MAHUA DABAR and the Destroyed Villages of BHARAT VARSH.Monopolistic Aggression would not allow any Bharatiya village to SURVIVE!
Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 125
Palash Biswas
Mahua Dabar, the RAJ RAZEDrediscovered Village in UP District of Basti in India reminds me Mohanjodoro, Harappa and Lothal of Indus valley civilisation. How Resistance is deleted from geopolitics, my people, the East Bengal Dalit refugees feel it most as they have been ousted from the Geopolitics of Bangla nationality! Mahua Dabar also reminds me of the Villages lost in every corner of OLD Bharat Varsh to AMERICANISE the Urban Five Star India which is engaged to create greatest HYPE of WAR in this Geopolitics once again! I remember all those lost villages in Development Projects, SEZ, Industrial areas, STEEL Plants, Big Dams, New Sub Urbans and so on! I also remeber the REPRESSION unprecedented in the course of Indian History of ENSLAVEMENT. The Indigeneous People in Resistance have been killed. If they surrendered as our aboriginal tribes did, had been mercilessly deported from their native villages, deprived of home, land and life , they have been predestined to die. I also remember all those villages wiped out in Natural or Man made calamities!
India's factory output fell for the first time in more than 13 years in October, the latest evidence of a rapid economic slowdown which
could spark more interest rate cuts after aggressive monetary easing last weekend.
Asia's third-largest economy, which was expected to escape the worst of the global crisis, is rapidly losing height with industries such as automobiles, real estate and exports reeling as recessions deepen in big economies and credit remains tight.
Industrial output declined 0.4 percent in October from a year earlier, the first annual drop since data in the current series became available in April 1995, and sharply below the previous month's upwardly revised 5.5 percent.
"It is a shocking figure and only underlines the fact that the Indian economy is in a very bad situation," said T.K. Bhaumik, economist at JK Industries Group. "This is a wake up call for the government."
The number was below a forecast for growth of 2.2 percent in a Reuters poll of economists. Manufacturing production fell 1.2 percent from a year earlier, data showed.
Most economists expect a further contraction in industrial output in November.
Meanwhile,With India not convinced about Pakistan's crackdown on terror outfits in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, influential US Senator John Kerry arrived in New Delhi Sunday on a two-day visit with a message of solidarity from the incoming Obama administration to calm tensions in the region. Kerry will meet External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon Monday to discuss the US' perception of Pakistan's action against terrorist outfits which India blames for the Nov 26 terror attacks in Mumbai. Kerry, who will be chairman of the influential Senate Committee for Foreign Relations in the incoming administration, is also expected to call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
He is carrying an important message from US president-elect Barack Obama, who takes charge Jan 20, that unveils the incoming administration's plans for close cooperation between New Delhi and Washington on counter-terrorism and regional issues, reliable sources said.
On the other hand, bearing the legacy of RAJ in India, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Sunday named Laskhar-e-Taiba militants as responsible for the Mumbai attacks, backing India's accusations against the Pakistan-based group. The British divided India and created the Problems we suffer from. But Indian Media as well as Intelligentsia happen to be most Pleased with British support to US War against Terror right into our Heart for which Al Quaeda considers us most hated US partner! However, the British Prime Minister offered Pakistan help in fighting militants on Sunday and sought to ease renewed animosity between Pakistan and India fueled by last month's attack in Mumbai. In talks with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari in Islamabad and earlier with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, Brown offered both countries help in tightening security and combatting terrorism.
Since the FIVE STAR India is attacked in India, let the Indigenous aboriginal Bharat Varsh DIE! Proactivism of the Civil society seems so strong! We saw a little glimpse of it during nandigram Insurrection while the Kolakat Intelligentsia voiced RURAL India for the first time. But the same response is not seen anytime in last sixty years as far as the problems of SC ST and OBC are concerned! Not even during the recent Lalgarh Tribal resistance in Midnapur. Now,It seems that citizens' weapon of choice for battling the terror is PIL. At the last count, six Public Interest Litigations (PILs) have been filed so far, urging the courts to force the government to reform the security set-up; and punish those whose lapses helped the terrorists.The petitioners include a body of law firms, a woman who lost her son and daughter-in-law in the attacks, and even a former top law officer of the country. Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF) has filed PIL in the Bombay High Court, asking why 'Quick Response Team' of Mumbai police could not do much when attacks began. Another PIL, filed by advocate V P Patil, seeks action against M K Narayanan, National Security Advisor, accusing him for "negligence".
On the other hand, Industry body Assocham has asked the government to raise the foreign direct investment cap in the defence sector to 49 per cent for enabling indigenisation and the transfer of latest technology. At present, 26 per cent FDI is permitted in the sector. "This needs to be accelerated to 49 per cent so that defence indigenisation speeds up with latest technological transfer to the domestic defence sector," Assocham said.
India's arms imports since the 1999 Kargil conflict have been worth USD 25 billion and would further rise to USD 30 billion by 2012. It is, therefore, necessary to move towards self-reliance in defence production, Assocham Secretary General D S Rawat said.
India is the world's largest importer of defence equipment -- over USD 6 billion, it said.
As India has a large industrial base, offsets (as introduced in the 2006 and 2008 defence procurement procedure of the government) will further develop its technical and manufacturing potential and help increase investments in domestic research and development, it added.
"Defence Offsets Policy (DOP) is expected to bring in USD 10 billion during the 11th Five-Year Plan period, as every foreign company is required to spend 30 per cent of the value (of exports) on offsets goods or services purchased from Indian defence companies," the chamber said.
Offsets policy is expected to create market-entry opportunities for private companies, and generate investment in research and development and manufacturing defence goods, it said.
Under DOP, a single-window clearance wing called the Defence Offset Facilitation Agency assists potential vendors in interacting with the Indian defence industry for identifying potential offsets products and projects.
Pl join me to mourn for those people who are not DEAD as yet but Survive in STARVATION Strategy! Mind you, India had been a self sufficient nation for centuries where the village was a self sustaining entity with its own cultural identity. God blessed us with fertile lands and intellecutally capable people who utilized the blessings and catapulted as a Global power to recon with till the 17th century.Then came the colonial rule of India, a dark part of our history. The rule of British on India was unfortunate in a lot of ways and if we are to introspect, lack of scientific innovation, absence of quest for knowledge, lack of solidarity amongst Indians and absence of a strong conviction to defend our homeland are some of the root causes of why we were ruled by so few of another race for more than two centuries.Although India has enough food to feed its population of 1 billion, hunger and food insecurity have increased since the mid-1990s, says a new UN report on the status of food security in India!Foodgrain-availability in rural India has fallen to 152 kg per capita, 23 kg less than in the 1990s, creating large-scale food insecurity in India?s villages. The poorest 30% of Indian households eat less than 1,700 kilo calories per day, per person, well below the international minimum standard of 2,100 kilo calories per day, even if they spend 70% of their income on food. These are some of the findings of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's intelligence agencies are no longer backing outlawed groups like the Lashker-e- Taiba, which will not be allowed to use the country's soil for any acts of aggression, President Asif Ali Zardari has claimed.
There is no supportive interaction with our intelligence (agencies) and the LeT. Lashker-e-Taiba happens to be a banned organisation in Pakistan," Zardari said, referring to the terror group India has blamed for planning and carrying out the Mumbai terror attacks.
The economic slump roaring across the world's geopolitical map poses weighty challenges, as well as some unexpected opportunities, for President-elect Barack Obama. Japan and major European countries have joined the United States in falling into recession. China has seen its remarkable three-decades long export-fueled rise slowed. Oil-based economies on Washington's worry list such as Iran, Russia and Venezuela, are reeling, too. The US led the rest of the world into the economic crisis, and many global players hope Washington can lead the world out. International investments pouring into low-interest US Treasury securities in recent weeks show that, even if the US has lost prestige internationally in recent years, it's still deemed one of the safest places to park money. The financial crisis drives home to other nations that ``without an America that is successful financially, economically and therefore also politically, they're not going to be successful,'' said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. ``If we don't function well, no one functions well.''
In this Global reference how India may indulge in yet another WAR for which the MASSES have to pay most dearly and eventually bleed once again!But it makes no difference to the emerging capitalism and India INCs as The recovery on bourses last week has added over Rs 52,600 crore to market valuations of country's 10 most valued firms, with Reliance RIL's first crude from KG basinTackling volatile markets Industries gaining the most and regaining the crucial Rs 2 trillion mark.
The combined market capitalisation of the country's top 10 firms-- comprising five pubic sector and five private sector entities-- gained Rs 52,621.06 crore last week at Rs 9,98,374.84 crore at the end of Friday's trading. The combined valuation of the elite club stood at Rs 9,45,753.78 crore a week ago.
After dabbling below the psychological Rs 2 trillion mark for six consecutive weeks, the country's most valued firm Reliance Industries regained its lost turf by adding Rs 29,524 crore to its valuation last week.
Mukesh Ambani-led RIL saw its market capitalisation rising to Rs 2,05,568 crore at the end of Friday's trade against a valuation of Rs 1,76,044 crore a week ago.
The shares of RIL gained nearly 17 per cent in the week to settle at Rs 1,306.20 on last Friday. Since October 24, when the firm had first slipped below the Rs 2,00,000 crore mark, it has gained about 29 per cent to its share price.
Leading cellular operator Bharti Airtel rose to the third place, adding Rs 10,820 crore in a week to its valuation.
Tata Steel Ltd, one of the leading steel makers in the world on Tuesday said its consolidated net profit rose 213 percent for the quarter ended September 2008, boosted by its Anglo-Dutch unit Corus.
The company's consolidated net profit after minority interest and share of profit of associates rose to Rs 477.2 crore during the July-September quarter as against Rs 152.4 crore a year ago.
INS reports:Ever since the Pakistan link in the Mumbai attacks was traced, many strategic analysts have been rooting for punitive action against Pakistan - also State of Taj Hotel after the terror attacksreferred to as pre-emptive strikes and hot pursuit. This is not the first time such suggestions have been mooted. After the parliament attack in December 2001, India launched Operation Parakram to mobilize its troops along the international border with the assumed intention of a frontal response to Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.International pressure later forced India to withdraw its troops through a costly de-mobilisation effort running into months. The fear then was an Indian attack would force Pakistan to use nuclear weapons in the event of a conventional defeat. Many believe the operation was planned as a conflict escalation posture short of actual war to pressure Pakistan on its terror infrastructure and test its nuclear resolve. However, unlike the scenario in 2001 when terror camps openly operated in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), their current spread and locations is unclear, which would directly inhibit scope for surgical strikes.There are three modes of action on this front - pre-emption, prevention and hot pursuit. A pre-emptive strike is undertaken based on credible intelligence to preclude an adversary from launching an imminent attack. Preventive action, on the other hand, is anticipatory use of force to degrade the capability of an adversary for future attacks. India has rarely planned such operations for the fear of violating sovereignty of another country and inviting global outrage. Security planners have but considered the 'hot pursuit' method which entails pursuing a terrorist group inside Pakistan after a major terror attack.
Warmaniacs controls the Media and Mind of the People as basic problems of the Masses are unaddressed!However,East India companies have taken over and the people demanding WAR against Pakistan and SUPPORT the idea of strong STATE Power and Military option to resolve the ETHNIC DIVIDE within, are never concerned with the Starvation and Displacement of Rural India. All of this CREAMY Layer influencing most Indian Economy andsociety, Polity and politics, planning and policy maker belongs to the Brahaminical ruling hegemony and sustains the Manusmriti and Apartheid in India. They are the best Agencies of US Imperialism and are COMMITTED to HINDUTVA of RSS family!The same Colonial Era returns heralding War and Civil War in every part of Bharatvarsh! I have seen the Sickled Bharat Mata of ANAND MATH fame in Lalgola lying highly negelected by INTACH, by Centre as well as Government of India! It is symbolic that the Ruling Hegemony belongs to Five Star FreesenSEX India and they have to do nothing with either Bharat Varsh or Bharat Mata! Sovereignity and Freedom surrendered and the India is at War against Rural, indigenous Bharat Varsh! Agriculture being the gretest Victim. The suicide spree of Indian farmers is nothing but a HOTCAKE Media story which evokes NO Action at all! The British Colonial rulers also developed India at the cost of our districts and villages. In case of resistance, the FATe was that of Mahua Dabar. In LPG Age of Economic Reforms, the Nuclear SEZ India never hesitate to kill a Singur, a Navi Mumbai, a kalingnagar, a Barnala, a Dumka and so on! The colonial era was marked with a focus to transport wealth and capability into the European nations and destroying the fine balance and self sufficiency of Indian economy. While India is a strong nation that has historically been able to survive the ravages of invasions, the systematic destruction of grass root village economy brought the Indian village economy to bankruptcy. The independent India not only inherited the bankrupt state of Indian villages, it also inherited a cultural corruption that forced us to believe in inferiority of our race, religion and scientific achievements.50 years and more of freedom, we've had some achievements like that of the green revolution courtesy scientists like M.S. Swaminathan, however, we still have 54% of Indian citizens engaged in agriculture contributing only 29% to the GDP of India.
The colonial Saga is in Full BLOOM once again in corporate MNC Builder Promoter raj while Rs Three Lac Corore of National revenue is Pumped into the Money Machine bypassing the parliament and killing the Parliament.
Monopolistic Aggression would not allow any Bharatiya village to SURVIVE!
Mahua Dabar is well linked to REST of India. The greatest EVIDENCE hapens to be the missing links of the History of Bengal, defined as DARK AGE. I am searching the lost traces of those Villages which have been destroyed time to time like the Tribal Population in West Bengal and elsewhere! I expect your INVOLVEMENT and Cooperation for this self imposed task as no Historian, no anthropologist and no university seem to be interested. Specially in Bengal, the Aboriginal Indigenous History is DESPISED most.Even the Centres like GAUR and Murshidabad happens to be most neglected!
We had been never UNDER DEVELOPED. The Indus valley remins prove how the Indian civilization developed dismissing us and destroying us. The ARYANS adopted most of our legacy, the philosophy, the cultuer, the production system, the civil society, the myths, te legends, the folk, the arts, the myths , the superstitions and so on ... just to Aryanise us and thus made us Enslaved!
MAHUA DABAR symbolises the Global Process!
Till recently, modern science and technology served mainly the interests of the organised industrial sector. Due to introduction of mechanisation, automation and methods of mass production, goods produced by the organised industrial sector became so cheap that rural artisans could not compete with them. Destruction of the traditional rural enterprises led to pauperisation of rural India. The recent changes in economic conditions, such as increase in the cost of fossil fuels, increase in the cost of transport and the increased overhead expenses of operating modern industrial units, offer a chance to revive rural, family owned enterprises, which would use locally available raw material and sell their products locally. ARTI was founded in 1996 by a group of about 20 scientists and technologists to develop innovative and environmentally friendly rural technologies based on modern scientific knowledge. ARTI endeavors to help the rural people in establishing new enterprises. ARTI also maintains a Rural Entrepreneurship Development Centre in a rural location in the State of Maharashtra, India. Potential rural entrepreneurs are trained at this Centre in the technologies developed by ARTI. Those who start their own enterprises are provided with technical backup support and marketing support.
The most critical problem in rural India is degradation and depletion of land, forest and natural resources. Reforestation and ecological regeneration of degraded land has become an important issue. The so-called modern “planned development” in the country has clearly failed in the primary objective of alleviating poverty in the rural areas.
Energy is the main source of development and also ecological destruction. Increasing energy consumption in the industrial sector has posed a threat to shortage of energy supply for other critical needs. Added to this the lack of balanced regional planning and out-migration to the city is a combination of “push and pull” factors. In the city, most of the rural migrants end up as jobless squatters and this has an adverse impact on the urban environment.
If development along with use of natural resources is not sustainability oriented, very soon changes in the environment and ecology will outstrip the political and economical development of technology. There is a need for far reaching changes in technology and use of energy sources, economic ideas and institutions, social and political systems, and in the philosophical and ethical base of modern industrial civilization.
To combat this alarming situation, the ICF supports projects based on self-help system to promote sustainable development in specific rural areas of the country. ICF’s humanitarian action follows the wisdom expressed ideally by the saying : “If I am hungry, do not give me fish to eat, but teach me how to fish”. ICF was founded in 1986 and is one of the most reputed foundations in India. ICF is free of religious, ethnic, social and political pressures. It has a network of civic leaders, businessmen, environmentalists, scientists, educators, sociologists and others.
In his report ?The Extent of Chronic Hunger and Malnutrition in India?, presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on September 22, Zeigler says falling agricultural wages, increasing landlessness and rising food prices have severely undermined the right to food in rural India.
Ziegler?s report was based on a visit to India between August 20 and September 2, 2005, ?motivated by the fact that India has the largest number of undernourished people in the world and one of the highest levels of child malnutrition?.
The report, which reviews ?the situation of hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity in India? and whether the theory of ?hunger amidst plenty? stands, has made some startling revelations.
Over half of India?s women and children suffer severe malnutrition and chronic undernourishment. Over 47% of children are underweight, and 46% stunted in their growth, figures higher than most countries in poverty-stricken sub-Saharan Africa, notes the report.
Expressing doubts over the government?s claim that poverty in India had actually declined from 36% to 26% between 1993 and 2000, Ziegler says there is considerable debate as to whether the decline in poverty levels is simply a result of changes in methods of data collection.
?One explanation may be that the assumed cost of a minimum food basket no longer reflects the real cost of food in India. Poverty remains concentrated in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka. In some states, feudalistic patterns of land ownership persist despite its legal abolition and the Land Ceiling Act,? says the report.
Slamming the Indian government for the rising number of farmer suicides, the report says sustained economic growth in the 1990s made the country a more market-oriented economy, but this did not mean equitable benefits for all Indians. The middle and upper classes benefited, but the poor suffered a decline in living standards.
The focus on a more export-oriented economy has seen a shift from subsistence to cash crops, reducing the cultivation of grain, pulses and millets for household consumption. With cash crops requiring increasingly expensive inputs such as seeds and fertiliser, many farmers have been pushed heavily into debt, explaining the increasing number of farmer suicides -- nearly 10,000 by 2004 -- says the report.
It also criticises India for altering the Public Distribution System (PDS), the world?s largest food-based safety net, from a universal system to a targeted one, in 1997. This has created the paradox of huge excess stocks of foodgrain held with the Food Corporation of Indian, adding to costs and therefore to losses, and leading to a substantially higher food subsidy.
Source: www.uk.oneworld.net, September 24, 2006
Found: Raj-razed town
The British had chopped off their forefathers’ hands in Bengal a generation ago, so the weavers of Mahua Dabar in Awadh cut off a few British heads during the turmoil of 1857. Erased from the face of the earth by the Raj’s revenge, this lost town has been found again thanks to one man’s effort, reports Tapas Chakraborty
All that Abdul Latif Ansari, 65, had to go by was a tattered, hand-drawn, two-century-old map and family lore about how his forefathers had suffered twice in British hands.
It was enough to keep bringing the Mumbai businessman to Basti, eastern Uttar Pradesh, for 14 years to search out his ancestral home, lost in the mists of time for a century and a half.
The district administration didn’t know Mahua Dabar ever existed. Nor had any historian chronicled its weavers’ vendetta with the country’s colonial rulers, spanning two generations and two provinces hundreds of miles apart.
“I began from zero. There was no trace of the town; the Basti district map had no reference to it,” Ansari, a textile exporter who began his search in 1994, told The Telegraph. “But I was adamant. I had to verify what I had heard from family elders about the town that our ancestors had fled after the British razed it during the 1857 revolt.”
His persistence prompted the then Basti district magistrate, R.N. Tripathi, to set up a committee of historians from Lucknow who, after 13 years of research, have now confirmed that the town indeed existed, at a spot 15km south of Basti town.
Ansari feels he has paid off a debt to his ancestors — which is what some of his forbears in Mahua Dabar too must have felt when, in the first weeks of India’s first war of independence, they attacked a boat carrying British soldiers.
They had reason to feel vengeful.
In the early 19th century, the East India Company, eager to promote British textiles, had cut off the hands of hundreds of weavers in Bengal.
Twenty weavers’ families from Murshidabad and Nadia had then fled to Awadh, whose nawab resettled them in Mahua Dabar and allowed them to carry on with their livelihood.
Many of the first-generation weavers had already lost their hands, but they taught the craft to their sons and the small town of 5,000 people soon became a bustling handloom centre.
It was around March-April 1857 when Zaffar Ali, a young man whose grandfather had migrated from Bengal, spotted a boat coming down the Manorama (a tributary of the Ghagra) on whose banks the town was located.
The historians’ report names the six soldiers beheaded: Lt T.E. Lindsay, Lt W.H. Thomas, Lt G.L. Caulty, Sgt Edwards and privates A.F. English and T.J. Richie.
On June 20 that year, the 12th Irregular Horse Cavalry surrounded the town, slaughtered hundreds and set all the houses on fire. The Raj decreed that no one could live in the place from then on. On the colonial revenue records, the area was marked gair chiragi (non-revenue land).
Mahua Dabar ceased to exist.
Ansari, whose ancestors had fled to places such as Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Pune, landed up 137 years later, on February 8, 1994. Armed with his map — a family heirloom — he got surprisingly close to the actual spot where the town existed, between Kalwari and Mehsan, around 200km east of Lucknow.
“The place was covered by fields of peas, wheat and arhar. I realised it would be impossible to dig for proof under the crops. That’s why it took so long to collect evidence.”
Ansari kept coming back, leaving his sons to look after his business. The historians’ committee — headed by V.P. Singh and including J.P.N. Tripathi, both former Lucknow University teachers — kept digging into the district museum archives.
Finally, they discovered a survey map, drawn in 1823, that showed a Mahua Dabar in Basti tehsil of the then Gorakhpur district.
“When the place existed till 1823, how did it disappear from the sketches, maps, gazettes and other government papers published by the district administration after 1857?” the committee’s report asks, confirming the massacre.
The panel says at least 20 weavers’ families from Bengal had settled in Mahua Dabar in the 1830s. “First, the people of Mahua Dabar had ruthlessly murdered Englishmen, cut off their heads and dismembered their bodies and thrown them into Manorama river. The British rulers reacted with a fury that is unmatched in history,” the historians have said.
Their report, handed in last December, was sent to the Union human resource development and culture ministries for an official stamp on the findings.
A team from Lucknow University’s archaeology department had planned to excavate the areas lying just beyond the agricultural fields. But the human resource development ministry, after an inspection, has decided not to dig up the place but to erect a memorial.
Mazhar Azad, a writer in Basti, said: “One just has to go to the site to feel the eerie presence of a dead town. A thousand muted voices seem to be whispering to you. We are grateful to Abdul Latif saab that he kept shuttling between Mumbai and Basti for 14 long years to see his mission through.”
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081208/jsp/atleisure/story_10221665.jsp
The Narmada Valley: Villages Flooded, Livelihoods Destroyed
By Riam Firouz
On June 11, 2007, the government of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh closed the gates of the Omkareshwar Dam in the Narmada Valley, flooding dozens of villages, agricultural land, and homes. To protest the loss of their homes and livelihoods, the women of one affected village, Gunjari, refused to move from the rising water flooding their village for nine days until a proposal to compensate them was put forth by the state government.
The women of Gunjari are not alone in their struggle. Hundreds of thousands of people will be displaced by a series of 30 large dams being built in the Narmada Valley, of which Omkareshwar is just one. When the reservoir is at its full height, 50,000 small farmers will be displaced and 5,800 hectares of intact natural forest will be destroyed. Most displaced villagers have not received any compensation, neither in the form of land nor cash. Those who have been compensated have been short-changed by a resettlement policy that runs rampant with corruption.
A High Court trial set to start on July 24 will help decide the rights of villagers displaced by this season’s monsoons. Five thousand protesters have since June 4 been braving monsoon season storms while gathered in front of the state government’s district headquarters. They are demanding compensation in the form of agricultural land for cultivators, as well as land for the adult sons and unmarried adult daughters of these cultivators. Two protestors have now ended a 37-day hunger strike with a call for more action in hopes of getting their demands met.
Since the protests began, as many as 12,000 complaints have been filed against the Narmada Hydro-Development Corporation (NHDC) which, along with the State Government of Madhya Pradesh, owns shares in the dam. The NHDC has a controversial record with past projects, including forcibly removing affected people at gunpoint from their villages. Nothing seems to have changed this time around, as power and water were cut off to villages in an attempt to oust the residents. Meanwhile, most villagers whose land has already been inundated have nowhere to go. As protester Sarika Devi remarked, "We will not move from here. We will stay here only. We have no other options, what else can we do. No one is helping us."
Contact us:
Ann Kathrin Schneider
annkathrin@internationalrivers.org
+49 30 214 0088
http://internationalrivers.org/en/south-asia/india/narmada-river/narmada-valley-villages-flooded-livelihoods-destroyed
Hazaribagh and the North Karanpura Valley
The Heritage at Risk Report 2001/2002 for India discussed the threat from coal mining and a thermal power station that is faced by Hazaribagh and the North Karanpura Valley. Our 2002/2003 report looks more closely at the impacts this will have on the cultural heritage of the region.
The Hazaribagh District originally covered the entire North Chotanagpur Division, or the entire plateau of Hazaribagh, which is the northern tract of the massif divided by the Damodar River from east to west, with the Ranchi plateau lying to the south. Today the region is part of the new tribal state of Jharkhand (meaning Forest Land). This is an area rich in archaeological deposits, megaliths and dolmens, and rivers that are considered sacred such as the Damodar River, and hundreds of sacred groves (sarna).
Traditional vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes
The traditional vernacular architecture of the North Karanpura Valley is represented by mud buildings. There are usually around 200 houses in a village, generally single-storey, or with a loft for storage of grain, and having a square quadrangle surrounded by rooms with an inner courtyard, called angan, where all domestic duties such as drying of grain is done by the women of the house. The houses have sloping, tiled roofs and the tiles are handmade in the village itself, usually by the potter tribe, although other tribes such as the Kurmi (farmer) and Oraon (Dravidian Tribe) often make large, flat tiles by hand that are fired. These houses follow age-old traditions of building that vary from tribe to tribe. This is an artistic genius of the artisan builders that is threatened in the vernacular village houses and it is '…unprotected historic heritage that is not recorded in any monument list' (Michael Petzet, Introduction, ICOMOS World Report 2001/2002). The villages of the North Karanpura valley are villages of artisan craftsmen such as potters, oil extractors, ironsmiths, metal casters, weavers, basket makers, carpenters, and other semi-Hinduized tribes, and their buildings reflect their amazing creative talent. Once the mining destroys these villages this heritage will disappear forever, along with the great Khovar marriage art and Sohrai harvest art of the women artists. The village houses have evolved out of a cultural ecology adapted to the landscape as it is. Once this landscape is destroyed and replaced by opencast coal mines and industry this architecture and way of life must disappear and it can never be recreated at any cost ever again, and even the model is in danger of being lost forever.
It is important to note that the archaeology of India has been unprotected from destructive development: no obligatory archaeological assessment and archaeological clearance was mandatory within the environment impact assessment (EIA) which, after a long battle, the Hazaribagh Chapter of INTACH managed to get reinstated in l996. How much archaeological heritage must have been destroyed in river-valley industrialisation projects is anybody's guess! The entire heritage of the lower Damodar, cultural, social, ecological, archaeological, and built heritage was destroyed by the Damodar Valley project started in 1947 with big dams, coal mines, coal washeries, thermal power stations, and industries.
Generally in the villages of the Adivasi artisan communities such as Prajapati (potter), Kurmi (farmer), Rana (carpenter), Teli (oil-extractor) and others, make their houses along the well laid-out village roads that, along with the houses, reflect an ancient tradition that I have compared to the Indus Valley housing. The courtyards have excellent underground drainage in stone channels and these drains run from the central courtyard, under the rooms, to the vegetable garden at the rear of the house; they thus collect rain water from the roofs sloping towards the courtyard and carry the water to the vegetable plot, in the middle of which the well is situated. The cattle are kept in the shed within the inner quadrangle and as their dung is washed out of the courtyard through the drains it forms an excellent source of organic fertilizer for the vegetable patch. A typical village will thus have several hundred such houses with attached vegetable plots in the immediate village area. The roadside area may be used for parking bullock carts. The loft area is sometimes open on one side for storage of firewood from the forest, and additional stalls from the outside in which cattle and goats may also be accommodated. Though the general appearance is regular, both on the ground as well as from the air, these villages display an individual character and charm, and scenic views are found to blend in such a way to inform the cultural landscape. The fields of the village are sometimes adjacent to and generally not far from the village house plots, so an atmosphere of farm life lends a rural agricultural ambience to the landscape. They clearly follow an informed tradition of cultural landscape in the great ancient agricultural tradition common to farming communities in other parts of the world. In the Tribal Oraon, Munda and Santal hamlets we notice a little change both in the vernacular housing and cultural landscape, since these great forest tribes generally situate their sloping tile-roof mud houses in a corner of the agricultural estate, so that the forest is never far away. By virtue of this, there is no village in the traditional sense, and rather the cultural landscape presents these large agricultural estates of 10 to 50 acres each with the farmer's house and outbuildings in one corner, or in the middle, with wide spaces between through which one can glimpse the hills in the background. The tribes generally choose hilly forests and open valleys for their habitation and farming, being partly hunters and partly farmers. This would give a good general view of the vernacular housing and cultural landscape of the North Karanpura Valley, and of the upper valley of the Damodar River surrounded by a heavily forested watershed.
Including the Hazaribagh plateau, the overall watershed covers nearly 20,000 square kilometres. Bounded on either side by the plateaus of Ranchi and Hazaribagh surmounting the ancient rift valley formation, this gentle valley is entirely filled with the greenery of all forms of agriculture. The ranges of the Mahadeva and Satpahar hills run through the length of the valley, with forests containing tigers and elephants. The valley has a high water table and the streams descending from the plateaux on either side carry loads of fertile silt and good irrigation of the loamy soil. Unfortunately, at a depth of only a few dozen feet from the surface lies a solid carboniferous deposit of sunken fossilized trees that is the source of the coal which the developers are eyeing as an economic prize.
Indigenous Heritage
The endangered heritage of the Indigenous peoples of the North Karanpura Valley has been recognised by the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (UNWGIP), High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva. For the past two years Tribal women artists from INTACH's Hazaribagh Chapter, who are members of the Tribal Women Artists Cooperative, have attended and highlighted the threats to the upper Damodar Valley (North Karanpura) region through unprecedented destructive development, cutting of thousands of trees for roads, railways, and exploitation of new opencast coal-mines, and displacement of people from over a dozen Adivasi villages that have disappeared in coal mines. The plan to destroy a further 190 villages by coalmining activities has been noted in the international forum of the UNWGIP. The World Bank, which intended to give a loan of US$480 million, withdrew the loan in 2000 due to the protests of wildlife and social activists in India and the USA. It was determined that there was inadequate environmental and social rehabilitation plans by the coal company Central Coalfields Limited. Further, the Bank has initiated a policy for identifying Indigenous peoples and this now includes Tribals, and Adivasis, with provision for Scheduled Castes (Operational Directive 4.20). It is hoped that the displacement of tribal villages and the destruction of their heritage will stop, but in view of India's policy of using thermal power there is very little hope for this as the coal deposits invariably follow the river courses in which the oldest agricultural Adivasi communities have developed, in tune with their environment.
The living prehistoric mural traditions of Khovar and Sohrai art of the North Karanpura Valley
In this verdant setting are the villages I have described, with every house painted with breath-taking murals by the Adivasi women on all walls, inside and out. It is a great ancient mural painting tradition directly carrying on the rock-art tradition found in the surrounding hills. Like the painted rock shelters called Khovar, the marriage wall and room paintings are made during the marriage season (Spring-Summer) which are called Khovar after the cave (Kho) and bridegroom (Var). These beautiful paintings are made in a sgraffito technique in which the mud house walls are first coated with manganese black, after which a light coating of creamy kaolin earth is applied and cut while wet with the comb, creating stark black patterns of the black manganese undercoat.
In the 200 villages of the North Karanpura Valley we today find thousands of mud-built homes adorned all through the year with these beautiful marriage and harvest murals. The Tribal Women Artists Cooperation for the last two years has sent our Adivasi women artists to participate in the 19th (July 2001) and 20th Sessions (July 2002) of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, meeting in Geneva, to read out our statement that this entire tradition and its peoples are threatened through the North Karanpura Coalfields Project. The coal mines will completely destroy the hundreds of villages and displace their populations, replacing them with vast open pits hundreds of feet deep and several miles across. The art of Khovar and Sohrai unique to the North Karanpura Valley will die forever with the villages and villagers, as has happened in the lower Damodar Valley, to which we have again and again drawn attention but nobody in the government has as yet heeded or advised against.
Cultural lifestyle and the basis for the preservation of cultural heritage tradition
For the past 55 years, India, as with other Third World Countries, has been following a progressive western style of development model that has clearly produced further proof of the destruction. There has been increased displacement and poverty at the Fourth World level of the village, where the rural spirit and traditional cultural heritage of India resides, and consequent benefits to the urban, city-based Third World Culture found in the cities - the political and administrative centres of power. The massive displacement of village and forest societies throughout India, especially in the river valleys are due to destructive development projects like big dams, which have displaced over 40 million Tribal or Adivasi people, and to coal and other mines, which have displaced over 30 million Adivasis. Left without any agricultural or forest-based production they drifted to the big cities where they form, with others, the 60% of the city of Bombay who are living in inhuman and degraded slum tenements, and the 40% of the city of Delhi, living in slums. The dignity and pride of these once-proud, great indigenous rural and forest societies, has been inhumanly abused by the lending and spending of First World Countries who are still greedily eyeing the south as targets of ever greater lending and spending and this has been endorsed by the recent World Summit on Development in Johannesburg.
Archaeological Heritage of the Upper Damodar Valley
The palaeolithic archaeological heritage of the lower Damodar Valley, embracing the valleys of Bokaro, Konar, Damodar and Kamsavati, forms the fabled western Rarh palaeolithic region brought to light in 1947 by the Bengali savant and visionary P.K. Sarkar, who also started the Ananda Marga. His research was suppressed, although his stone-tool collection was housed in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, and a small museum near Bokaro. Further to this we have S.C Roy's excavations in 1915 of chalcolithic Asura sites in the Chotanagpur plateau. The coal mining of the lower Damodar valley from Jharkhand to West Bengal completely destroyed the evidence of a continuous cultural tradition in the built heritage and arts of the region. It was left to me in 1991 to bring to light the Palaeolithic tradition in the upper Damodar Valley (also called the Barkagaon valley or the North Karanpura Valley). My work showed the journey of a lower river-valley agricultural culture in the Damodar exposing Palaeolithic ancestry, and evidence in the upper river-valley for a great forest-based hunting society during the Palaeolithic and middle-Palaeolithic periods, and its continuance into an upper-valley Neolithic culture similar to the cataract cultures of the upper Nile in Ethiopia. This is complemented by the more recent contemporary village-culture, manifesting folk painting traditions clearly connected with the region's prehistoric rock-art, spanning a period from the Palaeolithic, through to the chalcolithic. A vibrant micro-lithic culture and Neolithic culture and the remains of a great Iron-Age Asura civilisation lie scattered on the floor of the North Karanpura valley and its surrounding areas, now once more threatened by indiscriminate mining.
Forest Heritage at Risk in the Damodar Valley
In 1947, the Damodar Valley became the scene of the Damodar Valley hydro-electricity and irrigation project. It was India's first big industrialisation project in an area already destroyed by vast coal mining since the early 20th century. Enormous tracts of forest lands, much of it belonging to Tribals, was clear-felled to make way for big dams. The entire history of deforestation in India has followed colonisation models. 'Backward' Tribal areas are destroyed in order to civilise Tribes, at the same time forested environments are cut down. As the hydro-electricity potential of the Damodar Valley project failed, new thermal power-stations were built, requiring more and more coal and the entire forested area of the lower Damodar Valley was destroyed and the Tribals displaced. Today hugely polluting thermal power-stations, coal washeries and industries release dangerous levels of toxic effluents into the river Damodar and its tributaries. If we look at North India we find that in the pre-Vedic times it was heavily forested, but with the advance of so called civilisation the Tribes were wiped out and the forests of the Ganges Valley completely destroyed. Today this process of deforestation has climbed from the valley into the Jharkhand hills and plateau which includes the valley of the Damodar River whose upper portion is threatened in the North Karanpura valley.
Cutting down of Heritage Trees
Recently the World Bank has funded a huge project for widening national and State highways all over India. Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar, Jessore Road, Barrackpore Trunk Road, National Highway#4 are being clearfelled in West Bengal. Bombay- Pune Highway has been clear-felled in Maharashtra. The entire Grand Trunk Road NH#2 roadside trees planted by Sher Shah four centuries ago are being clear-felled from West Bengal to Uttar Pradesh. State highways are also being clear-felled. These trees are the dozens of species of finest, oldest, most mature specimens of fruiting, shade, indigenous sacred heritage trees such as Pipal (Ficus religiosa) and Banyan (Ficus bengalensis), which are worshipped in thousands of roadside villages by the Adivasi women tying red thread around their bases. But even this worship it seems has failed to save these ancient trees. The loss to biodiversity is incalculable. The tree protection organisation Kalpavriksh filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Bombay High Court to try and stop the clear-felling of the roadside trees on the Bombay-Pune highway but they lost. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF-I) filed a PIL at Ranchi High Court in Jharkhand and lost. The highways throughout Jharkhand and West Bengal are having age-old indigenous trees clear-felled. The Grand Trunk Road NH#2 has been clear-felled for several hundred kilometres from West Bengal, through Jharkhand to Uttar Pradesh. The consequences of this to biodiversity, birds, insect life, and small animals such as squirrels is incalculable. INTACH, Sanctuary, and Kalpavriksh, have petitioned the Prime Minister. So far no action has been taken and it is reported similar felling of mature old roadside trees is being planned and implemented across India, which will result in the destruction of India's oldest, most sacred indigenous trees. Trees were protected during the Buddhist period. The Emperor Ashoka ordered special Edicts to save trees. The Pipal tree (under which the Buddha gained his great realisation or Nirvana) was especially sacred. At present in India the entire rural and forested Tribal regions, including Jharkhand and Chattisgarh and other places, are facing massive deforestation. The destruction of roadside trees for widening of highways will completely destroy the cultural ecology of the roadside villages and change forever the cultural landscape in which the heart of rural India beats. In a country like India, which is largely rural and agricultural with densely forested Tribal tracts, the destruction of agricultural and forest lands for mining and industry has led to a crisis of subsistence and the filling-up of urban slums with displaced villagers. Starvation deaths are becoming common. The further destruction of trees will have an adverse impact on the rural areas and is a wrong prioritisation of borrowed economic resources.
The Birhor leaf-house 'Kumba'
One of the most threatened objects of material heritage in Jharkhand - the only state in India having the nomadic Birhor Tribe - is the temporary leaf-shelter known as the Kumba, constructed from the branches and leaves of the Saal tree (Shorea robusta). For the last twenty-odd years the government has been trying to make this shy tribe sedentary, housed in cement houses with concrete roofs. However, the Bihor have attributed every ill attacking the tribe to these cement houses and have left one settlement after another to revert to their traditional leaf housing. It is even today not an uncommon sight to find a Birhor living in a leaf Kumba adjacent to, or even inside a cement building! The word Kumbha means earthen pot, and was used traditionally in Indian scripture for the burial urn, and being made of earth was believed to contain the female principle (Satapata Brahmana, vi.3.I.39). It is obvious that the term was borrowed by Sanskritic cultures from prehistoric cultures like the Birhor.
The major problem of the Kumba is that it is a flimsy construction of leaves and twigs, it does not have a long life and requires a regular renewal tradition to keep it going, and this is a very real problem if it is taken out of the socio-economic context of the tribe's hunting and gathering economy - which the sedentarisation of the Birhor will destroy. The only way in which such a tradition may be kept alive is by fostering in the Birhor pride for their cultural heritage. We must not make them feel their old way of life was inappropriate, because indeed it has sustained them for so many thousands of years. Even a post-agricultural society needs agriculture and a post hunter-gatherer society requires the genius of the hunter-gatherer.
Bulu Imam
rch_buluimam@sancharnet.in
www.sanskriti-hazaribagh.com / www.geocities.com/buluimam
Threatened Sites in Hazaribagh Plateau
Sitagarha Hill
Aligned to dolmen and megalith sites in a north-south and east-west axis, the sacred hill Marang Buru of the Birhor tribals, also called Juljul, forms the Recumbent Landscape Figure (RLF) of a reclining mother goddess. On the south face is a sixty-five-foot-long stone face called Mahadeva (Great God) by the Birhors. Mahadeva is a term used alternately for Shiva and Buddha.
The Border Security Force has been bombing the belly of the hill with artillery fire for over the past decade. INTACH took up the issue to stop the bombing of the sacred site in view of the discovery of a Buddhist Vihara and Stupa at the eastern end of the hill several years back. The matter was taken to the Union Minister for Defence and dismissed by him. It is a matter of importance to all who believe in Vision Quest sites to take up the issue with the Government of India.
For archaeologists and Buddhist devotees it is essential to note that an important Buddhist site exists in the Marwateri basin of Sitagarha hill from which stone carved stupa, statuary, and iron relics have been excavated along with stone pillars and heavily engraved blocks. A mound seems to present the aspect of a village, beside which there is a stupa mound. Painted Grey Ware has been recovered from the site, dated at around 300 BC. Also excavated is a black schist fragment of an Apsara dated to Harshvardhana period (6th century AD), and some statuary attributed to around the Kushan period (lst century AD) by the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India).
Banadag Megaliths
The Banadag megaliths stand demurely on the northern outskirts of the Banadag village, 7 kilometres west of Hazaribagh, a small town in northern Jharkhand State. Thirty metres west of the megaliths is the sacred Banadag hill, which is presently being ruthlessly quarried, undermining the age-old religious beliefs of the villagers. The standing megaliths of this ancient burial site now number about fifty, with an average height of 4.5 feet. The stones have been erected facing east towards a Recumbent Mother Goddess hill, 4 kilometres away on the horizon and have a north-south orientation. These megaliths are relics of the Kolarian tribes who have now left, erecting these sepulchral stones in the memory of their departed. The dynamite blasting often shake boulders with such great impact that many megaliths now lie prostate on the ground, destroyed. A brick kiln now operates 40 metres away from this site and their earth-cutting for making bricks is gradually advancing towards the megalithic site. Black ware pottery was recovered, the urn contained ash, arrow heads and even 12 silver coins. The amazing bird dolmen on this doomed hill, a remarkable example of unique and stunning aboriginal craftsmanship which has no known parallel, could be gone any day now.
Bawanbai Hill
Bawanbai Hill, five kilometres south of Hazaribagh Town, has been claimed by some researchers to be man-made, being pyramidal (E-W) and tridental (N-W). It follows the lines of sacred geometry, connecting with the megaliths of the region, falling on the latitude of the Ley Lines (Gita Lines). For several decades pervasive stone mining has eaten into the south side of the hill, up to 250 feet. The north face showing the man-made tridental architecture of the hill is still preserved. This hill immediately requires protection as a national movement.
http://www.international.icomos.org/risk/2002/india2002.htm
The period covered is 1611 to 1908. The epitaphs refer
to many events of great importance, from the old English and
Dutch factories and the Jesuit Mission at Agra, down to the
Naini Tal landslip of 1880 and the Manipur rebellion. Of the
whole posse of Anglo-Indian worthies, forgotten, half forgotten-
and unforgettable, the Province can claim its full share, — from>
John Mildenhall, the self-styled " ambassador " of Elizabeth,-
whose tomb is said by competent authority to be probably the
oldest English tomb in India, down to Quinton and Capper
and Sir John Strachey. A complete list of the great men who
died in the U. P. would commence with an English Marquess
who fought in three continents and ruled in two : it would end,
perhaps, with a gallant French circus-master who went out to
fight with Anglo-Indian Volunteers at Agra ^^ pour Vlionneur de
Valliance. '* Soldier, statesman, civilian, doctor, missionary,
factor, man of learning, heroes of Lake's wars, of Gurkha
and Pindari and Afghan and Sikh and Central Indian and
Mutiny campaigns, Viceroys and Lieutenant Governors and
Political Agents and Judges and Collectors, — such is the
medley of famous men which this list commemorates.
Kudyard Kipling in one of his famous stories has laid stress
on the way in which certain families have served, and are slill
serving, India from father to sou. Of this fact this list affords
ample proof. It would be interesting to calculate how many
of the persons buried in this province were born as well as died
in India ; the figure would be high indeed. The families of
LaTouche and Thornhill are two conspicuous instances. There
are no less than five of the former race buried in this province
alone ; no less than seven of the latter family were serving in
this province at one and the same time. Cherry, Hogg, Currie,
Muir, Boileau, Lawrence, Strachey, Lushington, Havelock,
Lindsay, Hope — all these families can boast a similar succession
of Anglo-Indian officers.
No list of epitaphs can be without its instances of uncon-
scious humour. I found an epitaph to a man who died ** craving
a large widow and family to mourn his loss" ; an exquisite in-
stance of a " nice derangement of epitaphs." There are many
curious verses such as the somewhat prosaic lines beginning —
** Good attendance was applied,
Physicians were in vain ;"
and, above all, the little poem entitled '* To-day and to-
morrow."
Nor is the list without its puzzles. How came a Major "of
the Brazilian service" to be buried in Chunar ? Who was Eliz-
abeth R , " of His Majesty's — th Foot ? " Was she one
of those Amazons of whom one occasionally reads, who joined
a regiment in male attire and fought with it for years ? The
Indian sculptor, '* Ramjohn Mistry" of the Chunar inscription
and his kind, is responsible for many curiosities. His weird
genius turns *'Cathcart" into *' Cat. H. Cart", **R. E. Parry''
into *' Reparry", ** Cha. Wil. Burton " into ** Chawil Barton."
In Fiihrer's list was to be found an exact replica of the inscrip-
tion on the monument to the officers killed at Bhitaura in 1794,
which was described as in a Chunar cemetery. The explanation
is this. Many of these funeral monuments were of Chunar
stone. The duplicate at Chunar was on a flawed stone, which
had been rejected, and left lying about at Chunar. A collector,
i)ir pius, found it and put it up in the cemetery, to cause (as I
myself know) much searching of heart and history to various
gentlemen who wondered how on earth we came to be embroiled
with the Rohillas so far east as Mirzapur !
A few words about some of the less well-known authorities
in the bibliography may be of value : —
(1) T/ie calendar and director!/ of the Agra archdiocese
(No. 15) is much more than its name implies. It con-
tains very valuable notes on many old tombs at Agra
compiled from the old mission archives by Father
Felix, 0. C.
(2) Dyce Sombre versus Solaroli, 8fc. (No. 16), is a book con-
taining the depositions in the famous will suit of 1852
{vide note on Dyce Sombre). (3) The sketch of the rise and progress of the Benares Pat'
shalla (No. 36) is a history, existing in manuscript
in the Benares College Library, of Jonathan Duncan's
Sanskrit College from the foundation up to 1848,
written by a Professor at the College, and printed in
1907.
(4) Bodwell and Miles* Lists (No. 117-9), and Prinsep's Gene-
ral register'' (No. 120) are similar to the present "His-
tory of services of Gazetted officers", but much less
complete. For soldiers and medical men, the dates of
commissions and death or retirement are given : for
Civilians, the various posts held.
(5) The E. I. register (No. 121) is the forerunner of the
present Civil Lists and India Army Lists, combined
in one volume. But it also contains (up to 1835 or
so) lists of non-official residents, with births, marriages
and deaths.
(6) The Services Bengal Army List (No. 125) is a series of
manuscript volumes containing details about many
officers, obviously extracts from letters written home
to the Court of Directors. There is much curious in-
formation in this book ; for instance I found one field
officer who was tried by court martial on 23 charges,
one of which was swearing at the standing orders !
He was reprimanded.
(7) The Writer's Petitions, Cadet's Papers, and Assistant
Surgeon's Petitions (Nos. 126-9) are the original
papers referring to the nominations of the civil,
military and medical officers of the Company. They
begin with little more than a birth certificate ; later,
they contain also information of all kinds, notably
about the father's profession, and the schools at which.
the officer concerned was educated.
One other point I may be permitted to mention. It may be
noticed that I have been silent on the controversies which have
raged and are still raging round the names of certain great men.
My reason is simply that if pigmies must squabble about a dead
giant, they should at least have the decency not to do so over
the giant's tomb. And further cui bono ? we may surely say of
their memories, as of their souls, *' Requiescat in pace."
My thanks are due to the gentlemen mentioned at the end of
the bibliography for the courtesy with which they have always
answered ray requests for information. I am also indebted to
Mr. R. Burn, C. S., for many useful hints which led me to
sources of information; to Mr. A. G. Ellis of the India Office
for assistance with the Armenian inscriptions ; and to Miss
Milford for the excellent photograph of John Mildenhall's
tomb which is reproduced as a frontispiece. Other civilians
who took much trouble in collecting inscriptions for me are
Messrs. J. V. S. Wilkinson, J. C. Moore and H. G. Smith. But
most of all am I indebted to four gentlemen — Mr. W. Irvine for
?he loan of various authorities otherwise inaccessible ; Captain
']£,. Milford, who collected for me all the information given about
the Indian and other services of British Hegiments ; the Rev-
erend Father H. Hosten, S. J., who not only furnished me with
a mass of material and hints on that difficult subject, the Jesuits
in Agra, but was good enough to look through and criticize
my account of them ; it is to be hoped that he will some day take
this subject in hand and deal with it as it deserves ; and lastly
Mr. W. Foster of the India Office, not only for many valuable
suggestions and the readiness with which he put both private and
official sources of information at my disposal, but for the sym-
pathy with which he viewed my attempt to deal adequately with
the deeds of " famous men, and our fathers who begat us."
Naini Tal: ¦) E. A. H. BLUNT.
The 22nd June 1911,
New Bamiyan Buddha find amid destruction!Here’s some more information on the discovery of fragments of a 62-foot-long “sleeping Buddha” statue at Bamiyan. “It was a happy moment for all of us when the first signs appeared. Our years-long efforts had somehow paid off,” said Afghan archaeologist Anwar Khan Fayez. Fayez and others on the team led by Zemaryalai Tarzi have been searching for a colossal reclining Buddha, mentioned in an account written by a seventh-century Chinese traveler.
Chinese archaeologists claim to have found one of the 84,000 miniature pagodas commissioned in the second century B.C. by the Indian emperor Ashoka the Great. The pagodas were said to hold relics of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha!Tombs dating to China’s Western Zhou Dynasty (c. 11 century to 771 B.C.) have yielded more than 1,100 characters inscribed on oracle bones.The palace garden quarters built in Beijing’s Forbidden City for the Qianlong Emperor, who retired in the 1770s, have been restored to their former glory. “The importance of the garden is that it is the most sophisticated design. This was the climax of the period,” said architectural historian Liu Chang, of Tsinghua University.The minerals in a stalagmite from a cave in China are telling scientists about the cycle of monsoons for a period of more than 1,810 years. Dry periods in history coincide with the decline of the Tang, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, and even the Maya. Wet periods probably contributed to greater crop production, increases in population, and stability.A Ch’ing Dynasty coin was unearthed during the excavation of a nineteenth-century building in the Chinatown section of Darwin, Australia. Australian coins, medicine vials, buttons, beads, and a buckle from a soldier’s belt were also found.A tomb discovered in China’s Hubei province in 1979 contains 43 chariots and more than 100 horses, and probably belonged to a king from the Warring States Period. “The great probability is that the tomb is of King Zhao of Chu, named Xiong Zhen, who was the last king of the state,” said Xu Wenwu of Changjiang University.
Did Noah’s Flood start in the Carmel?Marine archaeologist Sean Kingsley thinks that six submerged Neolithic villages near Israel’s Carmel Mountains may have inspired the biblical flood of Noah. But Ehud Galili, who has excavated the site for the past 25 years, says that sea levels rose slowly, and that the villages were not destroyed by a catastrophic event.The wreck of the slave ship Trouvadore has been identified off the coast of the Turks and Caicos Islands. More than 190 Africans survived the sinking in 1841 and escaped to the British-ruled islands, where slavery was illegal. “The people of the Turks and Caicos have a direct line to this dramatic, historic event – it’s how so many of them ended up being there,” said Don Keith of Ships of Discovery.
Cold case: world’s oldest family identified!What’s being called the world’s oldest family has been uncovered in a Stone Age cemetery in Germany. DNA testing has revealed that the 4,600-year-old skeletons of a man, woman, and two children, who had died violent deaths and were buried together, were a family. Others buried in cemetery had also died violent deaths, leading scientists to conclude that the victims died in a sudden, fierce raid. skull containing a yellow, brain-shaped substance has been found in a pit on prehistoric farmland in York, England. “This could be the equivalent of a fossil. The brain itself would generally not survive. Fatty tissues would be feasted on by microbes,” said Philip Duffey, a neurologist who examined the skull with CT scans.U.S. Fish & Wildlife archaeologist Debbie Corbett tries to locate all of the human remains taken from federal lands in Alaska, identify them, and return them, under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
Clues to why modern humans migrated!An international team of scientists excavating in Sibudu Cave in South Africa have found 70,000-year-old shell beads and other artifacts that could mark the leap to complex human thought! U.S. forces are guarding a 1,400-year-old monastery overlooking the city of Mosul. Violence has prevented restoration and excavation, but military chaplains have used the monastery to try to educate the soldiers. “It’s a break for the soldiers and gives Iraq, the people, a human face. It helps them understand the history of the country in which they’re fighting,” said Capt. Geoffrey Bailey.French mineralogist Francois Farges is 99 percent sure that the Hope Diamond, now housed in the Smithsonian Institution, was owned by the kings of France until it was stolen during the French Revolution. “It’s more than a hypothesis. We have carried out analyses by scanner and laser, which have been validated by experts in gemology,” he said.Cuban and American archaeologists are working together at El Chorro de Maita, an Arawakan village inhabited at the time of Columbus’s first voyage. Documents produced by the first Spanish colonists are also being examined for clues to life in sixteenth-century Cuba.
A 6,500-year-old Neolithic farming settlement has been found in central Greece during digging for a gas line. “We can’t provide an estimate yet on the settlement’s size, but it doesn’t seem to be very big,” said archaeologist Giorgos Toufexis.Researchers from the University of Chicago discovered an Iron Age funerary stele at the ancient city of Sam’al, in southeastern Turkey. The stele is carved with an image of the deceased, who is thought to have been cremated, and an inscription proclaiming that his soul inhabited the stone.The first Illyrian trading post has been found by a team from the University of Oslo, in an area between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina known as Desilo, according to a report in Apollon. The Illyrians have been thought of as pirates, but these archaeologists say they also had peaceful trade connections with the Romans. “There certainly were pirate activities along the coast, but we thought it rather odd that the pirates were so far inland and so near the important Roman colony of Narona. In our opinion Desilo might have been a trading center,” said Marina Prusac and Adam Lindhagen.
Anthropologist Larry J. Zimmerman of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, and student Jessica Welch, used archaeological methods to study homelessness in downtown Indianapolis. “A much better way to deliver aid is to target what they actually need, and our work on the material culture of the homeless may help us find out what that really is,” Zimmerman explained.
Chemical signatures in a piece of calcite from a cave near Jerusalem indicate that periods of dry weather coincided with the fall of both the Roman and Byzantine empires. “Whether this is what weakened the Byzantines or not isn’t known, but it is an interesting correlation,” said geologist John Valley, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
A new study of sophisticated obsidian tools from the Ethiopian site of Gademotta indicates that they are 276,000 years old, or older than the oldest known Homo sapien bones, which are about 195,000 years old. “The new date for Gademotta changes how we think about human evolution, because it shows how much more complicated the situation is than we previously thought,” explained archaeologist Laura Basell of the University of Oxford.More figurines and objects carved during the late Stone Age have been discovered at Zaraysk, southeast of Moscow. The new artifacts include two human figures assumed to be female, a small bone engraved with a cross-hatch pattern, a mammoth rib inscribed with three mammoths, and a cone-shaped object. “These finds are incredibly rare, and they offer a unique picture into human Upper Paleolithic life,” commented anthropologist Jeffrey Brantingham of UCLA.
Earlier this year, it was announced that 14,300-year-old human coprolites had been discovered in a cave in Oregon by archaeologist Dennis Jenkins. Here’s how the discovery of the oldest evidence of human presence in North America happened.
A bit of Stone Age string was discovered in a camp 30 feet under water off the coast of England’s Isle of Wight. “The string was found with wooden planks and stakes and some pits containing burnt flint. We believe they may have been heated up to help work timber into boats,” said Jan Gillespie of the Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology.
Peru has sued Yale University for the return of 40,000 Machu Picchu artifacts removed by Hiram Bingham!Machu Picchu is in today’s news, with another study of which European or American adventurer may have arrived at the remote Inca stronghold first. The twist with this version is the implications it may have for Yale University’s claim to artifacts collected by Hiram Bingham in the early twentieth century.A mummy and 25 ceremonial objects have been discovered within Machu Picchu, according to a report from the Associated Press.A 5,500-year-old settlement and 19 burials have been discovered near Nazca, Peru, according to a report in the Latin American Herald Tribune. Carved bones and snail shells, deer horns, and shell necklaces and bracelets were found in some of the graves.
William Fash, director of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, wants to return some 50 pieces of carved Maya jade collected in the early twentieth century by American consul Edward Herbert Thompson. Mexico accused Thompson at the time of taking the artifacts illegally, and filed an unsuccessful lawsuit.
Huge T-shaped stones have been uncovered in Turkey at Gobekli Tepe, which could date to 9500 B.C. Now archaeologists are asking which came first, monumental building projects or farming? “The intense cultivation of wild wheat may have first occurred to supply sufficient food to the hunter-gatherers who quarried 7-ton blocks of limestone with flint flakes,” writes Stephen Mithen of the University of Reading.
In Brazil and Argentina, pre-Columbian people built earthen ovens near burial mounds. “After they buried an important person on the burial grounds, they feasted on meat that had been steamed in the earth ovens and drank maize beer,” said archaeologist José Irarte!
Italian archaeologists working in the Palestinian town of Magdala say they have found sealed jars of ointment dating to the first century A.D. The excavators, who are Franciscans, have linked the discovery to Christian scripture. “We think these are balms and perfumes and if chemical analysis confirms this, they could be similar to those used by Mary Magdalene in the Gospels to anoint the feet of Christ,” said Father Stefano De Luca, who heads the project.In a blunt message to Islamabad in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, British Premier Gordon Brown on Sunday told it that "time has come for action" against terrorists operating from the soil of this country as he revealed that the 3/4th of the terror plots investigated by the UK had links to al-Qaeda and Pakistan. Making a visit to ISLAMABAD shortly after an unscheduled trip to India, Brown, who met President Asif Ali Zardari, also offered a comprehensive pact to Pakistan for controlling terrorism and extremism. Britain has asked both India and Pakistan to question suspects arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks, Brown said at a joint press conference with Zardari. While,Zardari denied that Pakistan was appeasing India by cracking down on terrorists and said his country was committed to fighting the menace anywhere in the world. He said he was the personal victim of terrorism, referring to the assassination of his wife, former Premier Benazir Bhutto, in December last year in a gun-and-suicide attack. Rather the Pakistan President said the Mumbai terror attacks presented an opportunity for Pakistan to work with India to fight the scourge.
The British Premier, who met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Delhi, said Zardari has assured him of taking further action to clamp down on terrorists involved in the Mumbai attacks.
"Time has come for action, not words," Brown said, adding that the action needed to be taken because what happened in the "mountains" of Afghanistan and Pakistan affected the cities of Britain. He said that the 3/4th of the terror plots investigated by the UK had links to al-Qaeda and Pakistan.
Earlier, Brown said in New Delhi that the outrageous attacks in Mumbai were carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba and made it clear that Islamabad will have a "great deal to answer for".
International pressure on Pakistan increased further on Sunday with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown asserting that the outrageous attacks in Mumbai were carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba and made it clear that Islamabad will have a "great deal to answer for". Brown, who made an unscheduled visit to New Delhi in the wake of rising tensions between India and Pakistan over the Mumbai strikes, met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and said he would convey New Delhi's concerns to President Asif Ali Zardari.
Hinting at building pressure on Pakistan, the British Prime Minister told a select group of journalists here that the world community should come together to ensure that there were "no safe havens for terrorists" and "no safe place for those who finance terrorist activities".
Brown held talks with Singh during which the Indian side shared details of the Mumbai carnage and its links in Pakistan.
When asked what Singh told him about the attacks which were "conducted" from Pakistan, Brown said "Indian police is interviewing people. We also know there have been arrests in Pakistan. We also know that the group responsible is LeT and they (Pakistan) have a great deal to answer for."
His assertion assumes significance as Pakistan has been in a denial mode on involvement of Laskhar-e-Taiba or its frontal organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa in the Mumbai attacks and has been asking for evidence in this connection.
Brown, who came here to demonstrate solidarity with India in the wake of Mumbai attacks, said he would convey the views of Singh and "concerns" of the Indian people to the Pakistan President when he meets him during a visit there.
The Indian side is understood to have apprised the British Prime Minister about how 10 terrorists were sent from Karachi to carry out well-planned and synchronised attacks in Mumbai and how the assailants were being guided by their "controllers" in Pakistan even during their three-day engagement with security forces.
"I am travelling to Pakistan and will meet President Zardari. I will explain the concerns that the Indian people have about what has happened and about issues related to Pakistan," he said shortly before leaving for Islamabad.
"I hope the world can see how it can work together to combat terrorists," Brown said, adding he had told Singh that Britain would give every possible help and the two countries would work together in tackling terrorism and issues relating to security.
"We will work together to build international support to tackle terrorism and roots of terrorism in this world," said the British leader who had a breakfast meeting with Singh which was also attended by Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon.
Underlining that "no country should have to go through what India has had to as a result of the Mumbai outrages," Brown said he had told Singh that "we have got to attack financial terrorism, that is where terrorism is given funds and given safe havens through funds.
"We have got to continue to expose the perverse and unacceptable messages that are sent out by extreme terrorist groups who are perversionists and misuse religion."
SEZs CULTURE KILLING RURAL INDIA : WHEN THE RULERS BECOME KILLERS !!
VIDARBHA JAN ANDOLAN SAMITI
REGD. OFFICE: 11, TRISARAN SOCIETY, KHAMLA, NAGPUR - 440 025.
PH. 2282447/457 MOBILE-9422108846. vidarbha@gmail.com
================================================================================
REF: - FARMERS SUICIDES VERY-URGENT- PRESS-NOTE DATED- 17th feb., 2007
To,
Dr. Shri Manmohan Singh,
Hon'ble Prime Minister,
Union Council of Ministers,
Government of India,
North Block, New Delhi – 110 001.
2) Shri Pranab Mukherjee,
Chairperson,
Empowered Group of Ministers – SEZs,
Government of India,
North Block, New Delhi – 110 001 .
Hon'ble Sirs,
We are greatly concerned and disturbed with the rapidly deteriorating Rural Economic Conditions across the various States in India, especially the parts which are dependent upon the Agriculture as main source of income. The Policies of the Governments either at Union or the States are killing the Rural Economy.
The Special Economic Zones (SEZs) culture has posed great threat to the survival of poorest of the poor & the entire Agrarian Community is becoming the victims of the special treatment meted out to the select class of the society in the name & style of promotion of SEZs and the mad competition being seen across the various states by the Corporates and the support given by the State Governments without considering the long term impact of such SEZs in India.
We are submitting this representation for lodging our strong protest against the Policies of the Governments in extending the extra-ordinary helps to the Industrial Houses and the Corporates in the name & style of the SEZs and its mushrooming culture across the Indian States, which has been proved as disastrous to the economy of Rural India.
We sincerely hope that you will consider following vital points in light of the facts raised through this Representation and pass suitable orders directing the Core Group of Ministers' on SEZs which has taken a positive step by bringing to halt the approvals of Special Economic Zone projects and considering the need to review the Special Economic Zone Policy and Act 2005.
We are glad to know this decision was the need of the hour in response to the wide scale opposition and rising discontentment among communities across India for forced acquisition of their resources and also among the civil society and people's groups in general for not opening the issue of SEZs for dialogue or discussion.
We, being the Members of the civil society, have consistently been raising several concerns in the matter of establishment of SEZs. The key issues that have been raised by us include
1. Large scale forced acquisition of land and promotion of real estate businesses
2. Loss of local agriculture, fisheries based and other traditional livelihoods
3. Lack of equal and non-exploitative employment opportunities for local communities in SEZs
4. Increasing burden on natural resources like land, water, forests and environmental destruction
5. Revenue losses and lack of real economic development of the country and people
6. Breakdown of governance systems especially of the local self governments with the creation of foreign enclaves
7. No effort by the government to initiate or open public consultation on the matter.
The grounds of opposition to the culture of SEZ has been detailed as below :-
(A) Issue of Land and Displacement of livelihoods
In countries like India the issue of large scale acquisition of farm land leading to dispossessed farmers and loss of farm based livelihoods across the country side has been dominant in creation of SEZs. In India, as of now the total amount of land for the 400 projects (both formally and in-principle approved) comes up to 1,25,000 hectares according to a news report The government however, claims that most of this land is available with the State Industrial Development Corporations which is indeed untrue. Farmer's protests against acquisition of their lands in Haryana, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu. Orissa and Gujarat are evidence enough to prove that.
The fact is that before the opposition started the government was completely unprepared to deal with the issue of land acquisition and the subsequent fallouts on farmers.
The Central SEZ Act 2005, for instance, is silent on land acquisition for SEZs. Further, land is a state subject and State governments are being expected to take the lead in establishing SEZs and, in characteristic fashion, the policy on land acquisition and potential displacement has been left unattended.
The SEZ rules do mention that the land can be acquired by the developer only after BoA approval. However, in Haryana and Maharashtra we have seen that the state government and developers have started acquisition before receiving a nod from the MoC.
Further , while there is a lower limit to the amount of land that can be acquired for an SEZ, there is no upper limit. Chapter 2 Section 4 of the Central Act in fact says that the central government after notifying the SEZ, if it considers appropriate, can subsequently notify, any additional area under the SEZ.
What is also ironic is the government's position that state should stay out of the land acquisition process and that it should be between the two parties (Private party and the land owner) in case of private land. This is rather unfortunate considering that the state is supposed to protect interests of the marginalized sections of the society rather than let the big sharks free to eat the small fish. Unless we move with the assumptions that farmers and rural communities in India are no longer marginalized this is a bit hard to understand
Another statement that "wastelands and single crop lands" can be acquired for SEZs is also adhoc and irrelevant. Any one who has an understanding of the rural areas would know that land use in India is not confined to cultivation but also extends to collective use for day-to-day survival. Fuel, fodder, other non-timber forest produce requirements are met from land, which could be categorized as 'common property resource' or charagah, gaucher, padit bhoomi in local languages but is referred to as "wasteland" by the government. Another critical issue is that in many states these "waste" lands are also either already under cultivation where the farmers are yet to get legal titles. In Raigarh district, where Reliance is planning to build a massive SEZ, almost 12,000 hectares of what are known as Dali Lands have been under cultivation by the tribals for decades now. Most families though are still awaiting regularization of these lands since they fall under the category of Forest land. Similar is the case for Orissa. For example, in Jagatsinghpur district the area where the Multinational Pohang Steel Company is planning its Special Economic Zone, almost 300 families are yet to be allotted legal titles. In the absence of pattas or titles, the villagers have virtually no bargaining power and get displaced without adequate or any compensation. Rehabilitation in such cases is not even considered by the government.
Also, considering the size of many of the special economic zones – they would be spread over an area of hundreds of hectares. It would be rather difficult to find contiguous "wastelands" spread over large areas, especially in many of the states like Tamil Nadu, Haryana, UP and Maharashtra, where these zones are coming up. So it would be virtually impossible to locate them "only on wastelands". In its myopic view of the problem of "Land" in SEZ projects the Ministry has failed completely in considering these complexities and dynamics which will have serious consequences for rural communities and the last of the common property resources in our country.
The principle of "eminent domain" which is the basis of our colonial Land Acquisition Act (1894) is being clearly misused and even given priority over the principles in the 73 rd and 74 th amendment of the constitution, which give primacy to gramsabhas as autonomous decision making entities.
Now, in a rush to facilitate the setting up of these zones the Government is also pushing a National Rehabilitation Policy based on a 2006 draft circulated by the Ministry of Rural Development. This draft has been extensively criticized by people's groups for being sketchy and inadequate. Further, this draft completely overlooks the earlier draft prepared in 2005 by the National Advisory Council (NAC) of the UPA in extensive consultation with people's groups. The 2006 draft does not draw from the principles of the 2005 draft version but in fact ignores them. In spite of detailed people's opposition to the new draft the government is pushing for its passage.
In a scenario where new mega-projects like Special Economic Zones are coming up at a fast pace within the legislative framework of the SEZ Act 2005, such a Rehabilitation policy in combination with the colonial Land acquisition act would do little to address the issues that arise out of development induced displacement.
(B) Labour Exploitation Issues :
It is a well known fact that all over the world trade and export zones have reported instances of labour exploitation as a characteristic feature. India is not very different.
Prior to the SEZ Act 2005, and the introduction of the SEZ policy, theoretically, all labour and factory legislation were fully applicable in the EPZs. However, even in the EPZs, trade unions were practically absent and rare despite attempts of trade unions to organize. The key reason being the restriction to entry into the EPZs, which is limited to the employees who are transported directly to and from the factory door. Workers have also reported fear of victimization by management if they become part of union activities. In the Noida EPZ, workers have been sacked for demanding that labour laws should be implemented.
The government had restricted the right to strike in two of India's export processing zones (EPZs) - the Santacruz Electronics Export Processing Zone (SEEPZ) near Bombay and the Kandla Free Trade Zone – by giving them "Public Utility" status under the Industrial Disputes Act. This makes strikes illegal unless they are preceded by specified reconciliation procedures involving the Labour Commissioners' Office
In the current SEZ regime, the labour laws have been significantly watered down. Chapter 2 Clause 5(g) of the SEZ rules hands over the power to the Development Commissioner to declare the SEZ as a "Public Utility Service". Clause 5(f) delegates powers to the Development Commissioner to handle workmen-employer relations. Functions of the labour commissioner are also handed over to the Development Commissioner.
As in other parts of the world in Indian EPZs it is the women who constitute the bulk of the work force in the EPZs, employed in establishments such as ready-made garments and electronics-based and software industries In an All India Convention of EPZ/ SEZ workers organized by CITU in 2002 it was discussed that women workers are exploited in these zones, Women are made to work in night shifts without providing proper conveyance to their residences. They are not given maternity leave. On the other hand, women found to be pregnant are removed from service. Cr unches are not provided. Young and unmarried women are only preferred. The use of toilets is controlled by issuing tokens. Sexual harassment is very common.
In the Santa Cruz Electronics Export Processing Zone (SEEPZ) near Bombay, ninety per cent of the workers are women who are generally young and too frightened to form unions. Working conditions are bad and overtime is compulsory. The same is the case in the Cochin SEZ. The Contract Labour (Regulation & Abolition) Act 1970 specifically prohibits employing contract workers in activities which are "permanent and perpetual" in nature. We have example of many SEZ/EPZs where almost all the activities conducted by the units in are permanent and perpetual in nature and yet the practice of employing contract workers goes unabated
In the time to come the issue of labour is going to emerge as a major concern in these zones.
(C) Environmental Issues in SEZs
While it would be very premature to talk about the environmental impacts of the large number of SEZ projects that are coming up, we have the Chinese example to imagine the extent of the environmental losses involved. India is already going through a crisis in terms of water scarcity as well as loss of forests and biodiversity. The point is that in the current framework for economic development costs of loss of forest and other common lands; large scale exploitation of water resources; coastal lands and lines; pollution – air and water; generation of e-waste etc; are not even being computed.
The environmental governance mechanisms have only seen weakening since the past five years. We have the following points to consider
It was way back in 2001 that the 1994 Environment Impact Assessment notification an amendment was made in 2001 that exempted SEZs from Public hearings, which was a critical part of the Environment Clearance procedure
The EIA notification 1994 was amended in a major way and a new notification was introduced in 2006 in order to issue fast track clearances for all projects
Schedule 1of the EIA notification, 2006 issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, under item 7c covers industrial estates/parks/complexes/areas, export processing zones (EPZs), Special Economic Zones (SEZs), Biotech Parks, Leather Complexes. The above categories continue to be exempted from the requirement of a public consultation even in the new notification
The EIA Notification, 2006 divides industries, projects and activities into Category A and Category B where projects under Category A have to be cleared by the Central Government, and Projects under Category B are to be cleared by the State Government.
Under Category A slated for Central Clearance " if at least one industry in the proposed industrial estate (SEZ) falls under Category A, the entire industrial area shall be treated as Category A irrespective of area", and "industrial estates with area greater than 500 ha. and housing at least one Category B industry" will be considered Category A and will require Central clearance.
Under Category B, with "industrial estates housing at least one Category B industry and area <> 500 ha and not housing any industry belonging to Category A or B", require an EIA report to be cleared at the State Level.
An industrial estate that is less than 500 ha and does not house an industry of either Category A or B is exempt from Environmental Clearance.
While it seems fairly clear that units operating within SEZs largely require an Environmental Clearance at either the Central or State Level, on the basis of an E.I.A, but without a public consultation, a broad-based, sweeping "Special Condition" undermines even this basic requirement. The condition states-
If any zone with homogeneous type of industries (under sections of chemical and petrochemical/bulk drug industries), or those Industrial estates with pre –defined set of activities (not necessarily homogeneous), obtains prior environmental clearance, individual industries including proposed industrial housing within such estates /complexes will not be required to take prior environmental clearance , so long as the Terms and Conditions for the industrial estate/complex are complied with
Construction projects are out of the purview of the EIA notification 2006
The SEZ Act and rules also leave the following ambiguities
No mention is made of regulatory mechanisms for Multi-product, single product zones, tourism zones as well as clearance for entire SEZ clearance vs. clearance for units
Guidelines for notification of SEZs are silent on environmental and ecological concerns
Single window clearances and roles of the approval committee are over arching. It is the development commissioner and later the SEZ Authority that would
The single window clearance feature makes the Approval committee at the state level under the DC responsible for approval of all SEZ units and even compliance to conditions of approval if any are to be monitored by the AC
There is no mention of the role of the Pollution Control Board
There is mention of Coastal Regulation related provisions in the sez rules and act. CRZ Notifications make space for SEZ's with almost no conditions and regulation
These issues become even graver with provisions like the one restricting entry into the SEZs , which will be open to authorised persons only. This would obviously make it difficult for independent researchers to enter the area to carry out any environmental impact assessments or studies.
Issues of Governance and sovereignty of self governments
The most antidemocratic aspects of the SEZ Act which hit out at the sovereignty of governance systems
Special Economic Zones have been given the status of industrial townships as per provisions of clause (1) of Article 243Q of the Indian Constitution and defined in Section 3.2 of SEZ Act, 2005. The State Government will declare the SEZs as Industrial Township Areas to function as self-governing, autonomous municipal bodies. Once an SEZ is declared as an Industrial Township Area, it will cease to be under the jurisdiction of any other local body like- Municipal Corporation and gram panchayat. Moreover, the SEZ Developer and Units would also be exempted from taxes levied by the local bodies because of its self-contained local body.
This clearly undermines the constitutional status given to Urban local Governance and Panchayats under 74 th and 73rd amendment. The present need is to improve financial powers given to the Panchayats to enable them to invest in physical and social infrastructure as a means of promoting growth and equity. And unregulated excessive industrial exploitation of land, water and other natural resources would only worsen the life of rural poor when Panchayats do not have any control of decision and taxing SEZs.
The status of "deemed foreign territory" to SEZs will snatch the sovereignty of locals from their lands, and natural resources which is the backbone of local economy and sustenance and also their fundamental right to movement as Indian citizens will be violated.
What is really going to challenge the governance system is the creation and concentration of power in the hands of the Development Commissioner at the state level and the Board of approvals in the Centre.
Further, the SEZ Act provides that grievances related to the SEZ can only be filed with courts designated by the state governments which will only be for trials related to civil and other matters of Special Economic Zones. No other courts can try a case unless it goes through the designated court first.
Building of a physical boundary around the SEZ and restricting entry to authorsied persons' only means that it would be difficult for any individual or civil society groups and independent agencies to enter the area without prior approval of the Development Commissioner.
Creating foreign territories as SEZs within the national boundary will challenge the sovereignty of the country and undermine the constitutional right to freedom and liberty. This will enhance the internal conflicts led by economic and infrastructural disparity.
The act is completely silent as to the mechanisms for accountability of these (SEZ authority/ Approvals' Authority) bodies to the people of the country.
Countering the Economic Logic
There are several questions that have been raised by economists and intellectuals challenging the arguments being offered in favour of SEZs as "engines of economic growth". Some of these are
Revenue losses from tax exemptions
According to an internal assessment of the Union Finance Ministry in 2005, the government had to forgo about Rs. 90,000 crore in direct and indirect taxes over a period of four years on account of the SEZs.
The 1998 Comptroller and Auditor-General Report on EPZs, stated that "customs duty amounting to Rs.7, 500 crore was forgone for achieving net foreign exchange earnings of Rs. 4,700 crore and the government does not seem to have made any cost benefit analysis.".
The RBI has estimated that till 2010 the country exchequer would lose 1,60,000 on account of the tax subsidies to SEZ projects. The other concern is of SEZs turning into real estate businesses considering that 65% of the area within a zone can be a non industrial set-up.
Domination of IT and Software projects
In the developing countries, the optimism generated by the boom in IT services allows the government to ignore the fact that growth of employment in the commodity producing sectors has not merely decelerated sharply but is increasingly less responsive to increases in output – the jobless growth syndrome. The optimism that IT services generate is only because this is the only segment where employment is increasing significantly. But that growth may be inadequate for most of the population except the middle class minority.
In Bangalore and Pune, both cities that have witnessed IT driven growth in the past five years, issues of widening class disparities within the city leading to several social problems have emerged. Between July 2005 and 06, the Consumer Price Index escalated by about 8% in Pune, and 7% in Bangalore. This is further driving the real estate market – and cities like Pune have seen a whopping ascent in property prices as well as new construction. The ultimate load is on the city infrastructure – problems that both these aspiring to be metro-cities are facing. The states where these cities are located also are the toppers in the list of approved SEZ projects.
POOR EXPORT PERFORMANCE OF EPZS
There has been a comparison between SEZs and EPZs and the prediction of performance of SEZs in export production based on the EPZ experience in India
Lets take a look at some figures that will throw a light on the performance of EPZs
EPZs contributed to 4% of the exports in the country (2002)
As per an MoC report the exports from the Special Economic Zones during 2004-05 were of the order of US$ 4 billion, representing an annual growth of over 36%. During April-December, 2005, the exports from the SEZs stood at about US$ 3.5 billion.
During the five year period ending 1996-97 the foreign exchange outgo on imports made by the units and the customs duty forgone amounted to Rs.16461.58 crore against which exports of only Rs.13563.87 crore were reported.
An appraisal of the seven EPZs was undertaken during August 1996 to July 1997. Out of 2333 units granted letters of Approval, 513 units were functional as on 31 March 1997.
The Ministry of Commerce stated that 1351 projects/LOAs had been cancelled or lapsed on account of non-implementation indicating 58 per cent mortality in the units approved.
While the zoning concept remains the same as far as EPzs and SEZs are concerned, there are certain differences here –
100% Export oriented units were essential in the EPZ policy and the conditions to get concessions and taxes were more difficult
The SEZ policy relaxes the conditions by allowing sale of products to domestic market by the Units in SEZ
The doubt that is being raised is that if SEZs are not able to attract EoUs then would they become hubs for domestic market production, which inturn would affect domestic producers in non SEZ areas (or domestic tariff areas)
Under all circumstances, in SEZ, the main beneficiaries would not be the units but the developers who would be getting land at cheap rates from the state along with huge concessions on infrastructure, maintenance and tax breaks. Even if they fail in attracting EOUs, their success will depend upon the set of activities (entertainment and township) that they can carry out for generating profits in the non industrial area of the SEZ.
Regional Imbalances
The state wise break up of the number of projects below shows the dominance of SEZ projects in Maharashtra , Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. As in the case of China many of these zones are to be located in coastal areas. They also seem to be clustering around urban and already developed areas due to easy access to infrastructural facilities for transport and communication. The question that is being raised is of creation and further accentuation of already existing regional imbalances. Further, there is a concern about concentration of these zones in areas that are already over burdened and running short as far as supply of water and power are concerned.
The question that is being repeatedly raised is that are these zones relevant in the current economic context of India?
In view of above, we hereby demand the following immediate reliefs in the national interest, especially the interest of Agrarian Community staying in the Rural India.
? the SEZ Act 2005 be repealed to ensure industrial and economic development which is fair and democratic
? the approved and notified SEZs be cancelled and land acquisitions already made be annulled
? an immediate dialogue or consultation be initiated with people's groups, communities and Panchayat representatives to seek opinion on strengthening the development of local economies
We once again reiterate that the SEZ Act 2005 is anti democratic and unconstitutional as it completely violates the right to life and livelihood of people, who are being forcefully displaced for the implementation of these projects. The Act promotes large scale privatization and monopolization of resources into the hands of a few private developers at huge costs to the state exchequer as well as the economy and environment of this country.
We hope that being representatives of the people, you stand united with us for a just and democratic society that ensures equitable development for all.
Thanking You & anticipating an immediate steps from your Desk,
Yours faithfully,
KISHORE TIWARI
IPRESIDENT,
VIDARBHA JAN ANDOLAN SAMITI
11, TRISARAN SOCIETY, KHAMLA,
NAGPUR – 440 025
CC to :
1. Shri Murli Manohar Joshi, Member of Parliament – Lok Sabha & The Hon'ble Chairperson, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce, Parliament House, New Delhi – 110 001.
2. Shri GK Pillai, Special Secretary, Ministry of Commerce, Udyog Bhavan, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Road, New Delhi – 110 001
3. Shri Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister of State, Ministry of Commerce, Government of India, Udyog Bhavan, New Delhi – 110 001.
CC with compliments to :-
Hon'ble President of India, Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi,
Shri Atal Behari Bajpai, Former Prime Minister of India, New Delhi,
Shri Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Former Prime Minister of India, New Delhi.
http://andolan.blogspot.com/2007/02/sezs-culture-killing-rural-india-when.html
Interlinking or Destruction of Indian River System?
Written by cpimlnd
Tuesday, 26 August 2003
(River water disputes between different states, particularly one between Tamilnadu and Karnataka, have fuelled the debate over interlinking of river water systems. We are here printing an article by Dr. N.K. Bhattacharyya on this issue. We welcome further contributions on this subject. – Editor)
Severe drought situation prevailed in various parts of the country due to recurring failure of monsoon during the last two consecutive years. Our politicians and bureaucrats, however, completely ignored such massive human disaster. Rural poor people, without any job opportunity, could not purchase their ration and had to die in thousands out of continuous starvation. No one bothered to serve them food, though FCI godowns were overflowing with grains. At the same time, to reduce increasing stock of food in the godowns, the BJP Govt. is allowing traders to earn huge profit by selling them grains at below the BPL- (below poverty line) price for export and it was not difficult for them to avoid the law by submitting fabricated export documents. Govt. allowed people to die of starvation and at the same time unscrupulous traders were allowed to make some quick bucks through fake export. This is a Govt. run by a political party whose main vote bank is traders and commission agents.
Indian irrigation system has completely collapsed and in 2003 India’s agriculture is made to depend on vagaries of monsoon as it was in the beginning of 20th Century. 70% of the population living in five lakh plus villages feel totally insecure. To exploit this man-made economic crisis, Indian and foreign gang of Mafia have brought out from their hat a beautiful proposal (to make huge profit) for the politicians, bankers and contractors lobby of this country. They definitely have no compulsion to think of this poor country with less than $400 annual per capita income. It hardly matters to the professional looters that the poor people of this country are getting poorer day by day. They brought out from its grave an old anti-national concept of “inter linking of rivers” floated by Mr. K.L. Rao in the sixties which was long back thrown into the dustbin after considering all aspects of the case. There was another such proposal by Captain Dastur (called the “Garland Canal”), which deserved hardly any attention.
In order to gain credibility for such an anti-national project with the huge gold mine in store for the contractors, this current proposal of interlinking of rivers was brought by BJP Govt. at the Centre before the nation in a very clever and subtle manner. They knew that the previous Indian President, Mr. K.R. Narayanan, went to Alwar in Rajasthan and highly appreciated the community efforts made by the villagers in bringing to life a forgotten river through check dams and water harvesting techniques. The Govt. contributed nothing; rather the politicians tried to harass the people who were helping themselves. Anna Hazare made similar efforts in Rahalgaon district of Maharastra. People from drought-prone areas throughout the country consult him on water harvesting. Some in Gujarat have done excellent work of water harvesting in the traditional dry regions of Kutch and Northern Saurashtra. In large tracts of MP, water-harvesting method is followed and the people are enjoying good result. The people of this country are totally fed up with all big projects which fail to deliver promised results. They yield high profits to contractors and politicians only. People want restoration of old silted-up storage tanks where surplus rainwater may be stored for the rabi season and for emergency. The experience of ordinary cultivators is that rivers should not be disturbed at all in their natural flow and our MNCs and foreign Institutional investors should be kept miles away from rural schemes as they only destroy rural India with their big and bigger projects. Sardar Sarovar Project on Narmada is the recent reminder to the country of how mega-projects enrich contractors like J.P. Industries and others while lakhs of adivasi families are on the roads of metropolitan towns pulling rickshaws or begging for food. If this is not destruction of rural India then what else is? Do our PM ever bother for these lakhs of hapless citizens of our country forcibly uprooted from their ancestral land for no fault of their own. Inter linking of rivers is again one such project which will bring more miseries to the people of this country. That is why till today the Govt. is following the project in a hush hush manner.
It is very difficult to believe that our learned present President does not know about all the community level work specially when millions are suffering every year due to complete failure of gigantic multi-crore projects. In his speech to the nation delivered on 14th August, 2002, BJP led Govt. announced as a policy decision the issue of Interlinking of Indian Rivers. Subsequently to give it a judicial approval by the highest court of the country, this was raised through a PIL before the bench of Chief Justice of India, Mr. B.N. Kripal on 31st October 2002, just one day before his formal retirement and he observed that the interlinking of river project should be completed in next ten years. However, the learned Judge, after retirement, denied that he issued any order. He said it was just an observation and need not be followed up. The BJP led Central Govt. wants it and the case is being monitored minutely by the Supreme Court and it is ordering the Govt. to complete the project as per schedule.
We are told that BJP workers in the south have promised the people of Tamilnadu that BJP, after it comes back to power with two-thirds majority at the Centre after 2004 parliamentary election, would deliver to each household pure Himalayan Ganga water and for that they have to support BJP in the election. Whether Ganga water comes or not the small time BJP traders in Tamilnadu are having a nice time promoting the sale of brand new metal water containers to keep Ganga water when it comes. This is the tragedy of Indian democracy!
Will any political party allow flow of Ganga water to states other than those over which it is traditionally flowing? Are interstate river disputes totally forgotten? The Farakka Barrage was constructed some time back to save Kolkata Port from closing down from siltation at the estuary of the Ganga and it caused huge controversy: both politicians of Bihar and Bangladesh vehemently opposed the project. The Kolkata Port even then could not be made navigable for huge international ships; an alternative port at Haldia had to be created by spending huge amount to handle modern ships. The basic thesis for interlinking of rivers is that surplus water should be diverted to dry areas but in that process if the original river water is completely sucked out and the river stops flowing, that will mean ‘killing’ of a river and it is an anti-national act. Perennial rivers should be allowed to flow according to their own natural course, there should be minimum interference in their natural flow system. Human settlements have to follow the discipline of the natural river. It is always dangerous to tamper with ecosystem; man’s greed for money has nothing to do with social and ecological justice. There are instances in India where those rich and affluent people whom even our courts are afraid of, have diverted the flow of rivers so that they can construct their hotel project and earn huge profit. In PM’s mega road project, where contractors and politicians are earning huge profit, large number of huge trees are desperately uprooted and wide roads are constructed. It hardly matters where the roads will be utilised or not. Who guarantees the quality of these roads? In Delhi roads on the flyovers are hardly some months old but look at their horrible condition in this rainy season. Where are the contractors? The BJP Govt. is treated as the worst form of corrupt government in the history of India!
The argument is that recurring loss in economy due to flood and drought should be stopped by diverting surplus water from one river to another river. But before that is taken up let the Govt. explain why not they bring some documents to show that this is a better alternative. Since independence, both the Centre and the states have taken various river valley projects and spent billions of rupees on these projects. Before they take up billion dollar Interlinking of river project, we demand a comprehensive performance report on the working of these river valley projects – their present state of affairs both of completed and partly completed projects. Many of them were termed as multipurpose projects and students of those days were asked to explain specific benefits of those projects in various examinations. Now almost all of them are sick or nonfunctional or if they function somehow, no one knows how long they will survive. In real life year after year during the rainy season when cultivators don’t need any canal water, their fields are always badly flooded with canal water released to save the dam, and when farmers require water due to long dry spell to save the standing crops or in the rabi season, there may not be sufficient water in the dam due to lower storage capacity. Excessive silting at the dam site has reduced the carrying capacity of the dams. Canals have vanished in the fields due to wilful neglect of maintenance. Why the existing projects are not properly repaired and efficiently maintained? The conventional answer is that governments are bankrupt and neither the Centre nor the states have any fund after paying salary to their staff. During last so many plans, public investments on irrigation and rural development was virtually nil and criminal politicians and their contractor friends looted whatever small allocations were made. It is reported in the Press that previous Central Rural Development Minister Mr. Shanta Kumar complained to the PM how Mr. Naidu, the BJP President, diverted fund of Rural Development Ministry when he was holding its charge to favour a particular contractor or a group of contractors in his home state. In such a state of affairs government is still not transparent from where it will arrange this huge investments of around Rs. 5,60,000 crore for financing the interlinking of rivers?
This is the estimate as on 2002-03 and the project is promised before Supreme Court to be completed before 2016. If past practices are any guide the cost may easily go up by 100 to 200 percent before it is completed 13 years later. Now who will finance this mega project except international financial agencies to which we already owe more than $100 billion? We don’t know why Govt. is not clearly explaining to the people the causes that stop us from repaying loan obligations to multilateral agencies, specially when our foreign exchange reserve is reaching $100 billion. Everything is kept secret: conditionalities of loan agreements, sources from where this foreign exchange is coming to India and what stops us from repayment of foreign loan taken by the government without consulting the people. Who will reply? Both the RBI Governor and Finance Minister are ignoring the questions as if they do not have any accountability on this vital national issue. This is the way fascist democracy functions in India.
World Bank and IMF are at least very clear on such issues. Both of them have included schemes for commercialising and privatising water in their recent conditionalities for loans to developing countries. In England where Margaret Thatcher started privatisation with a bang, private water companies increased their profit by 692% between 1989 and 1995 while cost to the consumers increased by 106%. In France privatisation of water services meant an increase in consumer price by 300% between 1984 and 1997. World Bank forced Bolivian Govt. to hand over public water system to an MNC, Bechtel, which increased the water prices astronomically high and individual residents were compelled to collect permit to store even rainwater in their own property. This angered the people so much that Bolivian Govt. was forced to withdraw water privatisation law. In India, many MNCs are given contract to supply water in the metropolitan areas like Degremont from France for Rithala water treatment plant in Delhi. Bottled water marketed by both MNCs and Indian companies are far from safe as drinking water, but Govt. doesn’t have the courage to intervene. When LDF Govt. was ruling in Kerala, it allowed an MNC, Coca Cola, to lift water from a particular river for its plant, which resulted in complete drying up of the ground water level of adjoining agricultural land. Cultivators are up in arms and want the MNC plant to close down. Now UDF Govt. of Mr. Anthony is blaming CPI(M) for this blunder.
Mr. S. Prabhu was happily privatizing electricity sector as the Central Minister of Power but he was asked to resign from the post by his Party boss Bal Thakery and BJP has retained his chair by offering Chairmanship of the Task Force on Interlinking of Rivers. It appears that Mr. Prabhu, a Shiv Sainik, will enjoy privatisation of Indian Rivers for the purpose of interlinking (Look at the huge billion of dollar investment). It hardly matters to him, what will happen to his thousands of brothers and sisters who worship Lord Shiva (Kanwarias) and every year they travel long distances from different parts of the country to go to Hardwar and carry back Ganga water. Will WB’s nutured MNCs allow use of Ganga water free of cost by Shiv Sainiks and volunteers of VHP? Will Bal Thakary stop this inter-linking of river project and privatisation of water resources? Will he ask Probhu to resign again from such a multi-crore hot money project? The so-called Shiv Sainiks and VHP brand Hindus who gather in lakhs to enjoy Khumb Mela on the basin of various rivers frequently – will they be allowed to continue pollution of rivers if they are privatised ? These rituals on the rivers of India have only polluted river water and made it completely unsafe for animal and human use. Will these fundamentalists of Hindutva Brand allow commercialization and privatisation of our rivers? Without commercialisation of our rivers, at least in next 50 years no government in India will be able to raise enough resources to carry on with this mega project. We have the sad horrible experiences of both Ganga and Yamuna Action Plans – contractors and politicians have become richer but pollution in both the rivers has multiplied several times instead of going down. We must learn from the experience of different countries in Latin America and Africa, that water should never be privatised and handed over to business houses.
It is strange that both RSS and its front organization, the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, have agreed with the govt. policy to destroy Indian Rivers and its water resources. Worst will be when MNCs will be given exploitation responsibility of individual rivers and other sources of water. Supply of safe drinking water is the minimum responsibility of any civilised Govt. and if it fails it should be shown the exit door. A hundred crore people of this country are pushed back to live in deteriorating human conditions (now in Human Development Index India ranks 127 against 124/125 previously). In the garb of interlinking of rivers the BJP Govt. wants to privatize the water resources of the country and like electricity there is huge money in this project. It started at the top with the blessings of the Chief Executive Officer of the country and subsequently is supported by the highest judiciary. There is no debate in the country and the decisions are imposed on the people. Till today water is a state subject and almost all the states have opposed the interlinking project as they don’t have any excess water in their rivers. Even then the sick Prime Minister is insisting on starting of the project simply because the Indian agents of MNCs are pressuring the Govt. to move fast because the economies of the developed countries are in shambles and G-8 countries are restless about how to run their sick economies. Bush and Blair can tell lies and survive in their ‘imperial’ democracies and occupy resource rich countries like Iraq with their muscle power. An average Indian understands the inner meaning of this project – Interlinking of Rivers or Privatisation of Indian Water Resources. It is high time we should accept the challenge thrown by both Indian Executive and Judiciary. We understand the unending unwritten powers to harass its citizens by both the organs of the state. No threat of contempt of Court can stop Indians from seeking explicit clarification again and again that water being a non substitutable integrated item to sustain life like air, can it be privatised and commercialized through back door or front door? The policy makers can not hide their faces like ostriches in the sand; they should be made accountable for their decisions. The BJP Govt. stands answerable to the people of this country.
http://www.cpimlnd.org/march-august-2003/interlinking-or-destruction-of-indian-river-system.html
Peoples Democratic Revolution in India and Land Problem
Written by cpimlnd
Monday, 09 April 2007
(Approach Paper of CPI(ML) - New Democracy,
Presented at the Convention on 4th July 1997, Hyderabad)
People’s Democratic Revolution in India and Land Problem
Uphold Great and Glorious Road of Great Telangana Armed Struggle
This year July 4th marks completion of 50 years since Great Telangana Peasants’ Armed Struggle. This struggle was the pinnacle of various mass struggles that came in the wake of Second World War. After the Second World War a wave of people’s struggles burst forth throughout the country. The people of Tripura and Manipur states carried on armed struggles. In addition to them, struggle of Warli tribal peasantry in Maharashtra, the Patiala peasants’ struggles in Punjab, the Azamgarh peasants’ struggle in Uttar Pradesh and Tebhaga struggle in Bengal came forward. In the beginning of 1946 armed revolts and revolutionary struggles in India, i.e., RIN Ratings Revolt, Azad Hind demonstrations etc., took place. Telangana’s downtrodden and toiling people, particularly peasants, waged heroic struggles and armed struggle against Nizam feudal state being protected by the Britishers and against the ‘new’ Indian Government led by Jawaharlal Nehru. On this auspicious occasion of the completion of Golden Jubilee Year of the Great and Heroic Telangana Peasants’ Armed Struggle, it is pertinent to recall that great and glorious struggle. Let us recapitulate in brief how the struggle started, what were its achievements and the relevance of that struggle for us today.
Telangana region, when it was a part of the former Hyderabad State of the Nizam, consisted of ryotwari and jagirdari areas. In both areas, the people were the victims of feudal exploitation and oppression of the Deshmukhs, Jagairdars and landlords. Forced labour, illegal extractions, indebtedness and occupation of peasants’ lands were the important forms of feudal exploitation. The Deshmukhs were also landlords, who received ‘Rusum’ – a form of pension from the government – and enjoyed special recognition from Nizam Government. Communist Party started working in this region from 1940. It could build up a powerful peasant movement within a short period (by 1944) by mobilizing the people for struggle against exploitation by Deshmukhs, Jagirdars and landlords while carrying on a political agitation against Nizam. The peasant movement faced the question of land distribution even by 1944. The peasants demanded back the lands which were occupied by the landlords from the poor and the middle peasants. They realized by 1946, through their own experience, that they cannot get back their lands within the limitations of law. They occupied about 3,000 acres of land by defying the law. They confiscated grain and money from the landlords, who had forcibly snatched them in various forms from the peasants. They elected People’s Committees which were called SANGHAMS which were to help them in administering the day to day affairs. This had put an end to feudal landlords’ domination. This revolutionary programme was implemented in about 150 villages of Nalgonda district. This was how the Great Telangana Peasants’ Armed Struggle started in 1946. During 1946 the peasants and agricultural labourers had distributed among themselves the following types of lands:
1. Lands occupied in various forms from the peasantry by the landlords (i.e., in return for loans, mortgages etc.), 2. Grazing lands in the possession of landlords, 3. Waste lands of the government in the possession of the landlords and 4. Forest Lands.
During those days there was an understanding among some revolutionaries that it is possible to distribute the land of the landlords to the peasantry only after the proletariat has seized power. But experience proved that at a certain stage of the struggle, it is not only possible but also necessary to distribute land and that the revolutionary movement can be advanced only when the land is distributed. In the course of their struggle people saw fully well that neither the government nor the armed forces prevented these lands from getting into the hands of the landlords, nor were the same of any use to get them back into their lands. As soon as they occupied the lands, they experienced how the government unleashed terror, with all its armed forces. They came to the decision that they could defend the lands only with weapons.
The Nizam’s Government had dispatched its armed forces to suppress the agrarian movement. Then the people formed volunteer squads and defended themselves with whatever weapons they could get. Women also participated in the self-defence. When the armed police had failed to suppress the resistance, the government sent its military. It selected some important villages, where it killed some of the important young leaders of the movement. One of them was a woman. With intense repression the then Nizam’s Government tried its level best to smother the peasants’ armed struggle. By the end of 1946, it could temporarily prevent the advance of the peasants’ armed struggle. Nevertheless, this fascist repression could not cow down the valiant peasants’ will power and dauntless spirit. Instead of succumbing to the fascist repression, they thought that arms locally available to them were not enough to defend their revolutionary gains. They felt the necessity of firearms. Having acquired firearms and made necessary preparations, they intensified the struggle after a few months.
THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF GREAT TELANGANA ARMED STRUGGLE
The Telangana peasantry, after some time, again attempted to occupy lands in the possession of the landlords. After the ‘transfer of power’, the Congress rulers were demanding that the Nizam should subordinate himself to Delhi, whereas the Nizam wanted that the Hyderabad state should be an independent entity. Taking advantage of the rift in the ruling classes, and pending their compromise, the Telangana peasantry, under the leadership of the Communist Party, intensified the armed struggle to overthrow the Nizam’s regime. They distributed among themselves the lands of the landlords. They established Village Soviets, and carried out administration through them. Youth formed themselves into armed squads, fought against the Nizam’s armed forces, and drove them out of their villages. Thus the anti-Nizam struggle and the agrarian revolution went on simultaneously. During the course of their struggle three thousand Gram Rajyas had been established in Telangana. About 10 lakh acres of land were distributed including tenancy lands. In addition to this government wastelands were also distributed extensively.
METHOD OF LAND DISTRIBUTION
The peasants had distributed first the lands of those landlords who were the active supporters of the Nizam. Later a ceiling of about 200 acres of dry land was fixed and the surplus land was distributed to the landless in a good number of villages. The ceiling was implemented for wet land taking 10 acres of wet land equal to 100 acres of dry land. The acreage of black cotton soil was suitably adjusted. The lands thus distributed were not compensated. But they could not quench the thirst of the landless for land. Then the revolutionaries thought of reducing the ceiling first to 100 acres and later up to 70 or 80 acres. In addition to landlords’ surplus lands, the tenants were declared as owner’s of the tenancy lands, while the entire banjar lands were distributed to the landless. Thus the Communist Party of India, for the first time in India, tried to solve the basic problem of the Indian peasantry i.e., “Land to the Tiller”. The main points observed during the course of land distribution were:
1. A peasant family was given the same land which it had lost to the landlord.
2. The rest of the land was given to other landless poor.
3. Equal distribution of the land.
– The cattle and agricultural implements were distributed to the needy, after they were seized from the landlords. The Gram Rajyas took the lead in carrying out these tasks. All disputes arising out of implementing this programme were settled by the Gram Rajyas. The Gram RajyasGram Rajyas functioned as village courts and justice was free. They gave judgements and implemented them. were elected in open meetings of the villagers. They were responsible for conducting the administrative affairs especially regarding education, irrigation and health, apart from land distribution. They developed irrigation sources (tanks, wells etc.). They dug out canals from riverbeds and converted dry land into wet land. They took special care for rural sanitation. They conducted night schools to root out illiteracy, when it was not possible to have them during daytime due to the constant police raids. The
– It was not considered feasible to abolish usury totally. It was abolished in relation to the big landlords. A reasonable rate of interest was fixed towards small moneylenders. Thus the people continued to enjoy credit facilities to the extent necessary. Youths from the families which got land as a result of the land distribution and patriotic youths joined the armed squads. Besides them, there were the village volunteer squads. While defending their lives and properties during the daytime, the people spent a peaceful night during the period of resistance.
With the abolition of landlordism leading to land distribution and the peasant tilling his own land, and with the free and selfless help of the Gram Rajyas, the people’s economic condition improved within six months’ time. For the first time after hundreds of years, they had two meals a day, whereas earlier they used to have one meal a day or starve for four to six months a year. They had enough of clothing and lived a life of self-respect for the first time.
In Telangana, the struggle was being conducted by the people to solve the land problem by distribution of the lands of the landlords among the landless and to basically change the social system. It was a turning point in their history. It was at such a juncture that in September 1948 the Indian Government sent its troops into the fighting areas of Telangana. While claiming that their aim was to liberate the Nizam’s state from the Nizam’s armed forces, they suppressed the agrarian revolution and restored landlordism. The Indian Government tried to succeed where the Nizam had failed.
FASCIST REPRESSION ON THE PEOPLE AND HELP TO LANDLORDS WAS THE POLICY OF NEHRU GOVERNMENT IN TELANGANA
There was white terror by the Indian forces in the Telangana villages. They were encircled. Men, women and children were tortured. Arrests were made on a mass scale, including of 10 year old children and old men. Practically there were no young men left in the villages, as they were all arrested. There was not a single village left in Nalgonda district which was untouched by the arrests. The state jails were not enough to accommodate all of the prisoners, therefore, the authorities had used the military barracks, and constructed temporary camp jails. Particularly Party leaders, cadres and militants were jailed. There was a military regime in the fighting areas of Telangana. The landlords who had fled away to the towns for fear of the people, particularly armed people, were brought back to the villages by the Nehru Government. The lands of the peasants were re-occupied, and economic assistance was given to landlords by way of rehabilitation.
EXTENSION OF THE MOVEMENT TO FOREST AREAS TO PROTECT AND CONTINUE THE ARMED STRUGGLE
A good number of revolutionaries and armed squads had become victims of repression. The rest left the villages and entered the forests to protect and defend the armed agrarian revolutionary movement, the people and the armed squads. They worked among the people in the forests. They organized them by spreading the message of armed agrarian revolution. Through their organization and struggle, they got rid of the exploitation and oppression by the landlords, money lenders and forest officials. They occupied and cultivated the forest lands which they were in need of. The people in the forests started a new life with the help of the revolutionaries and the people armed squads.
The ‘democratic’ armies of the Indian Union did not leave the people in the forests at that. They entered the forests and set fire to the huts of the villagers whom they killed at sight. The ‘Brigs’ plan was enforced by bringing a number of tribal villagers to one place, where there was a camp of the military to sever the links between the people and the guerrillas. With the intolerable conditions in the camps, the people came out of them and joined the armed guerrilla squads in considerable numbers, to defend their lands and other revolutionary gains. The people’s armed squads could come out of the military encirclement. Thus the armed struggle continued.
During the Great Telangana Armed Struggle of 1946-51 about 10 lakh people were imprisoned and 4,000 dearest daughters and sons of peasants and labourers were shot dead. There was no limit to the number of people who were tortured. In fact, the entire Telangana area was turned into a concentration camp. People of Telangana and through them the people of India, tasted ‘democracy’ of the Congress brand even before the Constitution came into force.
RESISTANCE TO THE FASCIST REPRESSION OF NEHRU GOVERNMENT AND SQUADS FORMATION IN AP DISTRICTS TO HELP TELANGANA ARMED STRUGGLE
The impact of the great heroic armed struggle of the Telangana people spread not only to Telangana Forest Areas but to coastal districts of AP and Rayalasema areas as well. Armed squads were formed in coastal districts with the available militants in support of Telangana Armed Struggle. Though there were tactical mistakes, these squads and the Party made tremendous sacrifices and laid down their lives in support of that heroic struggle. Squads were being formed to be sent to Nallamala Forest areas in Rayalasema districts.
Nehru Government provided a taste of its fascism even to the people of coastal districts. The fascist repression let loose by it against the people of Katuru and Yelamarru villages in Krishna district in front of Gandhi statues is unforgettable in history.
REVISIONISTS’ BETRAYAL OF THE TELANGANA ARMED STRUGGLE
This was the first historical Armed Peasant Struggle led by a section of leadership in CPI which for the first time tried to apply the Chinese revolutionary path to India i.e., the path of protracted people’s war. Ever since its formation in 1920, the CPI leadership had failed to pursue correct strategy and tactics suited to the Indian conditions. During the period of Great Heroic Peasants’ Armed Struggle of Telangana (1946-51) the leadership of CPI failed to digest and accept the Chinese Path. Instead of pursuing the tactics of retreat and defence in order to intensify and advance the armed struggle when favourable situation arises, the leadership became scared and laid down arms. Some of them shamelessly ridiculed and abused this great, heroic armed struggle. Through this they wanted gentlemen certificates from liberal bourgeoisie and from Nehru Government. Mr. Ravi Narayana Reddy wrote a notorious book slandering that great and glorious struggle. The title of the book was “Telangana Nagna Satyalu” (Naked Truth of Telangana). Some of them became approvers to save their lives. Most of those leaders are now in CPI or CPM. They boasted then that they were laying arms aside for a temporary period and they would restart the armed struggle. Nevertheless, during the long period of last 50 years, they never thought of touching them to wage armed struggle against the Indian state as they had promised the people and cadres at large. However, they also never stopped shedding crocodile tears about that epic struggle. Notwithstanding their crocodile tears and pretensions, both the revisionists and the neo-revisionists thoroughly failed in rekindling the torch of Telangana armed struggle even after 50 years.
Not only this, the revisionists, particularly the CPM leadership, betrayed and crushed Naxalbari and Srikakulam armed struggles as well. Whatever the strength of the movements and higher class-consciousness of the people, the revisionists looked only towards Kerala-Bengal road and not towards the great, heroic and glorious road of Telangana Peasants’ Armed Struggle. This has been only due to their parliamentary path and pro-ruling class politics. On the other hand, some of the communist revolutionaries who upheld the path of Telangana, Naxalbari and Srikakulam, also failed to catch and carry forward the path of Telangana Armed Struggle due to their left-adventurist tactics. Therefore neither the revisionists nor the left-adventurists can become the real heirs of Telangana armed struggle. None of their paths – parliamentary path of the revisionists and the left-adventurist line – can become the alternative to the Great Telangana Armed Peasant Struggle. The peasants’ armed struggles of Naxalbari, Srikakulam etc. and the Resistance struggle of Godavari Valley once again proved the validity of the path of Telangana peasants’ armed struggle. Taking proper lessons from these historical peasants’ armed struggles, let us (proceed) along the path of Telangana peasants’ armed struggle.
TELANGANA ARMED STRUGGLE THAT DISTRIBUTED LAND TO THE TILLER, FORCED THE RULING CLASSES TO TAKE LAND REFORMS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY
The armed struggle of Telangana that started for land, food and liberation showed the basic solution for the basic problem of the Indian people i.e. “land to the tiller”. This historic struggle distributed banjar/waste lands, forest-lands, tank beds, lands illegally occupied by the landlords, the lands of the landlords who supported the Nizam Government and the surplus lands of the other landlords while imposing land ceilings and reductions on it. For the first time in India, land reforms were implemented on the basis of land ceilings to provide “land to the tiller” during this great struggle under the leadership of CPI. The impact of this struggle reverberated on the peasantry all over the country. Hence, the Indian ruling classes started fearing that the spread of the influence of that struggle to other areas and other states could endanger their very existence. As a result of this, while imposing fascist repression on the people of AP particularly in Telangana, the Military government of Hyderabad under the aegis of Nehru-Vallabhai Patel, declared a number of land reforms to cajole and divert the Telangana peasantry and their movement. Not only that, it brought Vinoba Bhave into the field and made him start ‘peaceful’ distribution of the lands that were given to him by the landlords as ‘generous’ gifts or charity to divert the armed peasants’ struggles throughout the country particularly in Telangana.
In this paper we propose to deal with the state of the land problem and the ruling classes’ response to it. We shall also analyze the results of these measures by the ruling classes as well as point out the significance of the land struggle in the ongoing revolutionary movement in the country. Thus the ambit of our discussion is limited.
Thus the ruling classes, having sensed the dissatisfaction of the peasants all over the country and impending danger to their rule brought many land reform legislations. The Telangana armed struggle furnished the ruling classes a stunning lesson i.e., the princely states cannot withstand the armed peasant struggles which might arise in those states. Hence Nehru enacted certain reforms like annulment of princely states and land reform acts etc.
The import of these reforms with regard to land question was to abolish certain intermediaries as there were multiple layers of intermediaries. Through this measure the revenue collectors of British regime and princely states were treated as the real owners of the land. Infact they were allowed to retain big chunks of land. Only those intermediaries who failed to take legal possession of their land lost their land. They constituted an insignificant minority. The big intermediaries were able to convert huge tracts into their ownership while extracting big ransom from the government for the revenue collection rights over the rest. The ceiling imposed in this period was individual based and exemptions for homesteads, orchards and similar purposes formed parts of all state acts. Ceiling limit was very high. Land reforms being a state subject, there were differences in the land reform acts of different states. The land reforms of Nehru period failed miserably in solving the problem of land and delivering the land to the tiller.
While the peasantry continued to simmer with dissatisfaction, there was a relative lull in the agrarian struggles. This was largely due to the attitude of the CPI leadership which had embarked on the parliamentary path and had abandoned revolutionary struggle of the people against the ‘progressive’ Nehru Government. Continuing in their betrayal of Telangana, the revisionists in leadership tried to smother and lull the peasant movement into constitutional and ‘constructive’ channels. The section of leadership which had split from the CPI in the course of Great Debate and formed CPM continued with the same attitude towards the revolutionary peasant movement. Nehru Government and his successors obviously forgot about their reforms with the lull in the movement which only proved that their reforms were in response to the revolutionary struggles of the peasantry under the communist leadership.
However, the imperialist dependent Nehruvian model based on protecting and perpetuating semi-feudalism in the vast countryside had led to sever economic crisis. Congress faced decline and splits in several states and suffered serious setback in 1967 elections and non-Congress governments came to power in eight important states in 1967. In these states the revisionists and neo-revisionists participated in the non-Congress governments.
In West Bengal CPM and CPI became part of the united Front Government. They sought to substitute the participation in governments in semi-feudal, semi-colonial system and defence of the same, in place of class struggle and overthrow of the system. In these conditions the revolutionaries inside the CPM led the heroic Naxalbari peasants’ armed struggle which was brutally suppressed by the revisionists and neo-revisionists in power. The armed peasants’ struggle of Naxalbari was followed by peasants’ armed struggles of Mushahari, Debra-Gopiballavpur, Lakhimpur-Kheri, Srikakulam and the resistance struggle of Godavari Valley during 1967-69. These great struggles broke out after a gap of 20 years, since the Great Telangana Peasants’ Armed Struggle which was betrayed by the then CPI revisionist leadership. These struggles once again brought up the question of waging armed struggle to resolve the basic demands of the Indian people and their liberation particularly “the land to the tiller”. Naxalbari armed struggle proved to be a turning point in the history of the Communist Movement in India, as it became the dividing line between the revisionists and the Marxist-Leninists. Revolutionaries rallied around Naxalbari and formed CPI(ML) on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought with New Democratic Programme and path of Protracted People’s War. Thus Naxalbari declared the revolutionary movement in India on the question of programme and path.
In the background of the above developments, Indira Gandhi, once again, started singing the tune of ‘land reforms’ to divert the attention of the people from ongoing peasants’ struggles and to silence her opponents who were much senior to her in Congress. To have a socialist garb like her father, she also started internationally moving closer to Soviet social-imperialists; nationally she started giving ‘supremacy’ to public sector over private sector, nationalized the banks and revoked privy purses. In the wake of Naxalbari and other revolutionary struggles, started another round of land reforms. The government itself characterized the land reforms of Nehru period as a failure and laid down guidelines for the states to follow. These included lowering of ceiling, treating family as a unit for the purpose of ceiling and reducing the exemptions from the ceiling. But the lack of political and administrative commitment to carry out these reforms was all too glaring and they were doomed to fail as their predecessors.
Despite all the popular gimmicks, she was defeated in the elections held soon after the Emergency was lifted in 1977. The Janata Government that came to power at the Centre with the blessings of Mr. Jayaprakash Narayan kept all the earlier reform programmes and particularly the land problem under carpet. Mr. Jyoti Basu’s Government, which came to power in West Bengal in 1977, announced that it was bringing sweeping laws in agrarian sector to project itself as a better government than Indira Gandhi and others. Again Indira Gandhi came to power in 1981 but this time she kept almost silent on reforms particularly on land reforms despite her announcement on bringing new ‘twenty point programme’. After her murder, her son Mr. Rajiv Gandhi came to power but he was also silent on reforms like land ceiling acts etc. With the murder of Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao came to power and started talking about the failure of the earlier land reforms and his government’s resolve to implement those acts seriously. He was hypocritically talking of land reforms while his government was authoring the process of reversal of land reforms.
The problem of land continues to remain unsolved. Out of the total operated area in India of 406.5 million acres only 7.35 million acres was declared surplus and of this 6.4 million acres was taken possession of and only 4.9 million acres was officially distributed. Thus as on December 1993 only 1.8% of the land was declared surplus, 1.6% actually acquired and only 1.2% actually distributed. Hence the overwhelming majority of peasantry – poor peasants, agricultural labourers and middle peasants – residing in Indian rural areas demand basic land reform on the basis of “Land to the Tiller”. They demand that the ruling classes should genuinely implement the land reform acts which they themselves have passed. They also demand the removal of loopholes in the land reforms acts.
POST-1947 LAND REFORMS INTRODUCED BY THE NEW RULING CLASSES OF INDIA UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF NEHRU
The Great Telangana Peasants’ Armed Struggle forced the new Indian ruling classes to start land reforms throughout the country. Even earlier, several recommendations were there before the British rulers about the necessity of land reforms to prevent the revolutionary struggles of the peasantry. The very first amendment to the Indian Constitution brought by Nehru Government was, among other things, to validate the Bihar Land Reforms Act of 1950. The national policy on land reforms including ceiling on agricultural land holdings took shape in the First Five-Year Plan of 1951-56. In Andhra Pradesh, immediately after the transfer of power: Abolition of Madras Estates 1948 was enacted which applies to Andhra regions of the present day AP. In Telangana, Abolition of Jagirdari Act 1949 was enacted. The aims in enacting this act was to provide security to the tenants, to prevent transfer of lands to non-agricultural families, abolition of intermediaries and fixing land ceilings. The Hyderabad Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act were enacted in 1950 providing for regulation of rent and barring the eviction of tenants. After this an amendment called Section 38E was incorporated to treat the tenants as protected ones. In 1956 AP Tenancy Act was enacted. AP Agricultural Land Holdings Act was published in 1958 and it became an Act only in 1961. According to this Act a unit consisting of 1 person can keep 27 to 324 acres. This Act miserably failed in the course of its implementation.
Why did the enactments contain a number of loopholes and why were they not implemented seriously? This is because, the law-makers largely consisted of landlords who were greatly influenced by other landlords, ex-princes and kings. In addition, a large proportion of bureaucrats were from the landlord class. Hence, these laws naturally failed. It is very necessary to know the aims of the main agrarian reforms of Nehru Government and the loopholes in those acts. Let us look at some of his decisions and their implementation: 1. Amalgamation of princely states, 2. Abolition of Zamindaris, 3. Tenancy Acts, 4. Land Ceiling Acts, 5. Distribution of Banzar lands and 6. Rural Debt Relief Acts etc.
1. The amalgamation of princely states was not directly linked with the land reforms. The rule of Princes used to be run with outmoded methods and hence they were not in a position to withstand people’s struggles. Therefore, to make them withstand the people’s struggles and become part of the central machinery the amalgamation of princely states was taken up. As a result of this some kingdoms which used to be symbols of feudalism became non-existent but not feudalism as such. The ruling classes paid hundreds of crores of rupees as ransom from the budge i.e., from the money collected from the people.
Ex-princes and their children have been occupying the highest positions of the state apparatus like Central and State Ministers, Governors and Ambassadors in accordance with their economic status. They have got ownership rights on lahks of acres which used to be treated as their ‘own lands’ when they were princes. As these lands were fertile, these already millionaires further amassed crores of rupees. These are still among the richest. Though some reforms were brought to reduce or revoke their honours as kings, removing status symbols as kings and facilities provided to them as kings yet no loss at all occurred to their interests as feudal rich and millionaires. Under direct British rule feudalism and semi-feudalism continued in the form of princely states, zamindari, ryotwari and mahalwari systems. Semi-feudalism has been continuing after the ‘transfer of power’. Having seen some changes in the form of landlordism, to think that system itself has basically changed, is wrong.
2. “The Abolition of Zamindari System” was also a part of the Congress policies of so-called abolition of intermediaries. This was also an act intended to facilitate its rule. After the ‘transfer of power’ the new ruling classes abolished zamindaris and extended ryotwari system into these areas as well. This step was also taken very slowly and that too when the threat of people’s struggles existed. For abolishing some of these intermediaries in 40% of the country, the government paid crores of rupees as ransom to these sections from the public exchequer.
These ex-Zamindars kept fertile lands under their control. With the Abolition of Zamindari system, they became owners of these lands and thus they became big-landlords. Though they sold some of these lands and converted them into cash, yet while growing commercial crops, they have been earning lakhs of rupees every year. They have been safeguarding their interests by joining the state machinery at various levels. Thus these forces having joined Indian big landlord class has become the second biggest layer of it after the ex-princes. Many of them developed as bankers and industrialists. Though the new rulers abolished some intermediaries for facilitating their rule, yet by recognizing the ex-Zamindars as landlords overwhelming majority of the peasants lost their ownership rights on land. They are forced to live as tenants under the very same ex-Zamindars.
The landlords have taken big compensation from the government having sold their lands for projects. And yet they continue to occupy and enjoy the fruits of these very lands of project beds through their illegal occupation thus denying these rights to needy landless and rural poor. Landlords and Mafia elements also continue to occupy lakhs of acres of riverbed lands throughout the country.
3. “Tenancy Problem” was there ever since landlordism came into existence. Today’s landlord system in India is the creation of British imperialism. This problem was and has been prevalent not only in ryotwari areas but also in ex-zamindari areas and in ex-princely states. The servitors who used to collect taxes for Britishers and the puppets of British imperialism developed as landlords and intermediaries whereas the ryots cultivating their lands themselves became the tenants. Ex-princes and ex-Zamindars remained as landlords and those who were cultivating their lands have all become the tenants. The statistics being furnished by the Indian Government are not factual, scientific and integrated ones. However, we cannot but depend on their statistics. The number of tenants and the land under tenancy is not only continuing but the feudal system itself is continuing in this form. 37th Round of NSS (1981-82) brought out that share-cropping continues as the main form of tenancy. It showed nearly 41.92% of the leased in area under share-cropping with 10.86% as area under fixed cash tenancy, 6.27% under fixed produce and rest under other terms.
With the advent of tenancy acts, the unrecorded number of tenants and the extent of the land under their control have grown more than the recorded number of tenants. It is reported that the tenants are protected by the tenancy acts without the landlords removing them from the land that they till for years. This is not at all a fact. After the acts came into operation, insecurity of the tenants that till the land has increased because their tenancy agreements are oral in general. Those tenants who were there before the tenant acts came could get some nominal protection. According to the acts the landlord can take back the land from the tenant for his “personal cultivation”. In case tenant fails to pay his rent, landlord can take back his land. As long as these two rights are there for the landlord, the rights of the tenants will remain only on paper. Even when we consider the government statistics, the land given to the tenants was only like a drop of water in the ocean. In many states the tenant could not get even one acre of land. Even the land that was given to the tenant was mainly returning to the landlords. Owing to these tenancy acts innumerable tenants who could not pay their lease were alienated from the lands. Thus they are swelling the army of unemployed.
Thus the tenancy acts could not in any way resolve the problem of tenancy. The rights of the tenants remained nominal as it were. Tenants were removed from tenancy lands and tenancy rates increased. The number of oral tenancy agreements has increased. Ownership rights which were given to a small number of tenants also went into the hands of landlords and rich peasants owing to their debts to these forces. In some areas these ownership rights were not actually given to the original tillers but given to the brokers. Therefore brokers, utilizing the acts, vacated the real tenants.
4. “Land Ceiling Acts”: During the 1946-51 Great Telangana Peasants’ Armed Struggle, for the first time in India land ceiling was introduced and excess lands of the landlords were distributed to the poor peasants and agricultural labourers gratis. Entire banjar lands were distributed to the rural poor. The tenants that were tilling the landlords’ lands were given ownership rights. The entry of Indian army prevented this great endeavor.
The land ceilings and their implementation by the then Communist Party among the Telangana peasantry became a subject of debate throughout the country after the Telangana People’s Armed Struggle. After this struggle was suppressed, the Nehru Government brought a land ceiling act in 1950 for erstwhile Nizam areas. According to this ceiling rate was fixed at 500 acres and the remaining surplus lands of the landlords can be distributed with some conditions. In 1954 this ceiling rate was reduced. Later on such acts were introduced in various states of the country. But the surplus land distributed was only nominal. Land ceiling acts were enacted in the states of Bihar, Kerala, Mysore (Karnataka), Orissa, Rajasthan and Manipur. However, these acts could not go beyond the Assembly walls of these states. Some of these states even refused to declare the surplus land in those states. Only in Kashmir land ceilings were fixed for the lands of the landlords and 4 lakh 50 thousand acres distributed with a view to reducing the influence of Pakistan and to win over National Conference temporarily as it had long been raising the demand for land reforms. Government paid ransom to the landlords. Some states, in the end, furnished their statistics stating that the surplus land available in their states was too little. These declarations were nothing, but false.
When the problem of land reforms came on the agenda, Sri Mahanabolis had estimated that throughout the country 6 crore 30 lakh acres of surplus land was available if a ceiling was fixed at 20 acres per family. Years passed between the introduction of the act in parliament and its enactment. Big landlord class skillfully utilized this period. Having transferred their lands under various pretexts, they declared that they have little surplus land or nothing at all. In fact, government itself unnecessarily kept a higher ceiling limit. The landlords utilized this time in a nice way to escape even from this higher ceiling limit.
The fact of the matter was that the landlords did not include various lands under their control in their surplus land declarations. Important among such lands were grass lands, lands allotted for factories, cooperative agricultural farms, orchards, plantations and private forests etc. And the rest of the surplus lands were made benami transfers to their close relatives etc. Thus at last landlords showed very little surplus lands or nothing at all. Furthermore; the scanty lands distributed to poor peasants and the agricultural labourers also have largely gone back to the landlords and rich peasants as debt payments. As the unremunerative land units were distributed to the poor peasants, they are selling these lands within 3 or 4 years to the landlords and rich peasants to get rid of their debts or first mortgaging their lands and gradually selling them. Thus in rural areas poor peasants have been becoming agricultural labourers.
5. Distribution of Banjar Lands: The government showed the statistics as if during this period it distributed cultivable banjar lands and private forest lands to poor peasants and agricultural labourers. According to it one crore acres of such lands were distributed to the poor and majority of such lands went back into the hands of rich people in lieu of their debts. Thus an enormous quantify of fertile banjar land still remains in the hands of landlords. They had already acquired ownership rights on some of such lands. They have been cultivating the rest of such lands by paying nominal penalties or no penalties at all. Since the governments belong to the landlords, they are protecting the landlords and giving all facilities to them. On the other hand, the governments are imposing repression when the poor peasants occupy such lands.
The distribution of banjar lands could be useful only when the lands of the landlords and the banjar lands are combined and distributed to the village poor in a systematic manner. It could be useful only when the government provides necessary help for cultivating such lands and gives protection to the poor so that the land could not go back into the hands of the rich. “Land to the Tiller” could be available only when the people could organize an apparatus that could rebut the atrocities and attacks of the landlords, their goondas and the state apparatus. Protection to the lands of the poor can come only when the landlordism is eliminated. If we distribute the tenancy land and banjar lands while keeping landlordism intact, the same will go into the hands of landlords and rich ones within a short span of time. Now the same is happening just before our eyes.
6. Government introduced certain schemes to reduce the debt burden of the rural areas. Nevertheless, the village poor have not benefited through these schemes in a big way. In the rural sector the landlords and the rich peasants remain as the creditors. The middle class, poor peasant, agricultural labourers and handicraftsmen remain as debtors in villages. In rural areas usury is not only continuing in the form of cash but it also continues in kind (Nagu system). Though acts were passed reducing the interest rates, these acts are implemented nowhere in the country.
ONCE AGAIN, INTENSIVE PROPAGANDA ABOUT LAND REFORMS DURING MRS. INDIRA GANDHI’S RULE
Under the leadership of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the Indian ruling classes, once again, started a chain of reforms to pacify the growing discontentment of the people and divert the people’s struggles. Indira Gandhi pursued stick and carrot policies. On the one hand, she resorted to fascist repression against the mass movements and, on the other hand, she started announcing a number of reforms. To project themselves as progressive the ruling classes started these reforms. They enacted a law revoking privy purses. Instead of paying privy purses every year, they paid them a lumpsum amount all at once. Utilizing this as a source the ex-princes started their industries. In the name of bank nationalization government paid thousands of crores of rupees to all those banks which were running on losses. They shifted this burden on to the shoulders of the people. She, once again, started enacting land reform acts and land ceiling acts.
Indira Gandhi and her followers announced that in the past land reforms were not implemented properly and the poor could not get the benefits of those land reforms, as there were reactionary elements inside the Congress itself. They declared that this time they would take all precautions so that the fruits of these reforms reach the common man. They announced the scheme of “Green Revolution”. Nevertheless the dissatisfaction of the people did not cool down. Economic crisis turned into political crisis. It led to political instability and emergency rule was imposed in the country by Mrs. Indira Gandhi. While imposing emergency rule in the country, she on the other hand, announced welfare schemes for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, schemes for the removal of poverty and as a climax of all these schemes she announced the 20 point programme. Her government also announced that they would strive for achieving socialism. Hence they incorporated a clause in the constitution of attaining ‘Socialism’. The ruling classes announced that their aim was to attain “land to the tiller” by eliminating landlordism altogether. Notwithstanding her pompous statements, like her father, she also resorted to suppressing the people’s movements through fascist repression. She took such administrative steps that cajole and kill the people.
Just as the reforms brought by Nehru failed, the reforms brought during Indira Gandhi period also failed. Their boasts notwithstanding, the basic problems of the people particularly “land to the tiller” was not solved. Though the land reforms of Indira Gandhi apparently appeared radical yet their implementation was confined only to papers. They pretended they would dig out a large amount of surplus land. However, the amount of land distributed was a pittance. The surplus lands of the landlords distributed during Indira Gandhi period also was very little. To some extent, they distributed the banjar lands. But most of these lands again reached landlords and rich peasants as debt repayments. Though in the wake of economic crisis leading to political crisis and political instability, Indira Gandhi brought certain reforms and implemented them to some extent to attract the people, yet they were not fundamentally different from the reforms brought by the ruling classes earlier either in implementation or in bringing results. The reforms of Indira Gandhi could help only to win over the vocal sections among the downtrodden classes but not solve the problems of these downtrodden classes. In the process the ruling classes have made certain reforms even in Andhra. Let us see what these were and how they were implemented.
Indira Gandhi could show some more surplus land by reducing land ceiling limit. Nevertheless, on this occasion also the big landlords like ex-princes, ex-Zamindars, ex-Jagirdars, Desmukhs etc. could take all precautions not to show their surplus lands for distribution. For this they utilized the government machinery in various ways. Still they have been keeping and using hundreds and thousands of acres in their possession by dividing their family into different units and resorting to benami transfers. Indira Gandhi also continued the same exemptions in her land reforms as her father, Nehru, did to orchards and grasslands etc.
The land reforms in AP were implemented in the same fashion as they were in other states of the country. Look at the style of Indira Gandhi’s implementation of land reforms: During Nehru’s period the land ceiling limit in AP was fixed as between 27 - 324 acres and in accordance with this ceiling limit government announced that 73 thousand acres of surplus land was available for distribution. In fact, when the Land Reforms Bill was introduced in the Assembly the then Revenue Minister Mr. Kala Venkatrao declared that 30 lakh acres of land was available for distribution. AP government distributed only 54,709 acres out of the 73 thousand acres it had declared as surplus land. And that too the land distributed was not surplus land. It was surplus forest land from the districts of Adilabad, Medak and Karimnagar. The very same ruling classes announced during 1975-76 that throughout the country 40 lakh acres surplus land was available and out of it 10.5 lakh acres surplus land was available in Andhra Pradesh alone. Out of this the actual distributed surplus land was only 2.18 lakh acres. At the outset when Indira Gandhi brought the Reforms Act, it was declared that 20 lakh acres surplus land was available. After that they reduced that quantity to squarely half. As pointed out above the actual land distributed was only 2.18 lakh acres. 1,250 lakh acres surplus land was still under the occupation of the family units consisting of above 25 acres ceiling limit.
The land ceiling limits were not applied to coffee, tea, coco, clove, rubber etc., gardens even when Indira Gandhi amended the Land Ceiling Act in 1973. It was not applied to factory lands as well. The Acts were made null and void by the ministers themselves. The ex-minister Mr. Sagi Suryanarayana Raju preserved 1,800 acres while declaring 118 acres as surplus. Another minister Mr. Venkata Krishna Murthy Raju preserved 1,000 acres while declaring only 18 acres as surplus. The sugar factory lands of Challapalli Zamindar were exempted from land ceiling according to 1961 Land Ceiling Act. In 1973 these lands were also brought under the purview of Land Ceiling Acts. Nevertheless, Mr. Vengalarao himself declared in 1978 that Challapalli Zamindar had got 3 thousand acres surplus land. These were the very few incidents that came to light. It is a hard fact that if we go deep into the matter, we can find a great many such big landlords both in AP and in other states of the country. Finally we may say that the land distributed was not the surplus land of the landlords but the banjar land. According to the Central Agricultural Ministry Report of 1976-77, throughout the country 160 lakh acres of banjar lands were distributed. Mr. Chenna Reddy declared that the government has given pattas for 22 lakh acres of such land. It is estimated that there are still 5 crore acres of banjar lands available in the country. Likewise in AP alone about 4.5 lakh acres of endowment lands are available. In 1982 the Supreme Court declared that in AP alone about 8 lakh acres of benami lands were available. The World Agriculture Census declared that 83.12 lakh hectare surplus land still remains in the hands of landlords i.e., above the Indira Gandhi Land Ceiling limit.
The big bourgeois and big landlord governments enacted various ‘land reform acts’ in different phases owing to the mass movements particularly the Great Telangana Peasants Armed Struggle conducted during 1946-51. Thanks to the acts passed during 1948-51 some tenants became patta holders in areas where Jageers, Izaras, Mokhasas, Sarphakhas, Zamindars etc. used to be. The government paid ransom to the landlords for having taken their lands to distribute among the tenants. This burden was thrown on the shoulders of the people. In addition to this, landlords were provided with personal pattas for lands like the land under their personal cultivation, waste lands and banjars in those areas. Thus lakhs of acres of land still remained under the control of the landlords even after the enactment of these laws.
Even after the implementation of the tenancy acts and removal of intermediaries in AP, thousands and lakhs of acres of land still remain under the control of Visnoor Ramachandra Reddy, Jannareddi Prathapa Reddy, and small and big Deshmukhs, Desh Pandeys and Raos. Though these areas became, for name sake, as ryotwari areas but 80% of the land remained in the hands of these landlords. These tenancy acts were most useful where powerful mass movements took place. Brokers entered into the field where such mass movements were not strong enough and played a disruptive role. Though owning to the protected tenancy acts some tenants could get land yet thousands of oral tenants lost their lands and became agricultural labourers. Till today thousands of such oral tenants are living depending on the mercies of landlords and the evil gentry.
The land ceiling acts brought by Indira Gandhi in 1972 appear radical in nature, but if we deeply analyse them there is no big difference between these acts and the old ones. In these acts, having taken all precautions in favour of landlords, ceiling limits were decided. By keeping a number of loopholes in these acts, the government has provided an opportunity for the landlords to preserve their lands in various forms. Nowhere is there a match between the surplus land declared by the government and what it actually distributed. Even the land so distributed was infertile and uncultivable. Upto now the government has repeatedly been marking statements about the distribution of surplus land but not distributing the same. In a nutshell, the land reforms acts of 1972 also became nothing but a hoax.
The Central Government has been trampling underfoot the rights of the tribal people by passing the Forest Bill. The state governments have been creating disputes between the poor people belonging to tribes and non-tribes while protecting the landlords and their properties.
The Central Government brought the Forest Bill while talking loudly about the welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Thereby it revoked the traditional rights of the Girijans over the forest. It banned podu cultivation which comes as the birth right of the Girijan people for generation after generation under the pretext of protecting the environment, without providing them with proper alternative arrangements. Government is giving hundreds and thousands of acres of forest to the timber contractors and they have also been dismantling large tracts of the adjacent forests for their smuggling purposes to earn enormous profits. In these nefarious deals the government and forest officials are hand in glove with the timber contractors. This deforestation of the timber contractors is the main reason for the environmental problems and not the podu cultivation of the Girijan people. However, the government has been accusing the tribal people as if their podu cultivation is responsible for the environmental problems.
BIHAR: LAND REFORMS GROUNDED
Bihar, which had witnessed the Bakasht Movement and other peasant struggles, got the attention of the Indian ruling classes. It was the first state of Indian Union to enact land ceiling law as Bihar Land Reform Act 1950, also called the Zamindari Abolition Act. Parliament passed the first amendment of the Constitution to validate this Act after it was annulled by the Patna High Court. This Act did not impose any ceiling and allowed the landlords to keep land in ‘khas’ possession as occupancy rights. It only meant that Zamindars assumed legal possession of most of lands. Patna High Court held that ‘khas’ possession included constructive possession through hired servants. Only in 1964, Supreme Court held that ‘khas’ meant personal possession.
Bill providing for land ceiling was introduced in 1955 and passed by the legislature in 1959. It received Presidential assent only in 1962, a good seven years after its introduction which gave enough time for landlords to effect transfers to avoid the Act. This Act imposed ceiling on individual as a unit, and ceiling was fixed ranging from 20 to 60 acres of land, allowed landowners to transfer excess land to the family members. It imposed graded levy on landlords with surplus – a provision which was not implemented. Act also provided wide exemption for health and educational purposes, for trusts and other charitable institutions and for public and private plantations. Landlords could retain 15 acres as orchard and 10 acres as homestead in addition to ceiling land. The Act allowed landowners to resume personal cultivation and therefore to evict the tenants.
On proclamation of Bihar Ceiling Act, the State Government had claimed that it would collect 17.77 lakh acres. But no administrative work had begun till 1965. Upto 1966, only 1790 returns were filed which declared 1197 acres as surplus. By 1968 the number of returns had increased to 10,000 but not much land was declared as surplus. Till July 1970 no action was taken against recorded 416 landlords holding 3.26 lakh acres of land. Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations in 1970 says that surplus declared was nil.
After the spread of the fire of Naxalbari peasant armed struggle and flaring up of Mushahari peasant armed struggle, 125 large landlords were listed in 1970. Starting with 5 big landlords in every block the stated target was to distribute 1 lakh acres by September, 1970. But there was no progress on this.
In 1973 Land Ceiling Act of Bihar was amended with retrospective effect. Power to take cognizance was transferred from judiciary to executive from 1st April 1973. The Act took family as a unit, provided ceiling from 15 acres to 37.5 acres in five categories and provided exemptions for land of certain educational institutions, universities, research bodies, hospitals, orphanages, public and charitable bodies and religious bodies of public nature. Amending Act of 1973 created a sixth category providing 45 acres as ceiling and also provided that specified landlords cannot hold orchards and homestead in excess of ceiling. An amendment in 1976 provided for “voluntary surrender” which resulted in landlords surrendering the land not in their actual possession thereby bringing a big gap between ‘acquired’ and distributed land. Another amendment in the same year increased the executive’s power of intervention and created appellate jurisdiction of Board of Revenue. Yet another amendment of 1976 took away the right of parties other than landowners (i.e. landless and poor peasants) to file objections thereby debarring their involvement in these disputes.
The performance of land reforms in Bihar since 1970 too has been dismal. According to the Commissioner of Land Reforms Task Force (1992) only 1% of the land in Bihar is distributed. 1973-74 was declared Land Reforms Year. Yet till 1979 Bihar Government claimed to acquire only 2.36 lakh acres out of which 1.31 lakh acres were “voluntary surrenders”. In November 1990 Bihar Government claimed that it has acquired 3.85 lakh acres and distributed 2.62 lakh acres. Of the rest, 71,542 acres were disputed, 19,948 acres unfit, 24,288 acres debarred by courts and only 6,749 acres pending distribution. Even this figure is 2.5 times the estimate of the Planning Commission. The situation till 1992 is virtually the same when the State Government claimed to have declared 4.75 lakh acres as surplus of which 3.92 lakh acres were taken possession of and 2.68 lakh acres distributed. And on top of it, 23% of the land assumed surplus was released back to landlords on various grounds. According to agricultural census figures (and these figures are generally pro-landlord) the land acquired by the Government is just 21.7% of actual surplus disclosed by its own records.
The land concentration in some districts is very high particularly in districts of Purnea, Katihar, East and West Champaran. Official Surveys in 1991-92 disclosed that in Purnea 210 landlords had more than 200 acres of land each (9 of them having more than 1,000 acres each) while in West Champaran 11 landlords had more than 500 acres of land each. The survey also found that of the 16,121 acres allotted land the landlords have not allowed occupation to the allottees.
Bihar land reforms present a picture of total administrative and political apathy of the rulers. The state has one of the poorest records in maintaining land records. First Act for maintenance of land records was enacted in 1973 under the pressure of agrarian movement but it was notified in only 9 anchals out of total of 587 in the state. Bihar Government maintained that implementation of this law was deferred for fear of ‘disturbing agrarian peace’. In 1977-78 Janata Party Government launched “Kosi Krant” Project to update land records and records of share-croppers. Later the Project was transferred to Rural Development Department and eventually scrapped, again for the fear of ‘disturbing agrarian peace’. Original Register II was prepared on the basis of information given by the landlords with no details of plots. Field bujharat at the time of ‘abolition of Zamindari’ was never completed.
Tenancy poses a very difficult problem with most of the tenancies being informal. Even otherwise Bihar Tenancy Amendment Act defines “personal cultivation” as “cultivation by one’s own labour, or by family labour, or by hired labour or by servants on wage payments in cash or kind”. Agricultural census shows ‘leased in’ areas as only 0.4% of total operated area. But the NSS records ‘leased in’ areas as 14.5% in 1971-72 and 10.7% in 1981-82. And this variation is in official records while most of the tenancies do not come on the records at all.
A discussion on the land problem in Bihar is grossly incomplete without discussing the lands with religious institutions and charitable trusts. It is estimated that 40% of total land area is with religious institutions and trusts. It is mostly Hindu mutts which have agricultural land while Muslim and Sikh setups have urban land. These bodies were largely able to defy all land reform measures due to exemptions granted by the Acts and in good number of cases these are the lands of the landlords and in their occupation with these bodies acting only as a camouflage.
Land Reform measures have suffered from the protection extended to the landlords by the political-administrative machinery and judiciary. It has been true of the successive Congress Governments and Janata Party Government and later JD Government. The present JD Government – which had been projecting itself as the benefactor of dalits, backwards and minorities, i.e. the section which stand to gain the most by land reforms and which had been widely praised and supported by revisionist and neo-revisionist parties – has performed dismally in this field. They too have protected the landlords and unleashed fascist repression on peasant struggles, particularly on struggles for land. A study of the implementation of land reforms in Bihar is a clear exposure of the JD and its supporters.
LAND REFROMS: REVISIONISTS IN POWER – PERFORMANCE BELIES PROMISES
It is important to deal with the performance of ‘Left’ parties which have been ruling in West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala on this question. Hence let us take the case of West Bengal, where they have been ruling continuously for last twenty years. It is necessary not only from the point of exposing the loud claims of CPM leaders about their having carried out land reforms in these states but also this oft repeated myth obviously not contested by other ruling class parties, being taken as a reality by a number of intellectuals.
CPM General Secretary Harikishan Singh Surjeet in his book “Land Reforms in India: Promises and Performances” has claimed “States of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura where due to the strength of the revolutionary peasant movement and the formation of left and democratic governments, within the constraints of the present constitution, land reforms have been by and large carried out and the monopoly of landlords on land has been broken. Land does not remain the key slogan to mobilize the peasantry so far as these states are concerned.” CC of the CPM in the same vein has said “WB, Kerala and Tripura, where due to the revolutionary strength of the peasant movement and the formation of left led governments, land reforms have been by and large carried out within the constraints of the present constitution.” (Review of the work on Kisan Front and Further Tasks, 16-18 August, 1993)
This claim of the CPM does not stand the trial of facts. Before going into the performance of their Government let us see what their leaders had said or estimated as the surplus land. Their PBM and ex-Land and Land Revenue Minister, Mr. Binoy Krishna Chowdhary, had stated “In the 1950s at the time of Estate Acquisition Act and Land Reform Act, estimate was that the amount of ceiling surplus land will be 18-20 lakh acres. At that time ceiling was quite high and ceiling was individual based. After 1972, when the ceiling was lowered and ceiling made family based, then estimate was that the amount of total vest land will be 30-35 lakh acres.” After five years of LF rule in 1982 at the time when they moved the 2nd amendment to Land Reform Act, they claimed that by virtue of that amendment another 10 lakh acres of surplus land would be available. So according to their own pronouncements the total surplus land should be 40-45 lakh acres.
But from 1950s up till now the total amount of vest land under the possession of various governments is 12.47 lakh acres and amount distributed is 9.95 lakh acres. And out of this also the bulk of the land vested and distributed was before 1977 when the present LF Government came to power.
Upto June 1977 After LF Govt. coming to power in
June 1977 till now
Taken Possession 10.80 lakh acres 2.39 lakh acres
Distributed 6.12 lakh acres 3.83 lakh acres
So CPM has only distributed only 3.83 lakh acres and taken possession of only 2.39 lakh acres of land in its 20 years of uninterrupted rule. As against their claim of taking 10 lakh acres of land through 2nd amendment, according to the present Land and Land Revenue Minister Surya Kant Misra, they have acquired only 95,000 acres of land. Up till now distributed land constitutes 7.31% of total cultivable land area of 1 crore 36 lakh acres.
From this it is clear that performance of the CPM is not only far below the promises they made but that whatever ‘reforms’ occurred were mainly prior to the fortification of their ‘red’ fort in West Bengal. It also makes clear that it was the strength of revolutionary peasant movement that was the primary reason for distribution of land to whatever extent it has occurred. The other contributory factor was the struggle by the immigrants from the then East Pakistan due to partition. Their ‘Left’ government’s contribution is not worthy of mention in positive terms. Rather by lulling the peasant movement, they have harmed the peasants’ struggle for land. In fact having been party to the violent repression and suppression of revolutionary peasant movement after Naxalbari, CPM and other revisionist parties have pitted themselves against the genuine land reforms. All their talk of the performance of their ‘Left’ Government is but a humbug to deceive the people.
It is the stark reality that under their rule 50% of people at the bottom own only 2.90% of land, while 10% top people have 48.66% of land. Moreover, the real wages of the agricultural labourers have been continuously declining since 1993 with nearly 2.54 crore of people living below the poverty line. These figures pour cold water over their tall claims.
CPM leaders quote the statistics of 38th Round of National Sample Survey in support of their claim of land reforms. According to this round, 60% of the total land is in the hands of small and marginal farmers and it becomes 70% if land of share-croppers is also added. How much reliance can be placed on the government surveys which are unreliable and only take into account the size of holdings, is open to question. And even these statistics belie the claim of CPM leadership.
Marginal Holdings Small Holdings
Household Area Household Area
1953-54 52.93% 15.90% 12.61% 18.60%
1961-62 56.69% 17.55% 16.81% 25.97%
1971-72 67.84% 27.28% 12.65% 25.68%
1982 74.39% 30.33% 11.50% 28.77%
The statistics simply show that under the ‘Left’ Front rule the number of small and marginal holdings increased only from 55% to 59% i.e. by 4% and that too if it is taken that there was no increase during 1972 to 1977, which can not be a fact. In fact this would be roughly 2% only.
Another big propaganda is about “Operation Barga” that they have by and large solved the problem of share-croppers. CPM has turned its back on the demand of AIKS all along that share-croppers are to be given not only share-cropping rights but ownership rights. LF Govt. in West Bengal has done nothing in this regard. Even with regard to recording of bargadars, what is the true picture? CPM Govt.’s own admission is that total number of bargadars is 30-35 lakhs and upto now number of bargadars recorded is 14.73 lakhs. This amounts to less than half of the number of bargadars.
These facts demonstrate the hollowness of the claims of the revisionists and neo-revisionists. They have only tried to bring about pitiable reforms in the present structure in line with ruling class policies. It should be no surprise that the government run by them has been among the first to dilute the land reforms. We shall discuss this elsewhere.
PUNJAB: RULING CLASSES IGNORED LAND REFORMS
Contrary to perceptions in some circles, Punjab has had a dismal record in implementing land reform measures. Ceiling acts were passed both in Punjab and PEPSU. The Punjab Security Land Tenures Act was passed in 1953 and PEPSU Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act in 1955. Punjab act applied land ceiling only to the land under self-cultivation and not to the total amount of land. Ceiling permitted under Punjab Act was 30 acres for local landlords and 50 acres for displaced landlords. PEPSU act provided for ceiling on land ownership and permitted 30 acres for local landlords and 40 acres for displaced landlords. Well managed farms and orchards were exempted. Exemption of 10 acres could be taken for the plan for an orchard. Later the two acts were unified on the PEPSU pattern. Later in 1972, Land Reform Act was passed by the Punjab Assembly lowering the ceiling to 17.5 acres dispensing with the distinction between local and displaced landlords. Separate ceiling was provided for an adult son.
By 1968, 60,333 acres of land was distributed. By January 1992, 1.38 lakh acres were declared surplus. Out of this 1.05 lakh acres were taken possession of and 1.02 lakh acres were distributed. Total area under cultivation was 75.53 lakh hectares in 1985-86. The present situation is that 56.64% households owing upto 5 acres have 15.03% of land. Among them, those owning less than 2.5 acres constituting 37.63% households own only 5.67% of land, while 5% of households owning from 25 to 125 acres and above have 26.97% of land. It is clear from this that the land concentration of landlors has not been broken by various land ceiling acts. Infact, Malwa region of Punjab has quite bit land holdings. D.C., Parte, ex-Governor of Punjab has commented “Due to loopholes in the land ceiling acts, there is still land concentration in the hands of landlords. 500 families are such in the state who own from 200 to 1000 acres.” His comments are in sharp contrast to beliefs of some that in Punjab there is no land problem or that landlordism does not exist there.
HOAX OF BHOODAN
One of the responses of the ruling classes to the Telangana Movement was launching of Bhoodan by Vinoba Bhave in 1951. Not to leave anybody in doubt about his intentions he launched this movement from a village in Nalgonda district. He propagated that land problem could be solved by peaceful persuasion of the landlords thereby trying to dissuade the fighting peasantry of Telangana from the path of armed struggle and preventing the peasants in other states and regions from taking the path of armed struggles. His efforts were supplementary to the land reform legislations of the Nehru Govt. and like them failed miserably to solve the problem. Many decades later, Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao was forced to admit in a Conference of Revenue Ministers in 1992: “The landlords are so clever, most of them disposed off their useless land, all kinds of rocky soils and so on where nothing grows and they put it in the khata of Vinoba Bhave.
Vinoba Bhave had vowed to collect 50 million acres by the year 1957. Of this he aimed to collect 3.2 million acres from Bihar alone. Sarva Sewa Sangh, which spearheaded Bhoodan land distribution, admitted that of 41.94 lakh acres of total land collected, only 12.86 lakh acres was distributed and 18.07 lakh acres was unfit for distribution, of that 13.15 lakh acres from Bihar alone. Classic case was of Raja of Ramgarh (Bihar) who ‘donated’ 5,00,000 acres, all forest and legally contested land.
Figures released by the Govt. of India in 1992 about the Bhoodan lands show the dismal failure of the objectives of the campaign. But their real objective was to douse the fire of the raging peasant struggles. His close comrade Mr. J.P. Narayan was to repeat the same feat in case of Mushahari peasant armed struggle in Bihar.
State Donated (in lakh acres) Distributed (in lakh acres)
AP 1.96 1.00
Bihar 21.18 6.95
UP 4.37 4.21
MP 4.10 2.43
Orissa 6.39 5.80
Rajasthan 6.02 1.41
Maharashtra 1.10 0.83
Assam, HP, J&K, Punjab, West Bengal, Kerala, Haryana and other states – Negligible
Bhoodan movement failed not only in respect of total land collected, their own figures being only about 8% of the target set by Vinoba Bhave. And of that only about one fourth could be distributed i.e. roughly 2% of the target. And that too is the land unfit for cultivation. Moreover, several field studies especially in Bihar have shown that parts are yet uncultivated and not in the possession of the allottees. In any cases, the lands donated by the landlords to Vinoba Bhave were kept by them in their own legal occupation. Records at many places have illustrated this gimmick. A DM in AP was transferred for bringing to light this fact which is uncomfortable to the rulers. The movement died its natural and gradual death while the land problem has all along continued to stare in the face of the ruling classes.
REVERSAL OF LAND REFORM MEASURES
With the changed international and national situation the ruling classes have embarked on moves to formally abandon land reforms. We have seen above that their land reforms have yielded little in terms of actual redistribution of land and now they plan to abandon even the pretence. The imperialist drive to intensify loot and plunder of third world countries in the background of their ever deepening economic crisis and absence of any socialist country in the world, has provided the driving edge to these moves. Imperialist countries seek to annul the gains registered by the people’s movements throughout the world particularly in third world countries. They wish to turn the wheels of history back albeit under new conditions.
The protagonists and apologists of these moves are arguing in favour of abandoning land reforms on the plea that in the new world situation and in the era of “market economy” small landholdings are uncompetitive and our agricultural produce cannot compete in the international markets. Their whole argument is fallacious as in no country has there been actual improvement in the agricultural production or competitiveness without carrying out land reforms. They take the additional ground of requirement of land for industrial and agro-business purposes. This has to be seen in the background of falling industrial growth and rampaging closures and lockouts. The land taken from agricultural production is in these cases sold for other uses. The promotion of agro-businesses is in line with imperialists’ drive for discouraging grain production in India and promoting agro-businesses to serve their interests. This is being justified by their apologists as required to meet the needs of the international market and produce what can be sold in western markets.
‘New’ economic policies ushered in wholesale by Narasimha Rao Govt. were the formal embodiment of these policies. They provided the fillip to putting the land reforms in reverse gear. A number of state Govts have passed amendments for dilution of land reforms which cover both raising the land ceiling as well as providing for leasing arrangements. Karnataka Land Ceiling Amendment Bill is the most sweeping and talked about. It increases the land ceiling limit four times i.e. 40 acres for wet land for two crops (earlier 10 acres) to 216 acres for un-irrigated land (earlier 56 acres), it provides for leasing land upto 20 years for acqua-culture and allows exemptions from ceiling for purposes of industrial development (20 units), educational institutions (4 units), places of worship (1 unit), housing projects (10 units), agro-based industries (20 units) and any purpose falling under the category of public interest with the Govt. having the right to exempt any amount of land for any specified purpose.
Maharashtra Govt. passed a legislation in 1993 to dispense with ceiling for horticulture and food processing units. In AP and Tamilnadu companies have been allowed to acquire upto 300 acres of land for shrimp exports. In Gujarat the Govt. decided to allow upto 25 acres of land to be converted from agricultural to non-agricultural use without the permission of the Govt. and more than 25 acres of land with the permission of the Govt. M.P. Govt. permitted the raising of ceiling limit for the purposes of scientific farming. Punjab Govt. favoured abolishing the ceiling altogether.
Not to be left behind CPM Govt. in West Bengal has brought about an amendment to Land Reforms Act (27 August 1996) permitting acquisition of the required amount of land for the purposes of “factory, mill, workshop, tea-garden, dairy, poultry and housing”. So in the name of industrialization, West Bengal Govt. has diluted the Land Reforms Act. While they are taking no initiative for the speedy implementation of LR Act in the interest of landless and poor peasants, they have acted swiftly in the interest of multinationals and Indian compradors.
So the reversal of Land Reforms is not an isolated act of any state Govt. or a particular ruling class group. It reflects the consensus among the ruling class parties including CPI, CPM. Reversal of land reform measures is the rural counterpart of the deregulation of industry in the interest of MNCs and big business, to serve the interests of landlords, MNCs and big business houses. It serves to broaden the support base of the new economic policies as well as intensify the exploitation by the imperialists, their compradors and landlords.
WRONG UNDERSTANDING ON LAND REFORMS
Through her reforms, Indira Gandhi could not bring the upliftment of the tribal people. Though she could win over the vocal sections among the tribal people through some of her schemes, yet her reforms failed to solve the fundamental problems of the tribal people. Those who came to power after her death are failing even in bringing social reforms, hence are trying to divert the people’s attention from their issues particularly on land problem. They have been giving diversionary slogans for mobilization on caste and communal lines. In the process of their reforms the ruling classes have made certain reforms even in Andhra. As a result of those reform acts, landlords could preserve hundreds and thousands of acres in accordance with the law itself. The government, showing the family units in accordance with the land ceiling acts, is propagating that it has reduced the land concentration in the hands of the landlords. Revisionist parties like CPI and CPM and some people believe this innocently as gospet truth and start feeling that due to these land reforms considerable changes took place in landlordism itself. This is not a correct approach. Treating removal of some of the intermediaries as the elimination of landlordism is contrary to facts. Whomsoever it may be, to think or propagate in this manner at a time when the ruling classes themselves are declaring that land reforms have failed would be harmful. If we recognize that still hundreds of acres of surplus land is in the hands of ex-Prime Minister Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao, we can understand that surplus land was not distributed in a big way due to land reforms and most of the land that was distributed to the poor also came back to the landlords. The land that was distributed during Indira Gandhi period was also not the surplus land of the landlords but mainly banjar land. Either in essence or in practice there is no big difference between the land reforms of Nehru and that of Indira Gandhi. It was and has been the policy of the ruling classes that whenever people resort to struggles they pretend to bring land reforms and throw them into the dustbin as soon as the struggles decrease. Therefore, the progressive and revolutionary forces should not view like the CPI and CPM leaders that the land reforms of the ruling classes were meant to eliminate feudalism and introduce capitalism in agriculture.
Recognizing “the land to the tiller” as the central task remains the key for new democratic revolution. Recognizing the importance of this problem is closely linked with the understanding that we should concentrate our work in rural areas and build volunteer and resistance squads to resist the attacks of landlords and their goondas and resist police repression and violence. It is also closely linked with the understanding that we should first liberate the rural areas and finally capture the towns and cities. It is linked with the understanding that while co-ordinating secret and open activities, we should give prominence to secret organizational and illegal activities. It is also closely linked with the understanding of the path of protracted people’s war. This understanding is opposed to the understanding of parliamentary path and the understanding of Junker Path of the development of capitalism in agriculture. The Junker path treats the land struggles particularly “land to the tiller” as secondary ones. In its place it keeps the issues like remunerative prices etc. It gives more prominence to legal and parliamentary struggles. The policies, understanding and practices of CPI and CPM are only the living examples for this. Therefore, it is not out of place to recall the internal struggle waged during 1969-78 by Sri P. Sundarayya who was then General Secretary of CPM. The struggle being waged by Sri B.N. Reddy who came out from CPM very recently is also note worthy.
STRUGGLE AGAINST LOOPHOLES IN THE LAND REFORM ACTS
We should mobilize the poor peasants and agricultural labourers against loopholes in the Land Ceiling Acts and for their implementation. We should mobilize the people with the understanding that even if we get these acts sincerely implemented, the problem of ‘land to the tiller’ in the country cannot be resolved. We should always be educating the people that only people’s democratic revolution (NDR) can solve this problem. We should organize the people for land struggles while constantly exposing the preaching of CPI and CPI(M) i.e., development of capitalism in agriculture.
Land to the tiller can be accomplished mainly through resorting to illegal methods. To prepare the people for such tasks we should mobilize them utilizing all the opportunities provided for in the Constitution or in Acts. We should find out the loopholes in the acts and fight against them so that, at least, we can seriously get the implementation of already passed enactments. Co-ordinating the legal and illegal activities, we should mobilize the rural people for the accomplishment of Land Reforms.
1. Many lands classified as dry lands at the time land reforms were introduced are today provided with irrigation facilities. Today they are wet lands. There are crores of acres of such land throughout the country. Therefore, we should demand distribution of the surplus land thus available in accordance with the law, treating these lands as wet land. We should mobilize the rural people against the attitude of the government on this problem.
2. The lands that were declared then as fallow or grasslands have now turned into fertile cultivable lands, s wet lands, as orchards, fishery tanks. Such lands are also in lakhs of acres. We should build pressure on the government to re-classify such lands and distribute the surplus.
3. We should build movements to bring pressure on the government to bring Coffee, Tea gardens, orchards and co-operative agricultural farms etc. which were exempted in the past under the purview of Land Reform acts. We should demarcate such surplus lands and get them distributed. This kind of lands are also available in lakhs of acres in the country.
4.
7. Inspite of landlords’ resorting to a number of illegal acts disregarding the land ceiling acts, not a single landlord was punished. Two years punishment should be there for such violations. Taking this as a sign of weakness the landlords are still continuing their illegal acts: A) The landlords are still either cultivating or selling the lands which the government declared surplus and for which it paid ransom to them. B) In many places, the surplus lands are being kept in Court Litigations by the landlords. Nevertheless, the government supports the same landlords. C) In many places surplus lands were announced on papers. But the government neither paid ransom for such lands nor distributed them to the poor. Therefore, the government should immediately take steps to distribute all types of surplus lands. The courts should not be permitted to take up surplus land issues and benami transfers issues of various kinds and the issues of tribal land. In this regard both Central and State governments should make necessary enactments.
8. The quantity of family unit in Kashmir and Kerala was kept much less compared to other states. Hence rural people should be mobilized for agitations and struggles demanding the reduction of land ceiling rate.
9. On the one hand, already the distribution of surplus land is proceeding at snail’s-pace. However a new situation is emerging today before us. As a result of new economic policies hundreds and thousands of acres of government lands are given to individuals for orchards, social forestry, coffee plantations and even for growing food and commercial crops. Governments are taking steps to revoke even the existing land ceiling acts. They are theorizing that small land units are not remunerative. We should mobilize the village people against these steps.
PRESENT SITUATION IN RURAL AREAS
The Land Reforms Acts that the comprador big bourgeoisie and big landlord ruling classes have brought ever since 1947 (including the 1972 Land Ceiling Act of Indira Gandhi) have thoroughly failed in giving ‘land to the tiller’. The ruling classes feverishly trumpeted their land acts day in and day out but their implementations is the worst compared to other countries. In China 43% agricultural land re-distribution took place. In Taiwan it is 37%, in South Korea it is 32% and in Japan it is 33%. Statistics show that in India land re-distribution rate is 1.25%. for this ruling classes brought land ceiling acts, they were amended a number of times and ‘implemented’. However many land reform acts were passed by the Central and state governments, thanks to the loopholes in the acts, illegal family units and benami transfers, landlords are still able to keep that huge surplus land under their control. According to estimates there is 5 crore cultivable banjar lands in the country. Apart from this, there is lakhs of acres of endowment and Matt lands in the country. In addition to this there are lands of Bhoodan Movement which were distributed to the poor peasants but have gone back to landlords’ fold. If the government reduces the ceiling limit and applies the same to dry land, grass lands, orchards etc. crores of surplus land can be distributed to the landless and poor peasants. There is a situation where undeclared slavery of the tenants for the landlords is continuing because of oral tenancy. Tenants and poor peasants are becoming agricultural labourers, the number of agricultural labourers is growing in areas of ‘green revolution’ and where market oriented agricultural production is taking place. The facilities of the governments are mainly gobbled up by the landlords and rich peasants. These cooperative facilities remain only nominally available to the village poor. They are still being stifled under the stranglehold of the usurers in the rural areas despite banking facilities.
Already, on the one hand, the rural poor have been facing a grave situation and are burning with land hunger thanks to the non-implementation of land reforms. On the other hand, the Central and State governments are hatching conspiracies to bury the land reforms altogether in the name of new economic policies. Karnataka government has already passed such an act. The WestBengalState government under the leadership of CPM is also going to advance along the path shown by the big bourgeois and big landlords’ Karnataka government. Ever since 1947, howsoever many land reform acts and schemes of green revolution are implemented, this is briefly the existing agrarian situation in the country.
In Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, where the revisionists have been in power for a long time, they are boasting that they have implemented land reforms in a better way. This is not a fact. Both after Tebhaga and Naxalbari movements, the Congress government, while suppressing the peasant struggles led by the communists with fascist repression, implemented land reforms to divert the people from the peasant movement. After that, to withstand the Naxalites’ influence on the on hand and to contain the influence of ruling class parties on the other, the revisionist parties also continued to implement land reform acts to some extent. Compared to the land distributed by Congress government in WB both before and after Naxalbari, the CPM’s land distribution is not significant. Congress distributed 8.5 lakh acres whereas in its 20 years of rule CPM distributes 1.5 lakh acres. Also, we cannot deny the existence of semi-feudal land relations and land problems even in these states. Of course, in addition to the land problem, there exist a number of other problems concerning agrarian sector. The task of fighting for the removal of loopholes in land reforms is also there. Here also the problem of “land to the tiller” remains unsolved. Therefore, the claims of CPM that it has implemented land reforms and the land problem is solved expose its class collaborationist policy. There are no hard and fast laws that prevent the changes in ruling. Class land reform acts. We should continue our struggle for the reduction of land ceiling limit. This is the only path of class struggle. Otherwise, it becomes class collaborationist path.
In Bihar, East and Central UP, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh and in majority areas of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, vagaries of semi-feudal relations are more crude and apparent. In these states the intensity of contradiction between the landlords and agricultural labourers and poor peasants is continuing. Here large land units are continuing either in the benami or illegal forms. The rights of tenants and share croppers are denied. Correcting the land records also poses a big problem. There is no security even for the time limit of the cultivating tenants. Landlords are throwing out the tenants. Here ‘land to the tiller’ remains as the main issue of struggle. In addition to this, the task of immediately fighting for the implementation of land reforms of the ruling classes is also on the agenda of agricultural labourers, poor peasants and middle class peasants. Huge number of tribal people are exploited in several ways.
Punjab, Haryana, Western UP, Delta areas of AP, some areas in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra Gujarat are called as Green Revolutionary Belt. These areas have distinctive characteristics. Compared to other areas, here irrigation facilities and Ryotwari system is more. Due to historical reasons, in these areas the above mentioned type land concentration cannot glaringly be seen. Land units have been divided, only a small number of big land units are visible. In these areas the growth of commercial crops in taking place. We have to take up the surplus land issue by picking up the loopholes in dividing the land units. The problem of large land units and banjar lands is present even in these areas. Even in these areas, we can certainly find semi-feudal land relations as well. We should keep in mind that here land concentration is camouflaged owing to the loopholes provided in the land reform acts and in various benami methods. Nevertheless, here, the land problem is not the main issue for the immediate mobilization of the peasantry. Other issues remain as the main ones for the immediate mobilization of the peasantry. In a process we have to take up other land issues and the basic issue i.e. “land to the tiller” even in these areas.
IMMEDIATE TASKS
1. We should demand the reduction of present land ceiling rate. Mobilize the people on this demand.
2. State governments should bring necessary changes in accordance with Supreme Court Verdict of 5/3/82 on benami transfers. The poor people should occupy such lands (whether ransom paid or unpaid and whether the government hands them over or not) that are declared as surplus ones.
3. The poor should move to occupy the lands that are under court litigations. Prevent the landlords from cultivating such lands. Government should be forced to resolve such disputes forthwith. Poor people should make self-defence arrangements before they enter into such lands.
4. We should trace out the lands to be re-classified and occupy them. Pressurize the government to resolve the disputes forthwith. In the same way pressurize the government to resolve the disputes belonging to other category lands and make necessary changes in the act itself.
5. During the Bhoodan Movement some landlords ‘generously’ donated their lands but again these lands are being cultivated by the same landlords. We should mobilize the poor and agricultural labourers to occupy such lands. In AP such lands amount to 96,000 acres.
6. Throughout the country there are lakhs and lakhs of acres of land belonging to endowments, Maths, churches and charitable trusts etc. These lands are given for rent. 80% of such lands are in the hands of landlords and rich people. They are not paying even the nominal rents and their dues are piling up. We should demand from the government that such lands should be given to the poor people either freely or for nominal market rates. We should mobilize the peasants and agricultural labourers i.e. Rytu-coolies, to occupy these lands.
7. The Banjar land of the government and forest department should immediately be distributed to Rytu-Coolies. Such lands as are under the occupation of landlords should be vacated forthwith. We should mobilize the people for occupying these lands. Government should provide necessary monetary help to develop the lands that it distributes.
8. Central and state governments should withdraw all their forest bills and acts which prevent the tribals from utilizing forest produce, lands etc. government should stop the banning of Hill and Shifting cultivation of the tribal people in the name of environmental protection without providing alternative sources to them. Government should extend monetary help to grow orchards in hilly lands (Kondapodu) to replace foodcrop cultivation using rotation system. Instead of issuing tree-pattas for podu lands including Kondapodu, government should issue permanent land pattas to the poor. Apart from that government should also extend its help and co-operation to grow orchards and other crops in such areas. The tribal people in GodavariValley have been cultivating forest lands (lakhs in acres) for many years. Government should give land pattas to all those lands.
9. 1/70 Girijan act in AP should be implemented after amending it. Ceiling limit should be fixed to the properties and lands of the poor non-tribal people and their rights should be protected. Government should take over the lands and properties of the landlords in the forest areas and distribute the same to the poor tribal people. We should mobilize the people in forest areas with a view to safeguarding the unity of Tribal and Non-tribal poor people. Government should provide alternative resources to all those non-tribal people who came to the forest areas after 1980 and settle them in the plain areas. New influx of non-tribal people to forest areas should be actively prevented.
10. Small landlords and rich peasants are taking lands from the small peasants by either buying or giving them higher rents to grow commercial crops i.e., Cotton, Chilies, Tobacco, Fish, Floro Culture etc. We should mobilize the village poor on this issue to get increased rent rates.
COMRADES,
Today our country is in the stage of semi-colonialism and semi-feudalism. 50 years are going to be completed since the transfer of power in 1947. Nevertheless, the comprador big-bourgeois, big landlord ruling class have thoroughly failed to provide food, shelter and clothing to the poor who are 90% of the people. From Nehru to Indira Gandhi, from Indira Gandhi to Rajiv Gandhi and PV Narasimha Rao, and from PV Narasimha Rao to Mr. HD DeveGowda, each govt. has brought a number of reforms. But still the above mentioned issues could not be resolved. On he other hand, as a result of the alliance between big-bourgeois, big landlord classes and imperialism, their assets are piling up like anything.
The intensity of imperialists’ neo-colonial exploitation has grown. The rulers of our country are not in a state to do anything without the permission of imperialists. Let alone self-reliance and its development, the stranglehold of imperialist over our economy, political and other sectors has grown in an unprecedented manner. It has never before reached such heights after 1947.
Before 1947 the patriotic forces, democrats, revolutionary forces fought against imperialism, comprador big-bourgeoisie and big landlord classes. The same fighting task is arising before our country. We have to mobilize broad masses of the people particularly 75% of the people residing in the rural areas to conduct such a struggle. To mobilize the people on such a vast scale, there is no alternative but to base ourselves on “land to the tiller” and on worker peasant alliance. The purchasing power of our people grows when the people achieve their basic demand i.e. “land to the tiller”. This provides economic strength for the development of our industries. To create such a situation we have to mobilize the peasantry basing ourselves on the basis of “land to the tiller” instead of depending on ruling class reforms particularly its land reforms.
Upto now we have explained in what background the ruling class brought land reforms, what were their aims, how they threw their land reforms into the dustbin immediately after the struggles receded. We have also explained the fighting tasks of the people particularly the peasantry and the attitude of CPI(ML)-New Democracy towards these tasks. CPI(ML)-New Democracy ardently believes that conducting the people’s democratic revolution (NDR) alone taking agrarian revolution as its axis is the real and correct road for the liberation of Indian people. It believes that NDR, which takes agrarian revolution as it axis and “land to the tiller” as the basis, alone can liberate the Indian people. CPI(ML)-New Democracy has been striving to fulfil its beliefs.
CPI(ML)-New Democracy opines that the leadership of CPI, CPM betrayed the Great Telangana Peasants’ Armed Struggle. It firmly stands to fulfil those aspirations, the great traditions and to safeguard historical achievements of Indian peasantry. It solemnly appeals to all CRs to come forward to unitedly fulfil the unfinished goals of Indian peasantry along the road furnished by the Telangana armed struggle 50 years ago. We appeal to other CR organizations to understand our orientation and come forward to conduct joint struggles on the problems of the peasantry particularly on the key issue of the peasantry i.e. “land to the tiller”. In case we fail to join hands to wage such struggles, let us discuss the other related issues and try to jointly wage struggles to the extent possible. Today the country’s political and economic situation demands the importance to the practical struggles on mass issues. Let all of us prepare to fulfil this task! Let us on this occasion, once again, dedicate ourselves to fulfil the unfinished tasks of the Great Telangana Peasants’ Armed Struggle! Let us once again pay our heartfelt red salutes to all those heroic martyrs who laid down their precious lives in that great and glorious armed struggle.
· Uphold and continue the great and glorious traditions and road of great Telangana Peasants’ Armed Struggle of 1946-51.
· Strive to fulfil the basic demand of the people i.e. land to the tiller!
· Long live Agrarian Revolution!
· Long live New Democratic Revolution!
· Long live Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought!
· Long live CPI(ML)-New Democracy!
With revolutionary greetings,
Dated 4th July, 1997 Central Committee,
CPI(ML)-New Democracy
http://www.cpimlnd.org/on-new-democratic-revolution-and-land-problem/peoples-democratic-revolution-in-india-and-land-problem.html
War of Independence of 1857 and Democratic Revolution in India
Written by cpimlnd
Tuesday, 24 April 2007
On the 150th anniversary of the First War of Independence of Indian people against colonial rule it is both relevant and necessary to discuss some aspects connected with the struggle. Despite their differences with each other, the common opinion of the parties of ruling classes is that the First War of Independence of 1857 reached its logical conclusion with the transfer of power in 1947 (which they hold to be “independence”.) Here they conveniently ignore that in 1947 the British colonial rulers transferred power to those very classes who had sided with the colonial aggressors in the War of independence of 1857-59 or those the colonial rulers had nurtured after crushing the peoples revolt. In a sense the transfer of power of 1947 was not the completion of the War of Independence of 1857 but the continuing in modified form of the colonial rule victorious in the war of 1857-59. The independence struggle of the people continues even now in today’s concrete conditions.
At the root of the understanding of the ruling class parties, supported and nourished as they are by imperialism, is their evaluation of the character of colonial rule. The praises showered on colonial rule by Manmohan Singh is in accordance with this evaluation. Yes, this much is there that the politicians of ruling classes used to avoid openly praising their masters as shamelessly as he did.
The question in context of the War of 1857-59 is whether the British colonial rulers were destroying feudalism in India and thus the War of 1857 was merely a feudal reaction against this. The basic question in relation to the above understanding is whether there were no processes of democratization in Indian society? Did the colonial rule, despite all its atrocities and destruction, democratize Indian society? With this outlook, the War of 1857-59 becomes a reactionary campaign, not a war of independence. This understanding takes colonial rule to be a synonym of destroying feudalism and building capitalism in India. It is another matter that the task of democratic revolution is not over even after 150 years of 1857, and the task of democratization of society is still on the agenda. In short, the issue is, with the victory of which forces in the war of 1857-59 was the task of democratic transformation in India associated?
Was the British colonial rule in India really a campaign to establish capitalism after destroying feudalism? When the colonial rule actually began in the first half of the 18th century, India was a feudal society pregnant with capitalist forces. Spinning and weaving was the occupation second to farming in which people found employment in large numbers. The muslin of Dacca was renowned throughout the world. Cottage industry was widespread on a countrywide scale and many people depended on it for a livelihood. Mineral resources were also used according to the needs of the society.
The British destroyed native industry completely. This was necessary to ensure use in India of mill products from Britain. With the start of British colonial rule the use in India of British goods increased very fast and many figures are available to show this. Textile industry in India was completely destroyed and this was not only due to competition between goods but was done through barbaric repression and atrocities whose hair-raising accounts are available in large numbers. In Capital, Marx had termed the uprooting of weavers in India the biggest human tradegy till that time. Weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths and other artisans became victims of unemployment on a large scale. In the proclamation on 25th August 1857 of Mughal prince Firoz Shah the state of artisans is mentioned and it is furthur stated that the entry of English goods snatched the livelihood of spinners, weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers etc. and made the artisans beggars in every way. The inflow of English goods into India finished off all possibilities of capitalist development in place of capitalist development of the country. Even today the ruling classes of India are showing a mirage of development leaning on imperialist capital. Actually by destroying the capitalist forces with which feudal India was pregnant the British did not ‘democratize’ India but rather tried to finish off any possibilities of this. By finishing off the industries of India the colonial rulers spread the use of industrial goods from British mills. In this way they prepared an economic basis for an alliance with feudalism.
The British colonial rule is synonymous with the cruelest loot. The British rulers looted the then rulers of the country as well the people and carried away all the resources to Britain. The British colonial rulers showed the way of capitalist development in Britain by leaving India penniless and of making Britain the biggest power of the world of that time.
The colonial rule targeted for plunder not feudalism but the whole agricultural system of India. The tax on land was significantly raised and peasants were dispossessed in the event of non-payment. The economic burden on both peasants and landlords was increased so much in order to intensify loot that large tracts of land became barren. According to SB. Chowdhry “heavy rent increased taxes and made the peasants destitute. In many parts of the country rent was settled at very high rates.” At the same time there were rent free areas in the country on a large scale. All rent free areas were declared ended and a period of terror against them was launched. Each piece of land was brought into the tax nexus. In order to increase its income the Company also used the method of direct extraction from peasants but altogether burden of tax and rent on the peasantry increased. The echo of the exploitation of the peasantry on such a large scale was heard even in England when Disraeli commented on it in a parliamentary debate. The British L.L.S. Omelie wrote referring to a report “I can challenge that one third of land in company ruled areas of India has become a jungle in which only wild animals live”.
By auctioning the possession of farmers and landlords who did not pay the high rents to the colonial rulers a web of usury capital was laid out in the country. In the struggle of 1857-59 these too were attached in many places. Altogether colonial rule made agriculture a special target of its exploitation due to which the situation of the peasantry become quite pitiable. This was an attack not on feudalism but on Indian agriculture and its aim was to intensify colonial loot of the country.
Historians and writers have collected many examples of the impoverishment of the people of India by this destruction of Indian industry and by especially targeting agriculture for exploitation. Macaullay’s own admission is in these words, “Delicate women, who had never ventured out of their homes and never seen the sun, touched the feet of passerbys, spread their hands and begged for a fistful of rice Scores of corpses of the hungry were swept in the Hoogly river past the mansions and gardens of the British to disappear into the sea.”
Renowned poet Ashraf Ali Khan ‘Fuga’ described the impoverishment of the people of the country in words which captured the piteous condition of the people. Marx has mentioned the destructive effects and the regeneration in the context of colonial rule in India. The British colonial rulers gave full effect to the destruction of the country. Of the other aspect Marx said “The Indians will not reap the fruits of new elements of society” till “in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat” or till they “themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke all together. Marx said the situation of the Indian people was one of losing an old world and not getting a new one. The sympathy of Marx and Engles was with the war of independence of 1857-59 because only by “fully overthrowing the yoke” of British colonialists did they see the road for the regeneration of India.
The widespread participation of the people in the war of independence of 1857-59 can be easily understood in the context of their impoverishment by colonial rule. However in this the role of the peasantry and the peasant in uniforms (sepoys) was main. Despite this the intellectuals of the ruling classes of India either opposed this or understood it mainly as a revolt of feudals. Bankimhandra Chatterjee, Ram Mohan Roy, Sir Syed Ahmed openly criticized the war. Savarkar did call it the war of independence of India but mainly described the role of feudal rulers in it. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote, “Essentially, the revolt was a feudal outburst headed by feudal chiefs and their followers and aided by the widespread anti foreign sentiment.” (The Discovery of India)
Here it is important to state that not only was there no feudal king at war with the British at the start of the war, but rather it is only because of the support of the feudal kings that British could maintain their rule over India. Scandia, Holkar, Thzam, Nawab of Rampur, Begums of Bhopal, Maharaja of Patiala, the Ranas of Nepal and many feudals stood with the British and the war of independence of 1857 had divided the feudal forces. A big section was with the British while the feudals opposing colonial rule jumped into the war. The war of independence of 1857-59 was fought between the British colonialists and their supporters on one hand and the people of India including some feudals on the other. Those who refute war of independence by showing the handful of participating feudals should remember : “The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants.” (Karl Marx, On Colonialism)
The main force of the war of independence of 1857-59 was the peasantry and the war extended against the pro English feudals also. However, it was not an anti-feudal peasant war but a war against colonial rule. In this context the comment of some writers are guilty of exaggeration. Even so, the support extended by major part of the feudals to the British exposes this false propaganda that this was a mere revolt by feudal forces.
The war of independence declared Bahadur Shah Zafar as the Emperor of India but the aim of the war was neither to restore the old Mughal Sultanate, and nor did the circumstances to do so exist. In this context a reference to the letter written by Bahadur Shah Zafar to several kings is relevant: “It is my fervent desire that the foreigners should be thrown out of India using all means and at any cost. It is also my fervent desire that the whole of India should be freed from the foreigners. After throwing out the British from India I have no desire to rule for my own importance. If all you native rulers are ready to take up arms to throw out the enemy I am ready to give up my kingly powers to any elected group of native kings”.
The most important issue in context to the war of independence of 1857-59 is its evaluation in view of social progress. Colonial rule which crushed living forces of Indian society could not be the harbinger of regeneration of India. Colonial rule along with feudal forces destroyed both, the industries and capitalism developing in feudal society and pushed the peasantry into a cycle of prolonged exploitation and backwardness. The main burden of the failure of the war of independence of 1857-59 fell on the peasantry and on artisans. Colonial rule tightened its collaboration with feudals because this was the reactionary section which could be of assistance in Colonial loot and plunder, could become the social base of colonialism and was incapable of existing independently from colonial rule. The social progress of India was only possible by uprooting the colonial rule along with its supporters.
Comprador capitalists and feudals in the twentieth century made use of the anti colonial struggle to extract concessions from colonial rulers. After the weakening of imperialism following 2nd world war and in the context of the world wide intensification of anti colonial struggles, the comprador capitalists and feudals betrayed the independence struggle and reached an agreement for transfer of power with British imperialism. With this India changed to a semi colony from a colony and the alliance of imperialism – comprador bureaucrat capitalism – feudalism began exploitation and plunder of people of the country. The aim of democratic revolution in India was to uproot imperialism and its compradors but in 1947 the comprador classes reached an agreement with imperialism and foiled this struggle.
Today too the exploitation and plunder of India by the alliance of imperialism – comprador bureaucrat capitalism and feudalism is continuing. The people of India are writhing under the loot of imperialist exploitation and feudal loot. The natural resources and labour of India are being exploited for the benefit of multinational companies of imperialist countries and comprador big corporates. The major part of the people of the country are victims of extreme poverty, impoverishment and backwardness. It is only by uprooting the ruling classes that this situation can be got rid off. That is, only by new democratic revolution in the country can a new India be built. Even today the enemies of revolution in our country are imperialism and its compradors.
This is the relevance of the war of independence of 1857. The freedom struggle of 1857 is incomplete even today and can be completed only by agrarian revolution under the leadership of the working class.
(Translated from Hindi, Pratirodh Ka Swar, February, 2007)
http://www.cpimlnd.org/miscellaneous/war-of-independence-of-1857-and-democratic-revolution-in-india.html
The NRI and India's rural economy
The total amount of FDI investments in India is estimated for 2007 is $ 15 billion. And we tout that fiigure proudly - and our stock market fluctuates on any variance from that figure too. Guess what NRI"s will remitt to India in the same period ? A mind boggling $ 30 billion ! 60% of which goes into goes into Rural India. Most consisting of small amounts for the maintanence of families left behind, or small investments. If the world bank is correct, every dollar remitted contributes 3 dollars to the GDP growth - which means that NRI's are contributing to growth of almost a $ 60 billon to India's rural economy.
(25 million people of Indian origin live outside India. On the other hand 45 million people of Chinese origin live outside China - but they remitt just $ 25 billion into China.) ........
... and yet our farmers are committing suicide, not only in Andhra but also in Maharashtra. We hear that Rural India is being left behind as GDP surges in Urban areas. I don't know the answer and hope that some of our community can enlighten me.
I know that a large number of India's problems arise from completely inefficient and corrupt distribution systems. We grow enough food for example, but a large part lies rotting in warehouses, dotted all over. Or being eaten by rats.
shekhar
16 Comments Posted. Post your comment
Situation of the farmers was never good in india. The NRIs ofcos play a very vital role in rural development but y it is not entirely visible is bcos they remit money mainly in specific parts of india. thats y gujrat / kerela rural india is much better than rest of rural india. But a study of which parts the money is exactly remitted to can be very interesting. Or maybe the remitted money is so small for each transaction that it is consumed and not invested or maybe invested in cities. I m sure some data must be available...
1. Posted by Aditarya on January 12, 2008
Dear Shekhar,
The NRIs are definitely doing wonders for India and in most cases they love and care for India far more than the people who live inside do. I have been lucky to see it from both sides and I truly see how much the NRIs in the US and UK love India and want to help. Plus, they have the resources to do it.
I believe the problem lies in the fact that maybe $30 billion is not enough and we need more given the size of our country (I am no expert at this). We also need a better distribution system for the million of tonnes of food lying in our warehouses that can feed so many people (this thing just hasn't become a priority at the national level - I just don't know why?). I think we need more banks which can give loans to farmers at lower interest rates and better support prices. As I had mentioned earlier the farmers also need to take responsibility and train themselves to do other things - even coming to the city and driving an auto or rickshaw or selling tea is better than dying of hunger. Also, they need to have smaller families so that they are not constantly hand to mouth and under pressure to feed so many. I think the changes have to come from the top in this case as it is not an isolated issue. The media needs to take center stage and make this a big issue - if it got the same coverage as the racism row in Australia, something would definitely happen.
Best Regards,
Himanshu
http://www.shekharkapur.com/blog/archives/2008/01/the_nri_and_ind.htm
Zindabad! The Resistance Lives Long and Loud in Rural India and at the 2004 World Social Forum.
by Hope Chu
50 Years Is Enough Network
Zindabad!
The Resistance Lives Long and Loud in Rural India and at the 2004 World
Social Forum.
By Hope Chu
50 Years Is Enough Network
Whose Development?: Fighting for Dignity in a Vast Land
India is vast – in land, in human numbers, in scope of national visions. This
scale is present everywhere; and especially in the strategies for growth and
development. So sweeping are the government’s plans for development, it is
easy for whole villages and communities to be overlooked, ignored, and
sacrificed in the name of “progress”, “growth”, and “development”. For the
sake of the nation, millions of the nation’s people are displaced from their
land, deprived of their livelihoods, and left to a life subject to the whims of the
market and the government.
It is in this context that some of the world’s most vibrant and active social
movements have arisen and flourished. From the organization of the Dalits –
the “untouchable” caste– and the now-famous resistance to the large dam
projects, to the numerous women’s and indigenous people’s organizations,
India’s marginalized have found a voice and created a representation they
aren’t afforded in the government. It is in these organizations, alliances, and
andolans that India finds its real democracy.
Seeing is Believing: The Plundered Lands of Fighting Peoples
This January, in the week preceding the 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai
(formerly Bombay), I had the honor of participating in a week-long tour of the
rural areas of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The tour was organized by
the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), a coalition of over 200
Indian social movements and, in their own words, “an attempt towards
building a people's political force, outside the electoral politics that can
counter the forces of destruction, inequality and exploitation and realize the
values of equity, justice, peace and nonviolence”.
Beginning in Bhopal, the site of the Union Carbide atrocity, the tour traveled
up the Narmada river valley, meeting with villages threatened with
submergence from the rising dam waters. I met the NAPM tour at a remote
point of the Narmada River where the three states of Madhya Pradesh,
Maharashtra, and Gujarat meet, upstream of the contentious Sardar Sarovar
Dam (India’s most infamous mega-dam project, started in conjunction with the
World Bank). Here the Narmada is quiet, and the dry, winter-season land
rises in dusty pyramids along the riverside. Thatched houses with fields lying
fallow are scattered in the hills; all of them are the ancestral homes and lands
of adivasi (India’s indigenous people) communities, all of them are
condemned to submergence by the ambitious development projects and
government edict.
From Mumbai, it takes nearly twelve hours by train and Jeep to get to this part
of the sleepy, unassuming Narmada river valley. This distance is more than
just a mere matter of geography; it is also manifested in the disconnect
between state policies and local conditions; between the interests of
government, the elite, and international actors such as the World Bank, and
the interests of the people. It is a distance felt not only by the people of the
Narmada river, but by other adivasi communities, by women, by fisherpeople,
by people alienated from their lands, dislocated from their communities, and
forced into slums at the very doorstep of the halls of power.
This divide grows no smaller as one moves toward Mumbai; throughout the
state of Maharashtra, adivasi villages are devastated by deforestation,
policies of land and water alienation, police violence, exploitation at the
hands of the Hindu upper castes and moneylenders, and corrupt structures of
local government. Two decades of intense timber harvesting have utterly
transformed the landscape, leaving unfertile and loose soil that makes
intensive agriculture impossible, turning small farmers and forest people into
day laborers, indebted and vulnerable to alcoholism and brutality from those
institutions that should protect them. Now these communities face more
exploitation and environmental degradation from calcite mining, resource
extraction conducted without consulting or the consent of the villagers who
will lose their land and livelihoods to the mines.
Resistance is Fertile: Local Solutions to Global Problems
Just outside Mumbai, accessible by the commuter train, lies one of many
towns struggling against that most ubiquitous of multinationals, Coca Cola.
Access to the water in Thane is threatened by the privatization of the
groundwater and its acquisition by Coke. The people of Thane have
organized against Coke, and have united with other communities whose
water has also been bought or contaminated by the company. Anti-Coke
organizers in Thane, as in many areas afflicted by Coke, face intimidation and
violence by the multinational and by the government. The tour experienced
this intimidation shortly after convening our meeting with resistance leaders at
a local school, when we were asked to leave by school administrators, who
had received threats from a pro-Coke faction.
Out of this divide between sweeping policy and reality, however, springs
resistance to the exploitation of natural resources and indigenous peoples by
distant powers; the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), the Shoshit Jan
Andolan and Jagrit Adivasi Dalit Sangathan (two adivasi organizations),
among countless others, challenge this distance with a myriad of tactics.
Engaging and confronting the powers that be is one facet of the resistance,
but the power of the people’s movements lies in their alternative vision of
development, in locally- initiated and community-controlled projects.
In response to the mega-dam projects on the Narmada, the village of Bilgaon
has constructed a micro-dam, spanning a minor tributary of the Narmada with
negligible environmental impact. The micro-dam not only produces enough
electricity to provide each family in the village with a tube light and lightbulb,
with some 5 kilowatts left over, but during the daylight hours, the power is
used to pump water, allowing the villagers to plan for a second harvest. The
dam was constructed with the aid of the People’s School of Energy based in
Kerala and the Association for India’s Development (AID), and control of the
dam and generator lies in the hands of the villagers.
Education has also been reclaimed by communities; we visited two adivasi
schools on the NAPM tour, the Adharshila Learning Center and the jeevan
shala (“light of life”) schools of the Narmada valley. The jeevan shala,
founded by the NBA, afford the children of the Narmada the only education
offered in that region. The Adharshila Learning Center is also an adivasi
school, started by two committed organizers with donations from the
community. Perched on a mesa overlooking an expanse of cultivated fields,
the Learning Center is a cluster of buildings housing an upper and lower
school, a library, and dormitories. Students engage not only in traditional
academic subjects including English, but also in organic farming, animal care,
traditional medicine, and manual arts.
Sharing the Vision: Another World Is Possible!
These organizations and movements met with thousands of others from
around the world at the 2004 World Social Forum (WSF), including the 50
Years Is Enough Network. Originally conceived as a response to the elite-
membership, policy oriented World Economic Forum held annually in Davos,
Switzerland, the WSF provides a space for groups and individuals to meet
and strategize on issues ranging from indigenous people’s rights to food
security, from the World Bank, IMF and WTO to child labor. This year the WSF
far exceeded any estimates with over 150,000 participants hailing from over
130 countries. The National Alliance of People’s Movements, the Narmada
Bachao Andolan, the Shoshit Jan Andolan, and the Jagrit Adivasi Dalit
Sangathan also participated in the WSF, with large contingents.
The 50 Years Is Enough Network participated in the WSF as a member of the
Grassroots Global Justice (GGJ) contingent, a delegation of over 100
community, labor, and student organizers. The GGJ delegation, which also
participated in last year’s WSF in Porto Alegre, Brazil, is a far cry from the first
US participants in the WSF. The GGJ delegation, made up mostly of people
of color and women, and representing women’s, labor, indigenous, and
economic justice struggles in the US, presented a different vision of the US
than that promulgated and promoted by media, advertising, and government
to other countries.
The people – especially the women and youth leaders – I met on my tour of
people’s movements and at the WSF, the courage in the face of intimidation
and violence I witnessed in rural India, the dedication and passion with which
all I met fight oppression, marginalization, and injustice daily, all these made
what was once only an inspiring slogan a truth to me; all these make me
positive that Another World IS Possible!
http://www.50years.org/cms/ejn/story/59
Problems of the Rural Poor in India - Future Perspective
By
N. Kavitha
MBA, M.Phil, (Ph.D)
(Research Scholar in Mother Teresa Women's University, Kodaikkanal)
Lecturer-MBA Department
SSM College of Engineering
Komarapalayam. Namakkal-Dist.
Dr. A.Ramachandran
M.Com, M.Phil, Grad.CWA, Ph.D
Reader in Commerce
SNR Sons College (Autonomous)
Coimbatore
Abstract
The burden of indebtedness in rural India is great, and falls mainly on the households of rural working people. The exploitation of this group in the credit market is one of the most pervasive and persistent features of rural life in India, and despite major structural changes in credit institutions and forms of rural credit in the post-Independence period, Darling's statement (1925), that "the Indian peasant is born in debt, lives in debt and bequeaths debt," still remains true for the great majority of working households in the countryside. Rural households need credit for a variety of reasons. They need it to meet short-term requirements for working capital and for long-term investment in agriculture and other income-bearing activities. Agricultural and non-agricultural activity in rural areas are typically seasonal, and households need credit to smooth out seasonal fluctuations in earnings and expenditure. Rural households, particularly those vulnerable to what appear to others to be minor shocks with respect to income and expenditure, need credit as an insurance against risk. In a society that has no free, compulsory and universal education or health care, and very few general social security programmes, rural households need credit for different types of consumption. These include expenditure on food, housing, health and education. In the Indian context, another important purpose of borrowing is to meet expenses for a variety of social obligations and rituals.
Introduction
About 75% of the Indian population lives in rural areas and about 80% of this population is dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. Agriculture accounts for about 37% of the national income. The development of the rural areas and of agriculture and its allied activities thus becomes vital for the rapid development of the economy as a whole.In this regard, India has succeeded in developing one of the largest rural banking systems in the world. Various regulatory measures have been taken enabling the banking system to play an important role in the economic development of the rural areas. The two most prominent measures are rural commercial bank branch expansion, thus moving from class banking to mass banking and secondly, priority sector lending and the formulation of specific development programmes and action plans to facilitate credit flow to the rural sectors. Despite these measures, as per the Debt and Investment Survey, Govt. of India (1992) about 36% of the rural households are found to be outside the fold of institutional credit.
Agricultural Productivity
Even though India occupies the first or second position in the world in several crops in terms of area and production, it's rank in terms of productivity per hectare in the world is 52 for rice, 38 for wheat and much low in several other crops. The productivity of some crops is not only low but also remained stagnant over the years. The yield gap needs to be bridged through an integrated package of technology and agricultural policies to reap the untapped production potential, particularly, in rain-fed and other low productivity areas.
Causes for Backwardness in Villages
1. Zamindari System, the legacy of the British Rule
India was under British rule for 200 years. British policies were aimed in revenue collection and not rural development. They introduced the zamindari system. The zamindars were deemed the owners of all land and they collected as much revenue as they could from the peasants. The system left the peasants very poor and the zamindars did very little to improve the conditions of the villages. After the country attained independence this system was abolished, but the conditions of the peasants is yet to transform completely.
2. The Bonded Labour System
It is equivalent to near slavery. Bonded labour is an indebted agricultural worker, who had borrowed from the money lender at usurious rate of interest and had to work in his farm for low wages. The system was used to permanently enslave the worker, as the worker was only able to repay a part of interest and the loan with compounded residual interest went on swelling. The agricultural labour can free himself eventually only by giving his son in bondage as a substitute. Under the 20-point economic programme, the Government India under Prime Minister Mrs.Indira Gandhi abolished bonded labour system and brought legislation to this effect in 1975. Despite the legislation the system is known to persist here and there in select areas.
3. Other contributory reasons are the total lack of agricultural development under foreign rule, poor communication, roads and other infrastructure development in villages, lack of education and health facilities, and the destruction of the thriving Indian cottage industries on account of competition from the cheap machine made goods imported under British rule
Progress made after the Country attained Independence
1. After Independence the Country adopted planned development. The very first five year plan laid stress on agricultural development. It took a number of measures to bring more land under irrigation. Major irrigation Dams like Bakra Nangal, Hirakud, Nagarjunasagar, Tungabhadra were constructed which generated power for industrialisation of the country and water for irrigation. A number canals were build to distribute stored water over an extensive area. The Indian farmer, as a result, is now not exclusive depending on the monsoon.
2. Intensive cultivation of land is made possible through farm mechanisation. Tractors are being produced in the country and these are available to the farmers everywhere. Farmers are also using threshing machines, deep boring and irrigation pumps. They get supplies of high yielding improved seeds, fertilisers and other inputs. To enable them to purchase such inputs the rural credit system has been invigorated with Cooperatives, Regional Rural Banks, and Rural Branches of Commercial Banks. The recent boon to the poor Indian peasant is the micro finance system and Self Help Groups that have rendered financial support within the easy reach of all.
3. Land Reform legislation introduced in the country after independence include the abolition of the zamindari system, the abolition of bonded labour system, land ceiling legislation etc.. Legislation was also introduced to relieve rural indebtedness and the money lender could no longer legally collect more than reasonable interest. Untouchability was abolished and special legislation for the upliftment of scheduled cases and scheduled tribes were enacted.
4. Community Development Programmes, Integrated Rural Development Programme, bringing local self-government to the roots of the village through introduction of panchayat raj system ushered a new era of rural development. Development of public health care system, schemes undertaken for promoting literacy and adult education in the country, programmes for development of rural industries are other development programmes that have received the thrust of the Government's development approach.
Future Perspectives
Agriculture, with its large dependent population has to thrive and flourish, in order to secure rural prosperity. To ensure orderly and vigorous growth of agriculture policy and structural issues need to be addressed quickly. Some of the important issues that need to be addressed are -
1. Improving profitability of agriculture, through yield improvements, diversification and reform of agricultural marketing.
2. Strengthening backward linkages and expanding irrigation coverage.
3. Providing forward linkages especially for post harvest management, processing, transport, storage and market infrastructure.
4. Securing a stable long term policy on agricultural commodities trade, including the role of private sector.
5. Encouraging emergence of a market mechanism for agricultural commodities such as a commodities exchange.
6. Streamlining the cooperative credit structure for facilitating hassle free flow of credit.
7. Implementing watershed development projects in the rain-fed and dry-land areas.
Rural banking faces twin challenges
Banking in rural India is faced with the twin challenges of regulation and distribution. Regulation with respect to banking has been designed for delivery in urban India and distribution required more manpower to be deployed in rural areas. Initiatives like cheque transaction — where the electronic image and not the actual cheque is sent — have in mind the urban customer, he said. "About 500-600 million people in India still do not have bank accounts. For the rural segment, one needs to design no-frills products and deliver hard core value".The other handicap was that while Rs 1-crore business in microfinance required 30 people in terms of manpower, the same volume of business in other portfolios required only one person. Also, contract farming and supply chain integration has not gone the way they should have. Power, telecommunications, banking and transportation had reduced the urban-rural divide, he said. Besides traditional banking services, people in the rural and semi-urban areas are expressing interest in liability and investment products. He said, "Rural India is fast transforming a nation of savers into a nation of investors".
Conclusion
No doubt, villages are in a state of neglect and under-development, with impoverished people, as result of past legacies and defects in our planning process and investment pattern. But the potential in rural India is immense. What if every village in the country is provided with basic amenities, like drinking water, electricity, health care, educational transport, communication and other facilities, with only a smaller population of the village engaged in agriculture and the remaining in other gainful occupations? When this happens India will turn into mighty country. The purchasing power of the rural population throwing enormous demand for goods and services will boost the national economy tremendously. The day will see the reverse migration of people from the urban slums back to the villages. Rural Development is the subject to come to the forefront after the economic reforms and rural banking will serve the backbone of this development.
Reference
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/05/07/stories/2007050700770800.htm
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/
http://www.geocities.com/kstability/learning/banking2/index.html
www.cababstractsplus.org/google/ abstract.asp?AcNo=20053122991
Source: From Article titled "Does Informal Credit Provide Security? Rural Banking Policy in India
www.answers.com
N. Kavitha
MBA, M.Phil, (Ph.D)
(Research Scholar in Mother Teresa Women's University, Kodaikkanal)
Lecturer-MBA Department
SSM College of Engineering
Komarapalayam. Namakkal-Dist.
Dr. A.Ramachandran
M.Com, M.Phil, Grad.CWA, Ph.D
Reader in Commerce
SNR Sons College (Autonomous)
Coimbatore
Source: E-mail May 23, 2007
India: Politics of Starvation
By Sudha Ramachandran
Asia Times
November 12, 2002
At least 40 tribals, most of them children, are said to have starved to death over a span of a month in the western Indian state of Rajasthan. It is a situation of the cruelest irony for even as the death toll from starvation mounts and hundreds waste away without food to eat, India’s granaries overflow.
It was a probe by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties that uncovered the horrifying details of the starvation deaths in the Baran district of Rajasthan. Cultivation has ceased here for the area is reeling under its fifth successive year of acute drought. The local tribals have been reduced to dire poverty. Desperately short of food and driven by hunger, the tribals have turned to eating a wild grass called sama. This grass is hard for humans to digest. As a result, the tribals, especially children, have developed severe digestive ailments, resulting in death.
The starvation deaths in Rajasthan are a replay of a similar tragic story that unfolded in poverty-stricken Kashipur in the eastern state of Orissa last year. There, tribals driven by poverty and unable to buy even the subsidized rice provided through government ration shops were forced to eat fungus-ridden mango kernel.
As the starvation deaths in Kashipur hit the news, the Orissa government claimed that those who died were victims not of starvation but of their tradition of consuming mango kernel and boiled grass even while grain is available. The truth was that the tribals were forced to eat the poisonous kernel for want of an affordable choice.
In Rajasthan, the government is now claiming that the tribals prefer eating wild grass and that the deaths were caused by poor hygiene and disease. Government officials are busy defining starvation to prove that these were not starvation deaths. A starvation death is when there is no food material in the stomach, and government officials shamefully point out that the victims had eaten grass. Whatever the spin, it is hard to deny that the deaths were hunger-related.
The starvation deaths in Kashipur and Baran are just the tip of the iceberg. Hunger is widespread in India. It is said that at least 50 million Indians are on the brink of starvation and over 200 million Indians are underfed. This, when a 60-million-ton surplus of foodgrains is rotting in various government warehouses in the country.
That so many are hungry despite overflowing granaries is a damning indictment of the government’s public distribution system (PDS). The PDS is a network of about 460,000 ration shops across the country through which grains, sugar, cooking oil and so on are sold at subsidized rates.
However, most of India’s poor, such as those who starved to death in Orissa and Rajasthan, cannot afford to buy the grains even at these subsidized rates. Many of them do not possess the Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards that entitle them to purchase at subsidized rates in ration shops. In several cases, the desperately poor have mortgaged their BPL cards to moneylenders or local traders.
Besides, the process of identifying the poor is severely flawed. An article in Outlook magazine points out that in Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, situated in Mumbai, just 151 families are identified as BPL. Millions of poor across the country are categorized in government records as Above Poverty Line (APL).
Food policy experts say that the pricing of foodgrains for APL and BPL categories is far too high. They have pointed out that the price of grain is sometimes cheaper in mandis (local markets). Consequently, the PDS grains have few takers and state governments have been unwilling to lift the grains they are allocated. This means that foodgrains in government warehouses remain unutilized. Because of poor quality and inadequate storage facilities, millions of tons of foodgrains are eaten up by rats or simply rot.
According to Planning Commission statistics, a third of the surplus food stocks (31 percent of the rice, 36 percent of the wheat and 23 percent of the sugar) in the government warehouses that is meant for the PDS is siphoned away by a nexus of politicians, officials and traders into the black market. One study indicates that 64 percent of rice stocks in Bihar and Assam, and 44 percent and 100 percent of wheat stocks in Bihar and Nagaland respectively "disappear" from the PDS.
There are several government relief schemes for the rural poor. Reporting from Baran, Bhavdeep Kang writes in Outlook, "Given the large number of central and state food aid schemes, it is hard to understand why the Sahariyas [the tribe that has been worst hit by hunger and starvation in Rajasthan] are in the plight they’re in today. There are special provisions for the old, infirm, pregnant and lactating mothers, school-going children and infants. There are food-for-work programs run by the village panchayat [village-level government] to provide employment. Even the World Bank sponsors a poverty alleviation scheme in the district. On paper, no one needs to go hungry. Ground reality is starkly different."
Many of the central and state government aid programs are not being implemented, Kang points out, adding that no effort is made to monitor their implementation.
While the failure of the PDS has often been attributed to corruption and poor implementation, P Sainath, author of the book Everybody loves a good drought writes that the PDS has "wilted under policies aimed at dismantling it. Part of the 'doing away with subsides' theme." He calls for examining the issue of hunger-related deaths against a larger canvas of the string of anti-poor steps taken by the government post 1990.
Sainath argues that while the government is cutting down on subsidies to the poor in the country and denying grains to them at prices they can afford, it is subsidizing the export of wheat by over 50 percent. "The export price of wheat is even less than the BPL rate of that item in many states. India is exporting lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of tons of rice at Rs 5.65 a kg. In Andhra, a government sells rice to people in drought-hit regions at Rs 6.40 a kg," he points out.
It is not without significance that hunger-related deaths and poverty-related suicides in rural India have mounted dramatically since 1990, when the Indian economy started liberalizing. Equally telling is the fact that it is in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra - the states where World Bank policies have been implemented most diligently - that the number of poverty-related suicides have mounted most dramatically.
The starvation deaths at Kashipur prompted the Indian Supreme Court to direct the government to "devise a scheme where no person goes hungry when the granaries are full and lots are being wasted due to non-availability of storage space". The court had asked the government to open the public distribution shops in the areas worst hit by hunger in order to make food available to the poor and hungry.
A year on, the starvation deaths in Rajasthan indicate that the government has done little to address the problem - and now the issue has taken on political overtones.
Opposition leader president Sonia Gandhi said at the weekend that the central government had not done enough for the state.
Criticizing the "insensitive attitude" of the center toward extending help to states, Gandhi said "the chief ministers of the states and myself had gone to the prime minister [Atal Bihari Vajpayee] seeking central assistance in August this year, but instead to acting positively the government is playing politics.
"We had asked for special assistance for the drought-hit states, but our pleas went unheeded. We shall now take up the matter in parliament," she said, adding that drought was a serious problem that needed the greater attention of the government in New Delhi.
More General Analysis on Poverty and Development
More Information on the World Bank
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http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/2002/1112starvation.htm
Tribal communities united over the issue of displacement and rehabilitation
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Rehabilitation has been the most debatable issue nationwide after the incident of police brutality by firing at agitating tribal people; chopping up palms and mutilating the dead bodies of tribal people killed at Kalinga Nagar. As state government is playing with the card of industrialization, the issue of rehabilitation seems to be the greatest hindrance on its way. Overwhelming success of the Bandh or strike in Orissa as well as tribal dominated neigbouring states like Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh in protest of the Firing at Kalinga Nagar has been successfully insisted the displaced tribal family members to agitate for fulfillment of promises made to them in time of establishment of SAIL’s Rourkela Steel Plant. Four trucks were set into fire; railway tracks disrupted and roads were blocked. Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik who had simply passed the problem with RSP to the respected ministry of the Central government just to get the ball out of his court had to go for a negotiation with the representatives of the agitators, after strong reaction against the attitude of the government by opposition parties as well as insiders of ruling parties, and promised to look into the matter seriously with the intention to find a solution at the earliest possible. The agitators, then only, let the steel city of Orissa revert to normalcy after being promised by the RDC, District administration and Plant authorities. This partial victory of agitators over the government is now working as an inspiration to all who have been displaced by different big projects in the State and are not rehabilitated properly.
In Orissa, more than lakhs of families are displaced by projects mostly related to Large Industries, Large Dams and hydro-electric projects, and Mining projects. 20 thousand families displaced by Hirakud Dam Project are still not rehabilitated asd per promoise. While the families displaced by the project are not yet identified, the numbers of displaced families have been cumulated to many times by now? This will put the administration in trouble even if it wishes to provide the compensation money to the affected families.
Apart from Hirakud Dam and RSP people are displaced in large number by projects like Rengali Dam Project, NALCO, Orissa Thermal Power Project, Coal Mining projects at Talcher and Ib etc. The families displaced by all the above projects are now planning to launch a statewide agitation for rehabilitation.
In the meantime, the tribal communities as well as the groups opposing further displacement and parties backing the agitators were congregated at the place of mass cremation of 12 tribal people killed at Kalinga Nagar; collected their urn to carry them to the places of tribal concentration as a campaign to unite tribal communities to fight against displacement and to protect their right to live peacefully in their ancestral lands. The campaign will spread to Chhatisgarh and Jharkhand where large scale industries are also planned to exploit mineral reserves. If this goes on, there would be another tribal uprising spread over Eastern India against displacement and basically against mining and industrialisation.
Orissa Government was never serious on the issue of displacement and rehabilitation as the tribal communities of the state were never organized as they are today. Such mindset of the tribal communities backed by non-ruling political parties, tribal leaders in the ruling party and social activists is expected to stand as a powerful force against the drive of Orissa Government for large scale industrialization.
However under pressure, State government has finally decided to develop an updated and effective rehabilitation policy in three months. But it’s still doubtful whether the practical problems of displaced families will be taken into consideration to develop a pro-people policy or the prevailing thing will be brought in a new form. The biggest question is, will the new policy satisfy the already displaced people and convince them who are to be displaced to join the process of industrialization?
© Basudev., all rights reserved.
http://orissanewsfeatures.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/01/tribal-communities-united-over-the-issue-of-displacement.htm
India's Combative Anti-Displacement Movement
by David Pugh
I recently spent three weeks gathering information about the anti-displacement movement in India. As a guest of Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan (People's Movement against Displacement and for Development), I traveled across central and eastern India visiting the sites of proposed industrial and mining projects, Special Economic Zones, and real estate developments. I spoke with hundreds of villagers who are threatened with displacement and with many dedicated activists who are helping to organize the people's resistance.
The villagers I spoke to, tribals, dalits (untouchables), and members of "other backward castes," told me that the lives of their families are at stake. Rapacious industrial and mining enterprises, supported by the state and central governments, are trying to grab fertile agricultural land. When bribery doesn't work, the industrialists and government officials send in the police and hired goons to terrorize the villagers into submission.
In return for their land, farmers are being offered paltry monetary compensation that will be gone in a year or two (villagers without land will get nothing); illusory promises of jobs in the new industries; and for a few, "relocation colonies" where they do not have enough land to farm to support their families. The result of these threatened displacements, like the displacements of the past 50 years, is the creation of millions of new landless farmers who will end up swelling the ranks of urban slum dwellers.
The overwhelming response of the villagers I spoke to is that they would not give up their ancestral lands under any conditions. As many put it, "We will sacrifice our lives, but we will not give up our land."
Maharastra
My first destination was a hunger strike in downtown Mumbai, which was aimed at the Reliance company and the Maharastra state government. Reliance had set up a large Special Economic Zone (SEZ) composed of 35,000 acres, where it has plans to build an upper and middle class "New Mumbai" on top of rice fields. This SEZ will displace 45 villages and 250,000 people, and is a focus of the anti-displacement movement in Maharastra.
Based on a law passed by the central government in 2005, SEZs are usually large industrial projects, often involving foreign investment. However, Reliance hasn't given any indication that it is interested in industrial development. Reliance is instead trying to take advantage of the many profit-making opportunities of SEZs. They offer hefty exemptions from taxes for 10 years, no tariffs or duties, and exemptions from most labor legislation. Since SEZs are treated as "public service utilities," strikes are illegal. SEZs are essentially foreign enclaves on Indian soil. Over 500 SEZs have been approved by the Central and State authorities. Most of them are under construction or in the process of land acquisition.
Chhattisgarh
My next stop was Chhattisgarh, where multinational companies are moving in to exploit the state's rich natural resources and cheap labor. In the capital city of Raipur, I met with two groups of women, who shared their stories of protecting their villages from industrial encroachment.
One group of women live in a slum of 3,000 people located in the middle of one of Raipur's industrial areas. The slum dwellers are villagers displaced by the surrounding factories. Their area, called Mazdoornagar (Workers' Town), is located near the Woodsworth wood products factory, which wants to take over their land. The residents have responded by demanding official recognition of Mazdoornagar with the right to have municipal services such as schools, water, and food ration shops. In the meantime, they have tapped into Woodsworth's water pipes for drinking water and into its transformers for electricity. These women are active in the Women's Liberation Front, whose slogan is, "We are not flowers. We are the sparks."
Another group of women I interviewed has built a separate women's organization that has a committee that runs the school, a committee for demonstrations, a committee to collect funds for village needs such as digging wells, and a campaign against liquor shops and their husbands' habit of wasting scarce funds on alcohol. When I asked them what they wanted for the future, one of the women told me, "We want a good world for our children. We will forge a new identity. The workers and peasants will rule."
I also interviewed two women activists who are working with women in remote tribal areas in northern Chhattisgarh to stop large mining companies. One of these women, Sister Bulu, explained to me that "Social activists are trying to organize the people under the repressive watch of the government." One prominent victim of state repression is Dr. Binayak Sen, a civil libertarian and doctor who opposed the forced displacement of 300,000 tribal villagers in southern Chhattisgarh by the Salwa Judum ("Purification Hunt") and has been imprisoned for more than a year.
When I asked Sister Bulu what message she wanted me to carry to concerned people in the U.S., she said, "People everywhere in the world should get united. All the intellectuals and thinkers and those who are concerned about the people should join hands with the oppressed, marginalized people to save humanity."
Before I left for the Bastar region in southern Chhattisgarh, my guide filled me in on the Salwa Judum. This is not a simple displacement to make way for industry or mining enterprises (though it will ultimately have this result as well), but a counter-insurgency operation aimed at the Maoist forces operating in this area.
She explained that after independence in 1947, the conditions of the tribals in the area had remained unchanged. They faced extreme exploitation at the hands of the forest officials and police. In the early 1980s, Maoist cadre from Andhra Pradesh crossed into the area to live and organize among the Gondi-speaking tribal people. Over 25 years, they developed a following of around 50,000 tribals in their sanghams, the mass organizations of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), which was formed in 2004 by a merger of the two largest Maoist groups in India. The Maoists have set up a parallel government in parts of two districts in southern Chhattisgarh. They have driven out the forest officials and police, while allowing in teachers, health workers, and government food ration shops.
My guide explained that the exact origins of the Salwa Judum, or "Purification Hunt," are somewhat murky, but that in June 2005, a section of the adivasi elite, led by Congress Party leader Mahendra Karma, started organizing to eliminate Maoist influence from several villages. The state government immediately threw its forces behind this effort to pit tribals against each other, arming tribal youth as Special Police Officers to conduct raids on villages that had been identified as "Maoist-affected." During these raids, villagers were ordered to leave their homes, which were burned, and make long forced marches to 23 "resettlement" camps.
Those who refused to leave were treated harshly. 538 murders and 99 rapes in three districts are cited in a petition concerning Salwa Judum in India's Supreme Court. This scorched-earth campaign eventually extended to 644 "Maoist-affected" villages in the South Bastar region, emptying them of around 300,000 tribal people. In the course of the Purification Hunt, Maoist guerrilla squads retaliated, killing Salwa Judum leaders, paramilitary forces, informers, and poorly trained SPOs. The Maoists also attacked an Essar Steel plant in Dantewada district in order to underline their opposition to industrial displacement in the area.
Civil libertarians and others who are speaking out are saying that tribal people must be permitted to return their villages without interference, the camps closed down, and the police, paramilitaries, and SPOs of the Salwa Judum disbanded.
I took a long bus ride to Dantewada district to meet with Himanshu Kumar, a human rights activist and leader of the Varvasi Chetna Ashram to learn more about Salwa Judum. He has played a leading role in exposing conditions in the 23 Salwa Judum camps. He took a few minutes to describe jail-like conditions, where nearly 50,000 people are living in crowded quarters with no work, not enough water, and rampant medical problems. There is constant violence in the camps; recently, three villagers were shot and killed by paramilitary forces. Many have escaped from these camps and run away.
According to Kumar, since villagers have been returning from the forests to rebuild their homes, the police and SPOs have continued to raid the villages, burning them down two, three, and more times. Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) has been denied permission to go into these villages and treat people for malaria and other diseases.
In this situation, Kumar's group has launched an initiative to publicly resettle the village of Nendra in southern Dantewada district. For three weeks, 20 volunteers had been living in Nendra, pledging to serve as "human shields" if the police returned to force the villagers to leave once again. Along with villagers who had been living in the nearby forest, the Ashram volunteers had started planting Nendra's first rice crop in three years. See
I had hoped that Kumar would be able to take me to one of the nearby camps, but he advised against it. He said the District Superintendent of Police was not in his office, and Kumar thought it would be necessary to get the DSP's permission to visit a camp.
Jharkhand
In the state of Jharkhand, I visited five villages along with a team from the People's Movement against Displacement and for Development. In the Karna Pura Valley (in the state of Jharkhand), the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), a branch of the Ministry of Energy, has set its sights on developing huge open-pit coal mines that would eventually displace 186 villages and 250,000 out of the 300,000 people who now live in the valley.
We stopped in the village of Kerigahra, where 100 households grow rice, wheat, vegetables, sugar cane, and maize. The land is fertile, supporting up to four crops per year. I met with a group of 30 villagers. They have formed a "Save Motherland Committee" which has organized road blockades and people-to-people, village-to-village processions in order to bring neighboring villages into the struggle. They organized a rally of over 10,000 in November 2006.
They are particularly proud of a militant action they took in October 2006. After NTPC built an office in their village to start the process of land acquisition, 3,000 villagers gathered and demolished the office, brick by brick, with their hands and feet. After this action, the police filed cases against 550 villagers. The villagers said, "The police are working as the right hand of NTPC."
After I asked the villagers about their movement, they asked me, "Do American companies displace people?" "What kind of mining do you have?" "What effect are companies like WalMart having on small shopkeepers?" "Is there unemployment in the U.S.?"
I came away very impressed by the Jharkhandi villagers I met. Due to their resistance and the strength of the anti-displacement movement, no new industrial projects have been built in Jharkhand in the past 5 years.
Orissa
My final destination was Orissa, another resource-rich state with a large tribal population. I visited villages where Tata Steel and the South Korean steel company Posco are trying to grab land to build large steel plants.
In June 2005, the Orissa government and Posco signed a Memorandum of Understanding for Posco to build a 12 million ton steel plant at Jagatsinghpur. This project will include a captive port nearby and 600 million tons of iron ore from mines several hundred kilometers away. Seven villages and 22,000 people will be displaced from 4,000 acres of land. In addition to the farmers who will be displaced, thousands of fisherman and villagers in the port area will lose their livelihood.
For three years, Posco has been trying, unsuccessfully, to acquire the farmers' land. Farmers organized by the Posco Resistance Struggle Committee have kept the company from establishing offices in the villages and have set up "check gates" at the entrances to the villages to check on the identification of outsiders and to prevent Posco from starting to survey and demarcate the land. Blocked in its land acquisition efforts, Posco has hired outside goons to destabilize the situation and provide a pretext to bring in police and paramilitaries.
In the area of Kalinganagar on January 2, 2006, the Orissa police killed 15 tribals who were protesting the beginning of construction of the Tata Steel plant. After January 2, the Anti-Displacement Movement (ADC) grew stronger in the Kalinganagar area. The ADC's secretary, Rabindra Jarika, told me that for the next 14 months, they constantly stopped traffic on National Highway 215. "People came from different areas of Orissa and other states, including Posco, Nandigram and Kashipur, to support us. Only 5-10% of the local farmers have sold their land to Tata."
Because of this movement, Tata Steel's construction work has stopped. This is a major blow to the efforts of the Orissa state government to make the Kalinganagar area into "the second most important steel city of the world."
On the night of August 12, as we were returning from Kalinganagar, the car transporting us was pulled over by local police for a traffic-related reason. My translator Protima Das, my guide Pradeep, our driver, and I were taken to a police station for questioning. For the next eight hours, all of us were interrogated, first by the local police, and then by one of the top police officials of the state of Orissa. The latter was particularly hostile, accusing me of being an "anti-government agitator." When I insisted that I was a teacher researching the issue of forced displacement in India, he insisted that only "communists" would be interested in speaking with villagers.
Shortly before I left India, I heard that Pratima and Pradeep had been arrested and charged with serious political crimes that can keep them behind bars for many years. This is an outrage which has to be vigorously protested. Pratima and Pradeep are guilty only of being anti-displacement activists and introducing a foreign friend to the realities of India's villages and the devastating impact that capitalist "development" will have on millions of people in India in the coming years.
I ended this trip impressed by several things. First, I had no idea how vast the SEZs and other industrial and mining projects are in India. In the next decade, it is no exaggeration to say that tens of millions of people will be threatened with displacement. This has taken center stage in Indian politics, and is beginning to make international news, as the recent coverage of the struggle in Singur against the Tata car plant demonstrates.
Second, I did not know how widespread the Indian people's resistance to displacement is and how it has grown exponentially over the past few years. Everywhere I went, I encountered the determination of villagers to hold onto their land, even if it costs them their lives. I saw that Indian women, rooted in the land, are at the forefront of many anti-displacement struggles. And in numerous talks, I was struck by the high level of political consciousness of the villagers and anti-displacement activists, and their efforts to lend assistance to each other's struggle.
Third, I learned how seriously the Indian state takes the anti-displacement movement and is moving to derail it with lies about it being opposed to all forms of development and to destroy it by the use of armed force.
I also returned convinced that international solidarity with India's anti-displacement movement is essential. The world needs to know about this powerful movement directly from those affected by displacement. This requires efforts like the International Campaign against Forced Displacement launched by the International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS). In order to move this campaign into high gear, there is a pressing need for a larger and more prominent Fact-Finding Mission to India. I hope that this report will spur the formation of such a mission in the coming months, and will contribute to the success of the campaign.
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David Pugh works with the ILPS in the SF-Bay Area. His complete fact-finding report is available from:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/pugh161008.html
More UK job cuts as Tata Steel and Corus to be merged?
14 Dec 2008, 2308 hrs IST, REUTERS
LONDON: Tata Steel is to merge its British unit Corus, formerly known as British Steel, in a cost-cutting move that could threaten thousands of UK
jobs, a British Sunday newspaper reported.
The proposed merger next year would result in the creation of the world's second biggest steel maker after ArcelorMittal, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.
The plan could cause plant closures and job losses across the UK at a time when Corus and unions are trying to prevent redundancies by discussing potential pay cuts of up to 10 per cent for the firm's 25,000 workers, the newspaper said.
The move was part of plans by Tata to cut costs in the UK by 350 million pounds ($521 million) following the Indian industrial giant's acquisition of Corus, which was agreed in 2006. No-one from Corus was available on Sunday to comment.
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? ArcelorMittal to shut down two US steel plants
? ArcelorMittal sued for USD 101.4 mn over iron ore shipments
Meanwhile, the Independent on Sunday newspaper said Corus was threatening to move its European operations to China unless governments overhauled carbon emission regulations. The newspaper cited the group's chief executive Philippe Varin as saying it would not continue to produce steel in Europe if it was forced to buy carbon dioxide credits on the market without help from governments to fund clean energy technology to improve its production processes.
Outokumpu shelves euro 45 million investment plan in India
14 Dec 2008, 1305 hrs IST, PTI
NEW DELHI: Finnish stainless steel major Outokumpu has shelved its euro 45 million (Rs 292 crore) investment plan in India after the government
initiated anti-dumping investigations into steel import.
"Due to uncertainties created by the Indian government, which has instituted an anti-dumping probe at the behest of a leading private sector stainless steel producer, we have shelved our investment plans," Outokumpu India head Y P Suri said.
Besides shelving its India projects, the stainless steel manufacturer has postponed its euro 1.5 billion capital expenditure in ventures across the globe.
Outokumpu had planned to set up in Maharashtra two service centres, one with an annual capacity to stock and process 50,000 tonnes of stainless steel coil and the other to make 5,000 tonnes of plates.
The proposed centres were scheduled to start by early 2010 and the company was expecting a combined turnover of about Rs 1,000 crore per annum from the two projects.
Suri said the government should have discussed with the end-users whether stainless steel dumping was taking place before initiating the probe.
India imports less than 45,000 tonnes of stainless cold-rolled sheets and coils and they are of grades and sizes not produced here."The quantities being investigated are insignificant compared to the 10 lakh tonne domestic market," he said.
Cash crunch to bite into Indian finance cos Oct-Dec net
12 Dec 2008, 1833 hrs IST, REUTERS
MUMBAI: Indian finance firms may report flat-to-negative growth during the October-December quarter as tight liquidity conditions hurt loan
disbursements, industry officials and analysts said.
Firms in the business of lending for construction equipment have been hurt significantly as sales have dropped to as much as a quarter of April levels, credit ratings firm Fitch said.
"It is a chicken and egg situation, the sale will not happen if we don't lend," said Hemant Kanoria, chairman and managing director, SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd.
SREI has a strong project pipeline but was unable to disburse due to lack of funds. "Disbursements from banks is not happening and we cannot raise funds from overseas, so the problem is liquidity," he said.
It dispensed loans worth 49.50 billion rupees in the six months to September but expects loans this quarter to be lower unless it picks up significantly in the last 15 days, he said. "What will get impacted is our fund-based income," he said adding fees from advisory services would not be impacted much. "It was quite a stressed-out quarter because of so many improbabilities".
Mortgage firms were also hit by the liquidity crisis that pushed overnight bank lending rates above 20 percent in October.
Loan disbursements for mortgage lender Dewan Housing Finance Corp Ltd grew 18-20 percent during the quarter, compared to more than 30 percent a year earlier, Managing Director Kapil Wadhawan said.
"We've had trying times in October and first half of November but positive signs are on the horizon as there is a bias towards lower interest rates," he said, adding the firm disbursed around 9 billion rupees in the six months to September.
"Logically, everyone had to prune down their disbursements".
Last weekend, the central bank cut its key short-term borrowing and lending rates by 1 percentage point, and the government unveiled a fiscal package including $4 billion of extra spending to stimulate activity. The economic slowdown has also increased delinquency levels in personal loans where the margins are higher than other assets.
Indian non-bank finance firms are expected to take a hit of $1.5-2 billion in the last one year due to investment depreciation and provisioning towards bad assets, said T.S. Harihar, senior vice-president, ICICI Securities.
"The worsening of the cycle and rise in NPAs (non-performing assets) would continue for the next 12-18 months," said Ananda Bhoumick, senior director, Fitch Ratings India Pvt Ltd.
India's external debt lowest: Chidambaram
12 Dec 2008, 1613 hrs IST, IANS
NEW DELHI: Home Minister P Chidambaram on Friday said in parliament that India's external debt is the lowest among the world's 57 biggest economies,
including the US and Britain.
Replying to a question in Lok Sabha, the former finance minister said the external debt in proportion to the gross domestic product (GDP) is 18.9 percent. It is the lowest among other large economies.
Chidambaram also said there was no need to worry about the fiscal deficit.
"If fiscal deficit crosses three percent of the GDP it is not a cause for concern. We had brought down the fiscal deficit from 4.5 percent to 2.5 percent," the minister said.
Palash Biswas
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