Land Acquisition Bill India 2011 Research Papers (original) (raw)

This unpublished PhD thesis deals with the various dimensions of development caused displacement in West Bengal under the Left Front Government. The main theme centers round land acquisition by the government for industrial projects and its adverse impacts on the peasants. The whole issue has been appraised under the context of the pro-peasant policies of the Left Front Government in West Bengal. So it is basically a policy study.

For achieving the target, a multidisciplinary methodological strategy has been adopted in which a variety of data sources have been tapped, that can be broadly divided into: (i) first hand empirical data collected through surveys and anthropological fieldwork and (ii) archival data obtained from the District Collectorate, Block Development Office, Government reports, Census, Gazettes, Panchayat Offices, Newspapers and West Bengal Assembly Proceedings. Since the study adopted a specific problem, viz., a critical evaluation of the transformation of the development policy of the Left Front Government after the liberalization, the case studies of two big industrial projects launched during 1990-96 in an agricultural district (erstwhile Medinipur now Paschim Medinipur) have been undertaken. The timing of the empirical observations in the field again coincided with a brief period of peasant resistance against the land take-over, which gave the author an unique opportunity to collect quantitative and qualitative data through participatory methodology.

The field observations revealed that although the peasants in this particular area have not been displaced from their homes, they were dispossessed from their major means of production that caused frustration and despondency to agriculture among this group of excellent farmers many of whom still survives on cultivation of crops. My field observations revealed that the peasants did not remain passive recipients of the government policy and put up resistance by adopting legal and extra-legal means. It was found during the fieldwork that some of the peasant leaders became quite efficient in helping the project affected families to file objections regarding compensation and organizing mass movements against acquisition. Secondly, it was also revealed that a huge plot of land remained unutilized and many families also did not get any compensation. This constitutes the first part of the narrative of disempowerment of the peasantry in West Bengal.

New research questions arose from within the field, viz. (i) how the administration tackles the objections under the existing legal framework? (ii) How land acquisition proceeds through its different stages? (iii) what are the problems and built-in difficulties in the land acquisition law in providing relief to the various segments of the project affected families? In order to collect first hand information to these questions, which arose in the field, it became necessary to go straight to the Land Acquisition Department of the District Collectorate and conduct archival research in the style usually followed by an historian dealing with contemporary affairs. The archival investigation revealed many hitherto unexplored areas on the administrative and legal aspects of land acquisition. For example, it was discovered that land acquisition and land reforms operate in contrasting manner and their simultaneous operation have immense policy implications for the State of West Bengal.

Besides this, archival search in the Land Acquisition Department yielded valuable information on the contemporary scenario of acquisition and also about how the administration looks at its own shortcomings and problems as regards land acquisition in the district. The overall dismal picture of land acquisition in terms of the huge volume of backlog and financial loss completes the second part of the gloomy narrative, which remains hidden from the public eye behind the rhetoric of development. People only come to know that such amount of land has been acquired for an industry but very rarely about the time taken to compensate a displaced family or the number of unfinished projects for which land has been acquired.

The archival search in the Land Acquisition Department again raised some crucial research questions, which are: (i) how the policy makers in West Bengal views land acquisition? And, (ii) what were the major issues on displacement that have been debated among the policy makers of the State? These questions led me to search the West Bengal Legislative Assembly Proceedings. Many interesting facts on land acquisition were revealed from the debates and questions of the Assembly Proceedings for the period 1946-1994. For example, the policy makers of West Bengal continued land acquisition with a State Act which was more anti-people in nature than the colonial Act from 1946-1994 and irrespective of political affiliation the elected people’s representatives never moved any bill to enact a legislation incorporating compulsory rehabilitative measures for project affected families. In the West Bengal Legislative Assembly the only adverse effect of land acquisition, which was emphasized, centred round the payment of compensation. The other adverse socioeconomic and political impacts of land acquisition like loss of agricultural land and common property resource, the pushing back of land reforms, disempowerment of the small and marginal peasants, plight of the sharecroppers and overshadowing of the panchayat were never discussed on the floor of the Assembly, even during the regime of the LFG. This is the third part of our narrative of land acquisition in West Bengal.

The analysis undertaken in the thesis revealed that land acquisition for big industries without a rehabilitation policy and legislation in West Bengal is a self-defeating strategy since it causes dispossession and disempowerment of the small and marginal farmers and sharecroppers and more importantly, pushes back the land reform policy for which the State had drawn the attention of the researchers and policy makers of India and abroad.

Finally, it can be stated that the study, is not limited to two cases of the installation of industrial projects in a particular district of West Bengal but addressed one of the current policy issues having national as well as international importance, viz., development caused forced displacement and rehabilitation.