NAPM : Struggle for Land Rights and New Land Acquisition Act

By Dilip -
The Real Political Question is Land, and Political Class Must Address This
New Land Acquisition Act will Increase Land Conflicts, Destroy Land and Livelihood, Need for Urgent Amendments 

Call for an United Land Rights Struggle for Decentralised Development Planning and Against Resource Grab

New Delhi, November 20 : After years of struggles by the people's movements in the country, the colonial Land Acquisition Act, 1894 has been repealed and a new law titled, Right to Fair Compensation, Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013, been enacted. The impetus to repeal the LAA was derived from the nationwide opposition to the land acquisition and deaths of farmers and workers while opposing the land acquisitions. However, none of the political parties have made this an issue in the coming Assembly elections in five states. The new Act has come but it will not end the land conflicts nor provide relief to the millions who have been displaced and hence there is a need to bring urgent amendments to the Act and also give inputs to process of rule making for Act, said, Medha Patkar, leader of Narmada Bachao Andolan and NAPM. She was speaking at the two day national meeting on “Struggle for Land Rights and New Land Acquisition Act”, joined by representative of many of the social movements from more than ten states at Gandhi Peace Foundation, Delhi. 

The meeting was joined by Prof. K B Saxena, Prof. Amit Bhaduri, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Anil Chaudhary, Arun Khote, Smita Gupta, Clifton D'Rozario, Medha Patkar, Prafulla Samantara & Lingraj Azad (Orissa), Nandlal Master, SP Singh, Arun Khote (Uttar Pradesh), Aradhana Bhargava, Rajkumar Sinha & Meera (Madhya Pradesh), D. Gabriele (Tamilnadu), Clifton D’Rozario & Sister Celia (Karnataka), Mahendra Yadav (Bihar), Ramakrishna Raju, K Rajendra (Andhra pradesh), Vivekanand Mathne, Vilas Bhongade, Akhlak Qureshi (Maharashtra), Bhupender Singh Rawat, Rajendra Ravi (Delhi), Capt. Deep Singh (Rajsthan), Gurwant Singh (Punjab) and many others.

Lingraj Azad, leader of Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, Orissa said that the struggle is for protecting life and livelihood. Our lives are intertwined with the nature, which even Supreme court accepted in our struggle. Unfortunately new Act doesn’t recognize this and attempt is at promoting cash based compensation.Movements and struggles across the country might differ in their nuances but are somewhere all very closely related. All the movements are based for the struggle to survive and are not ‘anti-development’. Our reading is that to counter the empowering laws as the PESA, FRA or the Vth schedule, the new act has been passed. The nexus between the politicians and corporates for money and political power has led on the path to destruction. We will struggle and survive over periods of time for this.

Bhupinder Singh Rawat, Jan Sangharsh Vahini, said that housing complexes and industrial units take advantage of the rise of prices and earn huge profits but that’s shared with the farmers who loose the land. Benefits must be democratically decided and distributed and take ownership over the land, unfortunately Act makes an attempt but its not adequate.

Smita Gupta of Communist Party India (M) said the new Act is a step towards abolishing the concept of common property itself. There is an attempt at giving role to Gram Sabha and public consultations at many stages but unfortunately, the government can easily override the Social Impact Assessment and Environment Impact Assessment and are not made binding in that sense.

Consent has been made very redundant and no particular provisions to define and understand are illustrated. Mani Shankar Aiyar, member of Parliamentary Standing committee, lamented the fact that our suggestion to improve the preface of the Act was accepted but the intent was negated. Gram Sabha, an elected body has been made subservient to the executive authority and Collector has become once again the key figure in the new Act, which is unfortunate.

KB Saxena, former Rural Development Secretary, Government of India, said the previous attempts to make amendments to the Act have been half hearted, and only when it was very the benefit of companies in 1984 major amendment to the old Act was done. In 2002 when the first time National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy was drafted under pressure from movements but more importantly from World bank. Hence, the democratic pretention in the new Act is a façade, government has appropriated Veto power on several occasions in the new Act.

Anil Chaudhary, INSAF, said the issue of land is extremely grave that the Parliament did not even properly listen to the standing committee. This shows the gravity of the situation and the powerful influence of people involved in the matter. Thus, the hunger and greed is not merely about a few projects but to a larger process. Corporate houses today are floating on non-existing floating capital. The fight in the future is going to be directly with the companies.

Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty, said we have to reject this Act and strengthen the andolan. Within the possibilities of the law and scope of its improvement through guidelines – bureaucrats will misuse this law in favour of corporate lobbies, knowing the law in spite of not agreeing to it will help us fight against those groups, showing the flaws of the law and merge the ways together.

Prafulla Samantra, Lok Shakti Abhiyan, Orissa said the things we have gained is through the andolan only and that too is diluted, and other than that there is not much to gain with the law. It is also a concession given to powerful classes to grab more lands – and also favour mining and other groups which earn huge profits.

Prof. Amit Bhaduri, speaking in the concluding session said that the important issue today is pursuit of an investment model based on the form of free or very subsidized natural resources. This is the thing to be fought and unless this can change we will continue to witness this fictitious growth promoting inequity and injustice.

Demand for decentralized development planning has not been considered. As long as decentralization process is not activated in the process of development planning and implementation, it will not be possible to realize the dreams. The two day meeting agreed to take forward the struggle against the land acquisition and chart a new agenda for land struggles linking up the struggle in rural, urban, coastal and forest areas and forming a broader front across sections and classes keeping the agenda for justice and equity for dalits, adivasis, landless workers, farmers and peasants.

Madhuresh Kumar, Seela M, Shweta and Sanjeev kumar
For details : 9818905316 | 9212587159

Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the PUDR stat
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certainty which a c
Read more

Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism

By Dilip -
NB: This is the text of my address to the Eighth East-West Inter-cultural Relations Conference held at Ramjas College, the University of Delhi, on March 17.  The details of the conference may be read here . A pdf file of the address is downloadable here  -  DS Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism Dilip Simeon Keynote address to the Eighth East-West Inter-cultural Relations Conference Ramjas College, March 17-18 2016 Zilu stopped for the night at Stone Gate. The gatekeeper said, Where are you from? Zilu said, From the household of Confucius. The gatekeeper said, The one who knows there’s nothing that can be done but keeps on trying?  -  from the Analects of Confucius (14:40) What is truth? asked jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer – Francis Bacon In fact it is more correct to say Truth is God than to say God is Truth – Mohandas Gandhi Introduction: The human being is the speaking animal, the discerner of good and evil. This featur
Read more

Rudyard Kipling: critical essay by George Orwell (1942)

By Dilip -
Mother of Cities to me, For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait  Rudyard Kipling , To the City of Bombay "Few people who have criticized England from the inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter patriot" : George Orwell IT WAS a pity that Mr. Eliot should be so much on the defensive in the long essay with which he prefaces this selection of Kipling's poetry, but it was not to be avoided, because before one can even speak about Kipling one has to clear away a legend that has been created by two sets of people who have not read his works. Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a byword for fifty years. During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there. Mr. Eliot never satisfactorily explains this fact, because in answering the shal
Read more

Three Versions of Judas: Jorge Luis Borges

By Dilip -
Image
In  Asia Minor or in Alexandria, in the second century of our faith (when Basilides was announcing that the cosmos was a rash and malevolent improvisation engineered by defective angels), Nils Runeberg might have directed, with a singular intellectual passion, one of the Gnostic monasteries. Dante would have destined him, perhaps, for a fiery sepulcher; his name might have augmented the catalogues of heresiarchs, between Satornibus and Carpocrates; some fragment of his preaching, embellished with invective, might have been preserved in the apocryphal Liber adversus omnes haereses  or might have perished when the firing of a monastic library consumed the last example of the  Syntagma . Instead, God assigned him to the twentieth century, and to the university city of Lund. There, in 1904, he published the first edition of  Kristus och Judas ; there, in 1909, his masterpiece  Dem hemlige Frälsaren  appeared. (Of this last mentioned work there exists a German version,  Der heimliche Heilan
Read more

Goodbye Sadiq al-Azm, lone Syrian Marxist against the Assad regime

By Dilip -
NB:  An interesting obituary to a great intellectual. My knowledge of the situation is limited, but as regards this article,  I'm uncomfortable with the argument that there should be no objection to the participation  of communal parties  in a democratic alliance. My views on this are conditioned by the history of religion-based mobilisations in India, where the communist movement has from time to time allied with communal groups of all colours, with disastrous consequences. Some material on this theme may be read here .  Nor can I agree that Islamists, Hindutva groups or Khalistanis etc. can be described as 'religious parties'. I do not mean to justify alliances with 'secular' tyrants, but to remind anyone who cares to listen, that communalism is also an expression of tyranny.  Communalists proceed on the assumption that membership of a religious community automatically produces a political interest, and strive to create that interest. They enter democratic move
Read more