Barga Blues

The most determined resistance to land acquisition in West Bengal is coming from those who possess little or no land

Nilanjan Dutta Singur/Kolkata

Whatever critics may say, the ruling Marxists in West Bengal seem to be adhering to Marx like moss to a stone. If ‘He' has said that history repeats itself, the first time as a tragedy and the second time as a farce, then so be it.

After playing the "success of Operation Barga" tom-tom loudly for three decades, the CPM-led Left Front (LF) government decided to "re-launch" the exercise. The announcement came from the Writers' Buildings when the panchayat elections were round the corner. As the ruling front suffered a jolt in the elections, it is likely to take some time before it recovers from the shock and puts the programme on track. But the move itself pointed to ground realities that had contributed to the volatile situation in the countryside.

Immediately before the announcement, Land Reforms Minister Abdul Rezzak Molla admitted in the state assembly that a large proportion of bargadars (sharecroppers) had lost their recorded rights as sharecroppers. The figure he gave was as high as 27 per cent, though the State secretariat mandarins somehow managed to reduce the percentage to 20 the next day.

The LF parties, which came to power in 1977 as a coalition, have a common past. They had
once organised sustained people's movements in the countryside on the land question. Like its predecessor, the United Front government, the LF government takes pride in this past. The journey from the historic Tebhaga sharecropping peasants' struggle (1946) to Operation Barga (1978) is shown as a glorious path charted by the Left in Bengal. And now, they are proving that they have not abandoned the land issue, in a different manner though.

Operation Barga was launched to give the sharecroppers some security against eviction by the unscrupulous jotedars. The idea was to protect the interests of the actual tillers of the land, not only those of the owners. A piece of land provides succor not to the owner alone, but also to the much larger population of sharecroppers and agricultural labourers engaged to work the ground along with their dependants.

Apparently, in the current scenario, land has become precious for the government to realise its dream of rapid industrialisation. More than 40,000 acres of land is supposed to be acquired for various industrial and real estate projects, including the controversial special economic zones (SEZs), within a year. However, it is doubtful what proportion of these huge tracts of land will eventually see industries coming up and how much will be swallowed up by the ‘real' estate, replacing downmarket habitats by elite housings or just pushing up prices in the land market. Whatever happens, the space would obviously have to be sliced off from the already scarce agricultural land in the state.

A report titled Status on Land, published by the state land and land reforms department, admits that "the extent of land currently under non-agricultural use is higher in West Bengal than in India.

The comparative data show that the share of land under non-agricultural uses in West Bengal in 2003-04 was 18.5 per cent while the corresponding share for India was 7.7 per cent."