Power grows from the dust of the land

The acquisition of 2,500 acre of agricultural land by the UP government for the Reliance power project at Dadri, massive protests by farmers and police atrocities might lead to a volatile build-up which can turn cowbelt politics upside down

Sandeep Yadav Bajhera Khurd, Ghaziabad

Septuagenarian Babu Ram Rana is angry and he doesn’t want to hide it anymore. The veins of his neck and forehead flare up as the veteran gives a clarion call to a group of 30-odd villagers sitting around him: “Agar pitrbhumi ke liyo jaan bhi deni pare to peeche nahi hatna hai.” (If necessary, give your life for your fatherland, but never retreat.)
Bajhera Khurd, Ghaziabad, 60 km from New Delhi on National Highway 24, is a typically listless and arid western Uttar Pradesh (UP) village with unilinear pucca brick houses defying all rules of aesthetics or architecture, surrounded by lush green paddy fields in the distance. Under the shade of a blue tarpaulin on a ploughed patch of land outside the village, Babu Ram Rana and his fellow villagers are tense and angry, they speak animatedly, dissecting their uncertain future, getting angrier as their own reality unfolds. Clearly, this new epicentre of struggle is rapidly becoming volatile and tense. The place is in turmoil.
The acquisition of 2,500 acre of agricultural land by the UP government for the gas-based power project at Dadri has led to massive protests by the farmers and social unrest in western UP. This simmering tension has now snowballed into a major political struggle: in this epic battle, the Samajwadi Party government in Lucknow and Anil Ambani’s multi-crore corporate empire is pitched against the VP Singh-led Jan Morcha in alliance with Dehat Morcha, Rana Sangram Singh Sangharsh Samiti, Indian Justice Party and several small but effective outfits.
The former prime minister and Raj Babbar, MP from Agra, have picked up cudgels on behalf of the mostly middle farmers. They constitute the vanguard of the new struggle against brazen corporatisation at the expense of farmers. So much so, the Mulayam Singh Yadav government blocked them from addressing the farmers’ rally in Dadri on August 17 and arrested Jan Morcha leaders and thousands of its supporters in various parts of UP. The entire Dadri area was literally under police siege. Despite that and the many police barricades, and defying court orders, VP Singh, Raj Babbar and others reached Dadri clandestinely the next morning, and symbolically dug the land occupied by the project. Hence began the long march of the farmers’ struggle in liberalised India’s Hindi heartland.
The genesis of the conflict lies in the compensation paid to the farmers in lieu of their land. While the farmers are demanding the market price, the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) claims to have already paid three times more than the existing market rate.
The land for the project has been acquired from the conglomerate of seven villages in Hapur tehsil of Ghaziabad district. Bajhera Khurd, Kakrana, Dhaulana, Jadopur, Dhera, Beharbandpur and Nandlalpur celebrated Diwali when the project was announced in February 2005. However, the joy was short-lived. Today, they feel cheated and humiliated, with an arrogant government unleashing brute force, while their ancestral land is being usurped at dirt-cheap rates. Babu Ram Rana is furious with Mulayam Singh Yadav who had assured him that his grievances will not be overlooked. He is now certain that the ‘socialist’ UP government has become a pawn in the hands of capitalists and there is no option but to intensify the struggle until justice is done. “We are not against the project. What we oppose is the manner in which the land is being grabbed by the government. If Anil Ambani wants the land, he should come and buy directly from the farmers. They are the buyer and we the seller. We don’t need a middleman. Why is Mulayam playing the broker?”
So what about the Land Acquisition Act, can’t the state government acquire land for ‘public development’ under this archaic act? Rana responds angrily, “Yes, for public purposes like hospitals, schools, canals, roads and railways. Not for a private commercial company chasing profits at our expense.”
In contrast, the corporate logic is different. “What is this project if not for public purpose? Won’t the electricity generated by the project be used by the public? They will have to pay a minimal price but that they do in any case for using schools or canal water or government hospitals,” defends Kamaljeet Rattan, adviser, External Relations, Reliance Energy Limited. “We will set up the project at any cost and you will see it will finally benefit the people. I can assure you of this.”
Rattan is emphatic that the company has done a favour to the electricity-starved state by bringing in the project and, instead of being grateful, the people, brainwashed by some local politicians, are hurling baseless allegations at Reliance. Why did the farmers sign the <ikrarnama> in the first place if they were not satisfied by the land rates? Around 5,000 farmers, that is, 95% of the land owners, have already taken close to Rs 160 crore as compensation. We provided them Rs 150 per square yard when the market rate was between Rs 35 to Rs 70. What wrong did we do?” said Rattan, showing the papers of the contract.
Land rates were low before, but they took a quantum leap once the project was announced. Says DS Puri of MP Properties at Kichra on the Mussorie-Gulavthi road, “Before the Reliance project came, no one bothered about the land here. It was not even Rs 50 per square yard then as compared to Rs 500 to Rs 600 today. The UP State Industrial Development Council (UPSIDC) had announced a hi-tech city project here, but the Reliance power project had a major impact on the land prices here.”
Before the project, as is the case in most rural and tribal areas, the land rates were low. In fact, as activists argue, village or tribal land, for the locals, just can’t be measured in terms of urban real estate market standards. “Land is a precious inheritance, fertile land is a source of livelihood. Now they are creating a ‘State within a State’ through these big projects by usurping thousands of acres of farmers’ and adivasi land, by creating special economic zones and private empires outside the civil society where only the corporate writ runs. No price can be quoted for a farmer’s land by urban market standards. For <adivasis>, cash has no value, so integrated they are with their ecological system. And why did they unleash police repression in such a scale in Dadri? Isn’t the UP government using brazen State repression to push a shady deal to benefit the Ambanis,” says Satya Sagar of the Forum for Democratic Initiative (FDI), who investigated the brutal attack by the police on the farmers.
However, with the Dadri project’s evident arrival, interested individuals and groups in Delhi and Ghaziabad saw the potential of making money in a booming real estate business and started buying land in the area at a rate much higher than what the Reliance offered for the 2,500 acre to the farmers of seven villages. Hence, predictably, these villagers were angry at having lost their land for a paltry sum. The stage was set for a showdown.
Soon, a protest committee, Maharana Sangram Singh Kisan Kalyan Samiti, was formed under the chairmanship of Mangoo Singh Rana of Bajhera Khurd whose 30 bighas have been acquired. A demand letter was framed. Apart from the shifting ‘market price’ of their land, the Kisan Kalyan Samiti is also demanding 10% of the total profit from the project for the farmers every month as life pension and 20 litres of petrol per day per member of the Samiti. Cynics say, for some farmers also, this is a clear sign of making hay as the sun shines.
But why these demands, and almost a year later? Rana answers questions like a seasoned politician: “These are not new demands. We have been raising the issue since the beginning and have met the chief minister twice. A five-member delegation met him in August 2005 and he assured us that a better rate would be announced soon. But nothing happened. We met him again when he came to Ghaziabad in September, 2005. There he passed the baton to Amar Singh saying let him handle his own caste biradari (community). Today, we have no option but to start a satyagraha for our demands.”
Rana argues that land acquisition was not even discussed with the land owners. It was merely announced when Mulayam Singh came for the inauguration of the project on February 22, 2004. In November, the same year, when Reliance started barricading the proposed site, the villagers sensed that things are becoming awry. That is when their peaceful struggle began.
The villagers are not to be blamed if they see the entire episode as a big conspiracy. Anil Ambani, owner of Reliance Energy Limited (REL), is a member of UPDC (UP Development Council) and extremely close to Amar Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav. He was backed by the Samajwadi Party for the Rajya Sabha seat earlier. Obviously, the villagers believe that rules have been bent to help him strike a lucrative deal at their expense and that too so close to Delhi.
In fact, with the VP Singh-led movement gaining ground, and various people’s struggles against displacement becoming prominent, big and middle farmers, including dalits and tribals, are rapidly getting exposed to a larger social and political reality of conflict, linked to (often forcible) land acquisition and huge subsidies to corporate houses including multinationals. So much so, the State seems to have become the middleman for big business groups, actively mediating on their behalf against the people. The Central and state governments are doling out massive benefits in the form of stamp duty relaxations or cheap land and electricity etc, to woo investors. In fact, even the CPM-led government in West Bengal is welcoming private business groups and multinationals to invest by providing various subsidies, including by ‘occupying’ thousands of acres of fertile village land.
Technically, REL can argue that it has done no wrong. It requested the UP government to give sanction for the project and to provide the required land under the industrial and power policy. The state government accepted the proposal and asked Reliance to deposit a certain amount as advance. The land acquisition process was started only after the company deposited an advance of Rs 80 crore. Reliance also paid a stamp duty of Rs 4.9 crore when the acquired land was registered for the project.
However, the Mulayam Singh government cannot run away from the widespread belief that it showed undue favouritism to the Anil Ambani group by giving a subsidy of 60% on land prices. That is, 60% of the land price will be paid by the state government and the rest by Reliance. Of the total land of 2,500 acre, 400 acre belong to the Gram Sabha for playground, school, community purposes etc. This 400 acre has been doled away to Reliance by the government at Rs 100 per acre per year for a lease of 99 years. The rest, 21,000 acre, has been taken at the rate of Rs 150 per square yard, of which 60% has been paid by the government, on the condition that this land will only be used for the power project, according to Reliance sources.
That is why VP Singh sees the entire deal as a ‘bigger fraud’ than Enron and believes that market economy has been sacrificed at the altar of favouritism. “Sixty per cent of the land cost being accepted by the government means the taxpayers are bearing the cost eventually. Why should people pay for the commercial endeavour of a huge profit-making corporate house like Reliance?” asked Singh, while speaking to Hardnews. (See interview, page …)
Apart from the dubious economics, the ‘samajwadi’ Mulayam Singh government, went out of its way to prove that come what may, Anil Ambani is their multi-millionaire mascot. So conventions, constitutional rights, consensus and people’s aspirations can be casually tossed aside. So much so, apart from the police siege against all forms of peaceful protest, the farmers had to bear the brunt of state brutality on July 8 when the security forces stormed the village of Bajhera Khurd in the early hours of the day and smashed up the people, village elders, women and children, and dragged people out from their sleep.
This brutality went on for hours; the camera of a TV channel journalist was broken, even while most of the media chose to ignore this atrocity. They beat eight-year-old Shivdayal Singh, who had baton marks on his body even after a month. People allege that the ‘police raiders’ looted cash, destroyed their cars and food in the kitchen. Almost 80 villagers were arrested and sent to prison, and the police did not even file an FIR on behalf of the villagers.
Police terror was being used against the people by its own government to patronise a corporate group. The People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) and FDI visited the site and found it under the shadow of fear. The PUCL has recommended that the colonial Land Acquisition Act should be amended from a people’s perspective. Social scientist Yogendra Yadav believes that the laws meant for public good are being manipulated for the private good of a few. “One should not see the lathicharge in Bajhera in isolation. Farmers everywhere in the country are being humiliated and discriminated against. There was a time when no political party could ignore the farmers’ issue. Today, it seems no one cares for the farmers, they seem to have no use for the parties,” says Yadav.

This is not completely true as VP Singh’s movement proves. It has galvanised farmers and civil society groups across western UP. As the wave of unrest against ‘corporate displacement’ moves across from the west to the east of the cow-belt, and then beyond UP, the Ambanis, the samajwadis, and others, might find the going getting tough for them. Because, history shows, when the farmers’ pick up the weapons of the weak, the world cannot remain the same. And history repeats, from despair to hope, the circle of injustice and justice.