Bengal govt wants to grab land

LANDED WOES: Acquisition may not leave WB in a position to afford a compensation package.

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Abhishek Patni

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Kolkata: For thirty years the CPI-M has empowered the agrarian community in West Bengal, but now it wants to grab farmland for industrialisation.

It's the biggest challenge facing the CPI-M today, but how does it propose to cope with it?

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has been saying that his government needs no more than 100,000 acres of farmland to realise dreams of industrialisation.

That's a small fraction of the 12.5 million acres under cultivation in Bengal, argues the Chief Minister. But with two out of three individuals in the state still dependent on agriculture for a living, farmland acquisition is a big challenge.

Says Left Front Cabinet Minister and RSP Leader, Kshiti Goswami, "Acquiring one lakh acre of land would be immensely difficult, more so, after Singur and Nandigram, where the government should have treaded cautiously."

What is more, there is still scope to create new jobs in the farm sector.

In his budget speech for 2007-2008, Bengal's Finance Minister, Asim Dasgupta, said that in one year, the state would create 2.5 lakh new jobs by increasing irrigated area from 70 to 72 per cent.

Hence, the obvious question: Why Singur and Nandigram?

Says CPI-M Leader and Left Front Chairman, Biman Bose, "The state government will keep the word to the unemployed young boys and girls in providing them job through setting up of industries."

The biggest challenge for Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is to find a model for inclusive growth.

In hindsight the compensation package offered to Singur farmers was disappointing, though the government claimed it paid much more than the ruling market price, companies like DLF and JSW Steel showed there are better ways of rehabilitating the displaced.

While both have made firm commitments to employ displaced farmers, JSW Steel went a step further by agreeing to make them stakeholders in its proposed steel plant.

Says Vice Chairman, JSW Steel, Sajjan Jindal, "Land losers and land givers must be part and parcel. They should be the owners of this plant."

So, it wasn't unusual that former chief minister Jyoti Basu mooted a land-for-land compensation formula for Singur farmers who didn't agree to sell their land.

However, because the state wants to acquire as much as 100,000 acres of farmland, it might not be able to afford such a compensation package at all.