rape, has one breast lacerated with a sharp weapon. In SSKM Hospital, too, there is yet another woman whose buttocks are hanging, having been nearly severed by a chopper.
Why does Brinda Karat remain silent on these injuries – clear evidence that the attack on March 14 was not merely somewhat excessive ‘firing’ by a provoked police? Why has she not bothered to go and see for herself if these reports of chopper injuries on private parts of women is indeed true or not, and whether these women could be helped to file complaints and pursue the case?
Again, the clear medical evidence recorded by a large team of doctors from Kolkata is that 70% to 80% of the patients in four camps they set up two weeks after the massacre, have had serious eye problems since March 14 – caused by some substance in the tear gas. Eye irritation caused by ordinary tear gas does not last so long – and certainly cannot cause loss of eyesight. Whereas several people in Nandigram have lost much of their vision due to exposure to the tear gas. Again, this is something Brinda Karat is silent on, and certainly has not bothered to go herself and verify.
If there is any iota of truth in the CPI(M) accusations that their supporter was raped – it is highly condemnable, abhorrent and indefensible, and must be punished. But it cannot be used as a reason to deny the clear evidence of a planned state-sponsored carnage on March 14, or of largescale sexual violence on women of the anti-land grab movement.
Brinda Karat expresses pious outrage at the ‘cynical’ way in which women and children were placed in the front row. Did these women suffer chopper injuries on breast and buttocks because they happened to be in placed in the front row, comrade? How come Comrade Brinda never says a word of condemnation for the fact that the police were not deterred by the presence of women and children, and police and her party’s cadre indulged in sexual assaults accompanied by abuse?
Were children torn apart and killed? Describing one woman who lies in hospital, crying inconsolably because she says a child was torn from her arms and killed before her eyes, Tanika Sarkar said “One can only hope that such heart-rending accounts of children being beaten to death, drowned or chopped up are some sort of collective hallucination, and the children are actually safe. But one fears they are true.”
The statement by pro-CPI(M) intellectuals had said the West Bengal Government would pay compensation to those affected by the Nandigram attacks. One wonders how come not a single one of Brinda’s articles on Nandigram mentions a word about compensation for those who’ve lost their loved ones, their eyesight, their organs? These are agrarian labourers and marginal farmers, how can they afford blindness; how are their families surviving while earning men and women are forced to do long hospital stints?
On the evidence of the use of a huge number of bullets not usually used by police, of firing above waist level (to kill rather than to rather than to disperse), of the arrests of ten CPI(M) men in a brick kiln with police uniforms and a stockpile of ammunition – both Brinda Karat and PD offer no explanation except to promise that a proper probe, preferably by the judiciary rather than by CBI, will reveal the truth. Meanwhile, inexplicably, the CBI findings have been suppressed and the hearing on it delayed by the High Court.
A whole section of Left economists and intellectuals who have been very close to the CPI(M) have raised serious questions about the WB Government’s commitment to industrialisation and employment generation.
Would Brinda and the PD care to answer or explain:
They speak of ‘facts’, why are they silent on the details of the Tata deal at Singur – details that the WB Government tried to suppress as a ‘trade secret’ until forced to reveal them in court?
Has Brinda Karat happened to read an article in (‘Santa Claus Visit the Tatas’, Telegraph, 30 March 2007) by Ashok Mitra, former Finance Minister of West Bengal in CPI(M)’s own LF Government? We quote from the article:
“...The Tatas are, of course, rolling in money. Only a couple of months ago, they invested a sum roughly the equivalent of Rs 50,000 crore to take command of a giant international steel complex. To persuade this fabulously rich group to start a modest-sized car factory here, the state government has already spent something around Rs 150 crore to acquire close to 1,000 acres of land. ...the Tatas have been handed over this entire tract of land on a ninety-year lease without any down payment at all. ... the government is, really and truly, making a free gift to the Tatas of the land in Singur.
...The state government is, in addition, offering the Tata group a gift coupon in the way of a loan worth Rs 200 crore carrying a nominal interest of only 1 per cent (as against the rate currently charged by the banks of at least 10 per cent); ...the entire proceeds for the first ten years of the value-added tax on the sale of this precious car in West Bengal are proposed to be handed back to the Tatas, again at a nominal interest of only 1 per cent. ...
All told, therefore, the Tatas are being offered the allure of around Rs 850 crore by the state government...”
Finally, Mitra asks: “Does it not appear obscene that a state government, carrying a burden of debt of more than Rs 150,000 crore and with a countless number of problems, would offer a freebie of Rs 850 crore to an industrial group which has made an outlay of over Rs 50,000 crore only the other day to satisfy their expansionary ego overseas?”
Does Brinda Karat or the PD have an answer? Has Ashok Mitra also turned ‘anti-industry’ according to them?
We also quote from an article by Prof. Tanika Sarkar in Hardnews:
“...industries (in West Bengal) were allowed to die away, leaving about 50, 000 dead factories and the virtual collapse of the jute industry. ...While factories remained closed, half the annual funds under the NREGA (Rural Employment Guarantee scheme) were sent back untouched. We may say that the history (of the LF Government) shows no concern for promoting real industrialisation, or for public concerns, nor for employment generation. What flourished with tender government nurture had been upper middle class luxuries and corporate profits...”
Prof. Tanika’s article goes on to say how in the mid-90s, huge tracts of highly cultivated land were taken over by the Jyoti Basu Government at New Rajarhat near Kolkata. No industry was set up on this land – instead what came up were ‘Vedic Villages’ for the super rich, set up by corporate groups. Various observers report that in these complexes, each house boasts of a swimming pool, and there are massive water sports complexes!
Why was this land from not used for productive industry? Why were the poor evicted from fertile land in vain? Wouldn’t a fraction of the Tata freebie of 850 crores have been enough free locked industrial land for fresh industries?
Finally, Brinda Karat tries to make for the lack of answers to glaring questions, by falling back on the good old standby of alleging sinister conspiracies and a ‘foreign’ hand. She claims that the “sea route through the Bay of Bengal is being used by the Maoists to come into Nandigram”. Once they land, will they use the Imperius Curse to hex the CPI(M)’s supporters into turning into Naxalites, comrade? Better allow fantasy to remain in the pages of Harry Potter rather than insulting people’s intelligence with tall tales!
Brinda Karat also alleges a US conspiracy angle, saying a US official met with “a leader of the minority community”. This may sound like stuff and nonsense, but the attempt to demonise the minority community by suggesting it is ‘anti-national’ is dangerous. And if meeting a US official makes one anti-communist and anti-CPI(M), what do we make of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya? On March 7 Buddha was praised by no less than the US Consul General in Kolkata, Henry V. Jardine, for embracing the doctrine that capital has no colour. And is it coincidence that on April 14, exactly a month after the Nandigram massacre, the Bush administration has invited Buddha to pay an official visit to the US? Issuing the public invitation, United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab said “We would like to hear about the political and development aspects of his success”. Surely Bush is not interested in CPI(M)’s success in revolutionary struggles and expanding communism – it’s Buddha’s success in wooing capital and putting down protest that he wants to hear about!
[Liberation May 2007]
MOST stories of corporate land grab have a predictable script: with identifiable themes like forced land acquisition, masked by ‘consent’ forged at gun point, handing of precious fertile land to mega corporates are throwaway prices with various other free services thrown in, and finally, if people insist on resistance, batons and bullets to suppress them, with both police and cadres of ruling parties and local goon squads working in tandem with each other.
Some new aspects have been added to the script as people evolve new modes of struggle and take the resistance to new heights. Let us glance at some of the sites of such land grab and people’s resistance.
In 2005, farmers of the highly fertile Dadri in Western UP, on the outskirts of the Delhi, found that what was declared to be the world’s largest gas-based power plant was going to come up on their land, to be taken over from them without their consent.
At Dadri, farmers were not opposed to land acquisition for a power project per se; but the rate of compensation proposed was outrageously low. Land in this region costs Rs 13, 500 per square metre, while Reliance had proposed a compensation of Rs 150 per square metre and CM Mulayam Singh had announced a rate of Rs 350 per square metre.
The state government went about acquiring land under the Land Acquisition Act. Significantly, the state government discounted nearly 40 per cent of the land cost to Reliance as part of its industrial policy to attract greater investments. There have also been reports that the stamp duty was waived and Reliance was required to pay only 40 per cent of the cost while the rest was treated as subsidy.
Farmers’ suspicions that much of the 2500 acres of land would be used, not for a power project but for a speculative real estate project, were confirmed further by the plans floated for a Dhirubhai Ambani Energy City.
How was ‘consent’ achieved? As usual under duress: police inspectors from the local station at Pulkhawa regularly visited the village and took away farmers to make them sign papers confirming acceptance of compensation. Those who did not comply were beaten up and hauled off and forced to put thumb impressions on blank papers.
Eventually farmers from Bajhera Kurd, Nandlal Pur, Jadepur, Dehrai, Kakrana, Dhaulana and Mehmendpur (from the villages, where land was being acquired) began a dharna on the outskirts of Bajhera Kurd on 25 November 2005. In July 2006, eight months into the dharna, the villagers decided enough was enough and pulled off the boundary fencing (set up by Reliance Ltd.) from their lands and decided to plough it. They sought support and found it from a few social and political formations like the Jan Morcha, CPI (ML) Liberation, Indian Justice Party and few other social organisations. On 8th July, a panchayat of several villages (sath-chaurasi) was going to be held and land was to be ploughed since they were losing out on livelihood from land as well as compensation.
Despite not having paid the full compensation, or having laid a single brick for construction of the power plant, and reportedly without even have received clearance for their SEZ, Reliance Ltd. filed a writ petition before the Allahabad High Court for protection of “their” project site on the evening of 7 July. This even as the villagers were sitting on dharna not at the marked project site but outside it, close to their homes.
The High Court swung into action and issued directions for taking appropriate measures for the project site’s security. The High Court order was handed over to the Dadri District Magistrate late into the night of 7 July.
The PAC (nearly 150 trucks arrived as reported by the villagers of Dehrai, Kakrana and Bajhera khurd) and began to force themselves into the village with several local goons, who were identified by the village people. The goons were also in khaki uniform but without badges along with other PAC men. This was even while the High Court was still issuing orders. However due to the large number of protestors who had gathered the policemen were unable to push themselves towards the dharna site and began firing.
On 8 July, at 6.00 a.m., the villagers noticed the PAC had crept through the fields and there were fresh reinforcements. The police said they had come to hold talks and gathered the village men at the dharna site and started speaking to them even as the PAC moved forward and started a brutal lathi-charge on the people without any provocation.
Thereafter the PAC entered the Bajhera Khurd village and moved from house to house beating up everyone on sight. The PAC randomly picked houses and broke doors and walls of the houses; women were dragged out by their hair and legs, abused and severely beaten. Women across the village and from various age groups were attacked. The bodies of women, old men, physically challenged and crippled people, and little children were not spared; rather they were singled out for the attentions of the attackers.
Most media gave a most distorted report of the incident; but the few news reporters who did try to cover the brutality were themselves not spared.
A fact-finding report on the Dadri incident by the Forum for Democratic Initiatives observed that “Corporations are dictating to people that they should take what is being offered and when they refuse state machinery, instead of being accountable to the people, acts as the private army of the corporate house and swings into action to unleash looting, molestation, assaults and terror. If this is the model for the setting up of special economic and manufacturing zones, 40 kilometres from the capital of the country, it has ominous implications for the other 150 special economic and manufacturing zones planned around the country and should be matter of concern to all Indian citizens interested in preserving their democratic rights.”
The developments since July 2006 - at Singur, Nandigram and POSCO – have seen those ‘ominous’ implications unfold.
Raigad in coastal Maharashtra is yet another site where farmers have taken a cue from Nandigram, and have succeeded in pushing the State Government onto the back foot. In Raigad district alone no less than none SEZs are due to come up, covering 50, 000 acres of land. The movement has intensified most against Reliance’s proposed SEZ of 10, 000 hectares covering some of the most fertile land in the Pen taluka. The SEZ Virodhi Sangarsh Samiti, a coalition of 24 coastal villages in Raigarh district of Maharahstra, is at the forefront of this struggle, and the struggle has also drawn political forces like the PWP (Peasants and Workers Party) into the movement. Around 4-5 lakh people would be affected by the project, mostly people of the Agri and Katkari tribes and Koli community.
The people here have raised the slogan: “Zamin amcha hakka chi, Nahin konacha bappa chi” (the land is ours not anyone else’s paternal property), and have angrily declared that unlike the farmers of Vidarbha who are committing atmahatya (suicide), they are willing to commit hatya (murder) to save their land.
For the past twenty years, farmers of this region have been fighting for water from the Hetawane dam. Instead of the promised water, they have been offered a Special Economic Zone (SEZ)! The State Government has been acquiring land on behalf of Reliance. In this area, most of the people are small and marginal farmers and about 30 per cent of them are landless. Therefore Reliance’s carrot of a 25 lakh-per-hectare compensation package has not cut much ice with them, since they know very well that the cash will reach very few, and will not replace the livelihood that they get from the land.
A three-member committee constituted by the Maharashtra Congress came out with a report warning that Nandigram would be repeated at Raigad if the Government went on with land acquisition. An embarrassed AICC rapped the State Congress on the knuckles for its “immature and hasty” report, pointing out that this report amounted to an indictment of the Congress itself, since “all the departments related to SEZs were held with Congress - from chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, industry minister Ashok Chavan, revenue minister Narayan Rane and relief and rehabilitation minister Patangrao Kadam all belong to the Congress.” Clearly, thanks to Nandigram, the Maharashtra Congress can see the spectre of peasants’ anger against its own seat of power, and that is what has caused it to back off, leaving Reliance to take the front seat in land grab.
Faced with this militant mood of farmers, and in the wake of the Nandigram fallout, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh issued instructions to the Raigad district collector to halt all land acquisition involving farmers in coastal Raigad. However, land acquisition notices are yet to be officially withdrawn. Meanwhile, it has been announced that farmers can sign MoUs with Reliance directly.
The battle is far from won – since past experience has shown that Governments will do all they can to facilitate companies in land grab even when land acquisition happens at the company’s behest rather than the Government’s. But the farmers’ movement in Raigad shows all signs of determination and unabated militancy.
The BJD-BJP Orissa Government of Naveen Patnaik has been on a spree of signing MoUs with national and international steel majors, indiscriminately handing over mineral rich resources and fertile land to them. Kalinganagar showed how the State was willing to gun down defenceless peasants and tribals to make way for Tata Steel. Since the massacre of January 2, 2006 the people of Kalinganagar have held a continuous siege, preventing the plant from coming up.
The most massive land grab in the State is by the South Korean company POSCO. With the largest FDI yet of around 51,000 crores of rupees, POSCO is to take over 8000 acres of land, directly displacing around 30,000 people from 3 panchayats – Dhinkia, Nuagaon and Gadakujanga, and 20,000 acres of cultivated land will be affected indirectly. Side by side, two iron belt mines of Gandhamardhan and Malangtoli hills of the tribal areas will be given as lease to the company.
POSCO is to set up a massive steel plant at Paradeep, and also, is the first company in independent India to have been given permission to construct its private port at Jatadhari. Apart from the steel plant displacing those who subsist on agriculture, and produce the best quality betel (paan) leaves, and engage in fishing, the port will also damage the coastline, destroy the nesting habitat of Olive Ridley turtles, encroach on mangroves (natural protection against super cyclones and coastal cyclones) and draw water from a watershed which feeds the Bhitarakanika mangrove forests which has the status of a sanctuary. POSCO will extract near about 12 thousand to 15 thousand crores litres of water from zobra and naraj barrage of river Mahanadi, and as a result the farmers irrigating the lands by the canals of Taldanda, Machhagaon, Birupa of Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur, and Kendrapada district will suffer drought. Apart from land and the port, POSCO will also hold the regions’ rich mineral resources virtually captive.
In recent times, taking the cue from Nandigram, three villages have barricaded themselves and are living in fear of a confrontation. No less than 20 armed platoons of paramilitary forces are the ready, menacing them with their presence. The presence of the multinational POSCO, the State Government, the paramilitary and the BJD henchmen ganged up against the farmers, fisher-folk and workers foreshadows Nandigram. The struggle committee has declared that a ‘Sishu Sangram Vahini’, which comprises children of the area between the age group of 5 and 15, as well as a women volunteer force will be the first to face the police.
The PM has thrown his weight in with the POSCO project completely, assuring the Orissa CM of the UPA Central Government’s full support.
This is one of the biggest SEZs due to come up in the country – a sprawling multi-product SEZ over 25,000 acres of land between Gurgaon and Jhajjar. 1395 acres lf land has been acquired by the State Government in Gurgaon district and transferred to the joint venture company. This land would have cost around 10 crore per acre in the open market – and the SEZ (of which the Government is a partner) has acquired it as undisclosed prices, which are likely to be extremely low. Observers point out that having acquired land worth 13950 crore virtually free, even if the company gives Rs 22 lakh per acre for the rest of 23, 605 acres, it spends only 5193.1 crore and has a straight profit of 8756.9 crore from the deal – all without even starting any business there!
Now, with the 5000 hectare cap on SEZ size, there is talk that either the rule will be waived in this particular case (as Kamal Nath has declared that exceptions are always possible) or it will be circumvented by turning into one large multi-product SEZ and several small ones.
Despite claims that the land is barren, it is apparent that the land is fertile. The company has been buying land in small pockets from farmers some of whom have been fooled into believing that they will not be displaced. Reliance has announced a ‘best ever’ compensation scheme, promising farmers a “share” in the “development”.
But slowly it has begun to sink in for the people of Jhajjar that their land (those parts that they do not intend to part with voluntarily) is bound to be lost since vast areas of agricultural land cannot be allowed to remain as ‘free’ islands in the ‘special’ zones’. Villagers of 22 panchayats have, since 31 December 2006 decided not to sell land anymore to Reliance under the present conditions.
At Singur, 957 acres of land was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act by the West Bengal State Government to hand over to the Tatas for a small car factory. When the people’s resistance to corporate land grab erupted there, CPI(ML) was quick to join them. Comrade Tapan Batbyal, member of the CPI(ML)’s Hooghly district committee and West Bengal State committee, was the icharge of the CPI(ML)’s nearly month-long camp at Singur. He played an exemplary role in personally leading the mass resistance against the police-cadre onslaught of first and second December and was seriously injured, arrested and hospitalised along with Comrade Bilas of AISA and others. He gives a brief account of his experience at Singur.
For us the AIALA camp was a necessary base for our independent political work. By the time it was set up, Sajal Adhikari (AIALA leader and party State committee member based in Hooghly district – ed.) had already been established as a natural leader of the movement while Bilas and Chaitali (AIPWA state secretary and party State committee member) had become popular as “our own son” and “didi” (sister) respectively. So there was full cooperation from the villagers. But there was political opposition from constituents of the “Save Agricultural Land Committee” (SALC) — the TMC, SUCI and the Hooghly district unit of CPI (ML) New Democracy — who argued that there should be only one camp with the SALC banner. Even posters were put up around the camp denouncing our “separatism”. Initially such propaganda had some impact on some people Singur but they were quick to accept our position that our independent existence within the movement was necessary to ensure the involvement of friendly left and democratic forces who hesitated to share a banner with the Congress or TMC. People’s support grew so much that when we were about to withdraw that camp after five days, that is on 11 November, the villagers came forward. “Return the pandal decorators’ materials”, they said, “we will build you that camp with our own materials, and we will take care of all your needs.” And that’s what they actually did. So the camp continued right up to December 2, the day Singur was attacked and ransacked by the police-cadre marauders. From the camp we conducted a lively mass political campaign throughout the entire affected area of Singur bloc. The basic content of this campaign was to prepare the masses for the impending attack. The absence of a unified command made it impossible to plan an organised resistance or counter-attack, but the people’s response to our campaign was highly encouraging. In fact we had set up the camp to rouse the people, but immensely more was the inspiration and moral strength we drew from them.
You know about the midnight attack on the masses staging at peaceful seat-in demonstration at the Singur bloc office on 25 September. The masses, including a large number of women and children, were injured and had to beat a retreat that night. A sort of retaliation came our way on 23 November. The DYFI organised a rally beside the Durgapur expressway as a sort of show of strength. A group of villagers (mostly women) went there to stage a black flag demonstration. Resisted by the police, the women blew their conch shells. Hundreds of people came out of the nearby villages and chased the police away. The DYFI fellows ended the mass meeting in a hurry and got going.
Another militant confrontation took place on 29 November. There was a LF rally (where the smaller constituents also took part) at the Durgapur expressway. Thousands of villagers staged a counter demonstration with black flags, burnt an effigy of LF chairman Biman Bose, and rent the air with angry slogans.
Just after this rally, the district administration clamped section 144 throughout the entire bloc and banned all meetings and processions. It was clear that the offensive would start any moment now. On 30 November we distributed leaflets at railway stations and nearby areas defying police restrictions and returned to our base to prepare the masses for the battle.
On December 1 the police and administration started the operation — i.e., fencing off the area earmarked for the Tata factory — from the Joymollah (the only village in the area with a considerable CPI (M) base) side. We mobilised as many people as possible from the canal embankment to erect a human wall of resistance. In this we encountered a lot of back-pull, so to say, by some SALC activists who invoked the bogey of section 144. Ultimately we succeeded and the militant spirit of the assembled masses was enough to make the enemy beat a retreat.
After the dress rehearsal, the final assault came on the next morning. A huge police-RAF force in battle gear was taking position on the Durgapur expressway. Brave men and women came down on the fields and the police began a fierce baton- charge. Comrade Bilas and I, long with others, were among the first to be targeted and severely beaten up. Ordinary villagers – among them many women and a number of old people – were also arrested. The police then entered the villages like an occupation army and the sheer scale of the torture you have seen on the TV. But two points I would like to mention here.
One is the extremely touching scene of women and old people on the fields crying out in tears, “we have not sold our land; we are sitting on our own land, why are you beating us like this? Why are you arresting us?” The other is the role of CPI (M) cadres. As during the Seventies, they played the role of police agents on December 2, identifying the main organisers of the movement.
Among a total of 49 arrested, a large majority were wounded, many quite seriously. But only four of us where hospitalised, that too after an in inordinate delay. We started a hunger strike in the hospital. The court ordered our release on December 7, but due to some suspicious “technical flaw” we were actually released only on the December 11. Meantime, a great piece of news reached us in jail – that of the successful party procession which broke two successive police cordons and culminated in a highly spirited rally on the road to Singur.
Nandigram is a Block under the East Medinipur district of West Bengal. Situated on the bank of the Haldi river, it is very close to the port town of Haldia. The West Bengal government proposes to set up an SEZ (a chemical hub) at Nandigram, with 10,000 acres earmarked for the notorious Salim group of Indonesia. In fact, the total plan of the proposed SEZ goes beyond Nandigram into the neighbouring Mahishadal and Sutahata constituencies (22,500 acres of land within the Nandigram Assembly constituency comprising Nandigram and Khejuri blocks and another 13,000 acres of Mahishadal and Sutahata).
Like Singur, the land earmarked for the Nandigram SEZ is also quite fertile. The area is famous for paddy and betel leaf as well as vegetables and fisheries. The region has a high percentage of Muslim population – 61% of the people threatened with loss of land are Muslim. The rest belong mostly to SCs and extreme backward castes.
Unrest broke out at Nandigram on January 3 when the Haldia Development Authority (HDA), of which the Chairperson is the all-powerful local CPI(M) MP Lakshman Seth, issued an acquisition notice for the proposed SEZ. The peasants, mobilized under the banner of “Nandigram Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee”, took out protest rallies, cut off road links to the area by digging out a portion of the main approach road and by putting road blocks in several places and attacking the police forces who had come there to discipline the agitating peasants.
On 4 January, the West Bengal State Committee of CPI(ML) sent a factfinding delegation of 6 members, including leaders of the party’s West Bengal State Committee, as well as AISA activists from Jadavpur University and Jamia Millia Islamia. The police intercepted and detained them, prevented them from proceeding towards Nandigram and ultimately arrested them on a range of fabricated charges including attempt to murder, arson, and possession of arms and so on.
Following threatening statements issued on television on January 4 by CPI(M) Kisan front leader Benoy Konar, January 6-7 saw the first brutal assault on the protesting peasants. At least six people were killed and several others went missing in a mid-night attack on anti-eviction protestors by CPI(M) cadres at a village called Sonachura near Nandigram. The police forces, which were reportedly stationed at a distance of only a few kilometers away from the place, equipped with about 10 cars and a large contingent of combat forces, stayed absolutely passive. Sections of the press reported that the police were sent only to prevent the exit of people from that place.
It should be noted that all the affected panchayats of Nandigram (seven panchayats – Bhekutia, Mohammadpur, Kendemari, Sonachura-9, Sonachura-10, Shamsabad and Gokulnagar – and one – Kalicharanpur – in Khejuri) are run by the CPI(M) and the CPI. The CPI is however treated very much like a junior partner – while the Nandigram Assembly seat and Bhekutia panchayat are held by the CPI, the Haldia MP actually calls all the shots in tandem with his party MLAs from Mahishadal (represented by his wife Tamalika Panda Seth) and Sutahata.
A sample of the outrageous lie concocted by the police in the FIR against the CPI(ML) fact-finding team:
‘During investigation, it could be revealed that the above accused persons are directly involved in this case and took active part in this incident. During interrogation of the accused persons, they also confessed their guilt before public and also before police regarding their guilt and also assured the Police Party that they will help...in arresting of the rest accused persons and also to recover the snatched rifles, ammunitions and the offending weapons...’
The ACJM Haldia used the above as a pretext to deny bail, observing that if they were kept in custody, “it seems to me that there is chance of recovering of weapon and arrest of other associates...”
The CPI(M) has claimed that those killed at Nandigram in January were mostly CPI(M) cadres. Well, people like Bharat Mandal (32), Sheikh Salim (22) and Biswajit Maiti (14) were indeed associated with the CPI(M) – the last named in fact hailed from a family of tebhaga veterans – but they were killed by none others than armed CPI(M) goons precisely because they had dared to rise in protest against the government’s eviction order. And if someone like Lakshman Samanta, CPI(M) panchayat member from Sonachura, was killed in retaliation by the masses it was because he was an integral part of the CPI(M)-led armed assault on the Nandigram people. And some people who figured in the CPI(M) list of party cadres killed at Nandigram – Lakshman Mandal and Bhudeb Mandal of Sonachura – have been found to be alive and safe.
For a week after the protests erupted, the CPI(M) and the LF Government kept reiterating that “No notification of land acquisition has been issued”. In the face of the fierce reaction, however, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya eventually beat a tactical retreat, admitting that “It was wrong of the Haldia Development Authority to issue such a notice ... Confusion among the local people is only natural if such a document from a State agency is brought to their notice” (The Hindu, Jan 10), and asking the DM to “tear up the notification issued by the Haldia Development Authority”. To date, however, MP Lakshman Seth, Chairman of the HDA, continues to uphold and defend the notification issued by him.
There remain several questions about that episode that are yet to receive a satisfactory answer by the CPI(M). If the notification by the HDA was indeed responsible for the “confusion” that claimed so many lives, why was no punitive action taken against the HDA Chairman, who after all is an MP from the CPI(M)? Why are the fabricated and outrageous criminal cases still continuing against the CPI(ML) activists?
Along with the admission of a ‘mistake’ by the HDA, however, senior CPI(M) leaders like Biman Bose, backed up by reports in the PD, continued to concoct tall tales of a “conspiracy” having been hatched in a ‘fourstoried house’ by Naxalites, Medha Patkar and Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind.
Subsequently, on March 14, a massacre by police and CPI(M) cadre followed that surpassed the January assaults in scale and brutality. A 5000- strong contingent of police was deployed ostensibly to ‘restore law and order’. Several newspapers and channels reported that CPI(M) cadres prevented them from entering Nandigram that day. The villagers, apprehensive of a police crackdown, wished to be sure not to give the police any pretext to attack. Feeling that the police would surely not attack defenceless women and children, the latter assembled in the form of prayer meetings of Hindus and Muslims in the maidan between Gokulnagar and Bhangabera. The police force stormed into the area, and began attacking those gathered there. The first to face the assault were women and children.
The police then lobbed teargas shells and fired rubber bullets – not to disperse a violent or unruly mob, but rather to literally create a smokescreen and confuse the crowd of people. Having done so, the firing began. The bullet wounds on the bodies of the people at hospitals are mostly in the waist, chest, back – bullets were cold-bloodedly aimed to kill. Local CPI(M) leaders oversaw the entire operation, and many villagers recounted how several of those in police uniform and helmets wore chappals on their feet, indicating that they were actually CPI(M) goons in uniform.
The official count for those killed is 14 – but a CPI(ML) fact-finding team was told that the count of those missing is massive, and there are reports of people having seen trawlers with dead bodies being driven out of Nandigram to an unknown destination. The CBI’s preliminary enquiries led them to arrest 10 CPI(M) cadres at a brick kiln, where evidence of a huge stash of ammunition and police uniforms were found.
There are several reports of sexual violence and assaults on women and even children. Women have not just suffered bullet injuries; their private parts have also been chopped at with sharp weapons. At least two women have filed complaints of gang rape.
Even till today, people continue to languish without proper medical treatment, and a large number suffer from mysterious eye ailments and near-blindness due to the ‘tear gas’ used on March 14, which seems to have been spiked with some other toxic substance.
March 14 has not happened all of a sudden – it is not a mistake that the LF Government or the CPI(M) has committed on the spur of the moment. Since January, the statements of senior CPI(M) leaders all clearly indicate the ominous threats to the people of Nandigram, and reading them after March 14, they sound like chilling prophecy. CPI(M) CC Member Benoy Konar said “We’ll surround them and make life hell for them”.
Health Minister Suryakant Mishra who is from East Midnapore, had declared “Snakes come out in the summer, you must use the flag like a stick and smash their heads” (see Ananda Bazaar Patrika, 31 January). And in the Kisan Rally of 11 March at Brigade Parade Ground, Buddhadeb also issued a veiled threat that no region would be allowed to hold the development of the State to ransom. These statements are as clear an incitement to and indication of violence as one can get.
Eventually, the WB CM has had to announce that the chemical hub and SEZ will not come up in Nandigram after all – but elsewhere in Haldia. Nandigram won the battle against SEZs – but have paid and are continuing to pay an incalculable cost for that victory. Till date, a civil war rages in Nandigram, and villagers face daily bombardment from CPI(M) cadres, while the local Administration turns a blind eye to the situation. No senior CPI(M) leader or responsible official has yet bothered even to visit Nandigram.
Nandigram underlines the CPI(M)’s inability to carry its own traditional mass base along with its pro-corporate, anti-peasant policies. Undoubtedly, Nandigram is a phenomenon that is likely to grow and spread in the days to come, and has created a model of resistance that others have begun to learn from.
EVEN as the Congress and the CPI(M) and their respective governments in New Delhi and Kolkata are busy covering up the state-sponsored barbarism in Nandigram, the ‘empowered group of union ministers’ has cleared the deck for the government’s SEZ campaign with only a few minor modifications in the SEZ policy. There will now be a cap on the size of SEZs – individual SEZs will henceforth not exceed 5,000 hectares. Half of the area in an SEZ will now be earmarked for the main processing activity with the other half still left free for real estate business. And governments will apparently no longer be involved in the act of forcible land acquisition – that part of the job will from now on be left to the free market! Of course, very soon after this announcement, Kamal Nath has declared that these rules are not final and binding – they will be reviewed if a particular case calls for it!
With these minor modifications, the government has now paved the way for immediate notification of formal approval for as many as 54 SEZs. Another 29 SEZs just await clearance from the Law Ministry, while 88 applications are now passing through the stage of verification. Then there are 162 SEZs that have already secured in-principle approval and only formalities remain to be completed. And then there are 350 new applications waiting for approval. Add up all these categories and the total is already close to seven hundred! If the average size of an SEZs is assumed to be 2000 hectares or 5000 acres, seven hundred SEZs would occupy around 1.4 million hectares or 14,000 square kilometres! And this is all prime land – agricultural or otherwise – in the vicinity of India’s major urban centres.
There is absolutely not a word regarding the enormous tax concessions that the Government’s own finance ministry had been questioning. Tax concessions apart, SEZs will continue to promise a massive immunity from the laws of the land. Municipal regulations or labour laws will all remain eminently dispensable. And it is not difficult to envisage how easily big corporations can subvert each of the minor modifications mooted by the group of ministers. To take just one example we already hear reports that the giant Reliance SEZ in Haryana, originally proposed to sprawl over 25,000 acres, will now be broken up into five separate zones: one large multi-product SEZ and four smaller ones, to conform to the new norms.
What will be the state’s role in the new scheme of things? We are told that the state will no longer directly lend its hand to the act of land acquisition. In other words, the peasants will now be directly subjected to corporate thuggery and the armed forces of the state will wield their batons and bullets to enforce corporate ‘rights’ on peasant land. If the people who are robbed of their land insist on the implementation of promises made to them – cash compensation, rehabilitation, employment in SEZ projects – they have Kalinganagars in store for them. Let us not forget that the gas victims of Bhopal have not been rehabilitated till date and Honda workers in Gurgaon were brutally beaten up just because they had dared to exercise their most elementary right to get unionised. The so-called ‘retreat’ of the state from the direct business of land acquisition does by no means signal any neutrality on the part of the state in enforcing corporate interests.
When the SEZ Act was passed in parliament, it saw little debate and no party, including the CPI(M) and its allies, voted against it. With mass resistance intensifying, the CPI(M) began making some noise about amending the SEZ Act. The amendments are mostly of a procedural nature and not substantive; in fact, it has now all boiled down to haggling over the size of SEZs. While the government is arrogantly bypassing all public debate and steamrolling its way to enforce its SEZ policy, the CPI(M) and its allies are fulfilling their duty by merely criticising the government for its ‘obsession’ with SEZs. And the government is perfectly aware that as the architect of “Operation Nandigram”, the CPI(M) has little moral courage and credibility left to risk a showdown with the Congress over the issue of SEZs. Indeed, for ruling parties of different hues, the debate over SEZs is just one more opportunity for another bout of shadow-boxing. The people of this country have become sick of this shadow-boxing, their opposition to SEZs is most urgent and real. They are staking their lives to resist this corporate land-grab.
It is now as clear as daylight why like POTA and AFSPA, we must fight for a complete repeal of the SEZ Act. Whichever way the government may implement this Act and whatever be the average or maximum size of the SEZs, the people of this country cannot accept this corporate land-grab which will drain away their resources into corporate coffers and mortgage their rights to brutal corporate power. Let us intensify the resistance to SEZs and let this resistance redefine the lines of political demarcation. Parties and governments that stand on the corporate side of the SEZ fence can have no claim to the legacy of the Left.
[Liberation May 2007]
