Corporate encroachment and the Panchayat elections: A rural montage
June 15, 2008
By Shamik Sarkar, Sanhati. Open for comments.
Click here to read Bengali version »
I. Beliya village, Haruda, and promises of development
Two or three years ago, I used to frequent a village called Beliya. This was in West Midnapur, in Jamboni Block under Jhargram sub-division.
I would go there in the morning and put up at Haruda’s house, two or three Sundays every month. Haruda was a small farmer in a joint family. He was a bachelor. His elder brother, who had married, would oversee most of the farming in the family. Another brother drove a private car for a living.
To get to Beliya or any of the 32 other villages under this Block, one has to take a trekker from Jhargram to Jamboni intersection, and then walk a few kilometers. A permanent road from Jamboni intersection to Beliya, spanning five kilometers, is being constructed under the Prime Minister’s Gram Sadak Yojna.
Jamboni intersection has a police station and a CPIM Party Office, which is two stories high and made from concrete. It stands out in a place where 90% of houses are earthen and only a few of those earthen houses are two-storied. To build a two-storied earthen house in this market, it takes thirty to fifty thousand rupees, and that too if all family members pitch in along with the laborers. Even two or three years ago, the Party Office wasn’t that big. Critics say that it suddenly got big after the Gram Sadak Yojna kicked off in the area.
Haruda says that the area was entirely dominated by the CPIM at one time. A few people did Congress. Haruda was a member of Krishak Committee, which worked in a few villages in the Block. The area isn’t really suited for farming, but that’s what most people did. The rainy season afforded the main and sometimes only crop for the year, due to lack of irrigation.
There are many tribals in the area, and based on them the Jharkand Party grew up from the time of the Jharkhand Movement. This dealt a blow to the pre-eminence of the CPIM. The two parties fought pitched battles at that time. Small battles, with bows and arrows. Even now, there are plenty of murders in the area from before the Panchayat Elections right up to the BidhanSabha Elections. The bodies are disposed of in the jungles – the outer world, media - nobody gets to know a thing. Locals have learnt to be careful at night.
People are dependent on the jungles for their living – they pick leaves to make bidis. Apart from this cottage industry, the jungle is a source for scavengers. Tribals are best at this, although some Bengalis, who have no land whatsoever, have learnt from them how to survive by scavenging. An NGO once tried to make brick houses for some tribals, and a local brick kiln got a contract. A few months later, the houses broke down and the tribals went back.
A government servant is regarded with immense deference in this region, no matter what his post. Anybody who can enter a government office and speak up is given huge importance. The price of Panchayat influence is unimaginable. Wars can easily be fought over such crucial things.
A rough class structure of the region would reveal the following: tribals, agricultural laborers, small farmers, big farmers, government servants.
Far beyond Beliya, cutting across extensive farmland, lies the Khatkura Rail Halt Platform. Some trains stop here on their way to Jamshedpur. People of the locality got this halt stop after fighting and agitating for it. The Gram Sadak Yojna has taken land from around 150 people, stretching from Jamboni to Beliya. A little magazine called Platform once brought out the names and amounts. Farmers were assured that they would get compensation. They didn’t, they won’t, they couldn’t have, because the Prime Minister’s Gram Sadak Yojna does not recognize compensation. It isn’t as if the farmers have been angered into action, though.
Haruda says, they’re hoping for development to snake its way in down this road.
II. Singur, its sharecroppers and laborers, and the Opposition
Tata’s fences hadn’t gone up yet. But land had been acquired in Singur. Near the acquired land, we were speaking to a man. He was dark, with a prickly white beard. Must have been above sixty.
What is your name?
Habul Majhi.
How many people do you have at home?
Many.
How many?
Well…twelve or fourteen.
Do you have land?
No…I am a sharecropper.
How much land do you farm on?
8 bighas.
Who does the land belong to?
Nole Barui, Kali Barui.
Do you get by on this?
Yes, I get by.
How many people capable of work do you have at home?
Capable of work? My sons, their wives. I can’t work that hard anymore.
Did these 8 bighas come under the Tatas?
4 bighas did. And the rest is by the river.
What did you say?
I said I wouldn’t give up the land.
And Nole Barui?
He says he will give up the land. I say I don’t want that.
Do you have papers? Are you a registered Bargadar?
No papers. I don’t know how to get a Barga, sir.
How long have you been working on this land?
My father, and after him…
Habul Majhi isn’t alone. We surveyed Dobadi in Singur and found that in this village of the landless, almost everybody works on land belonging to the Sahas, Ghoshs, and Baruis. Every village has its landless laborers. They depend on the landed farmers, and survive by borrowing from them during the off-season. During the tumultuous days of Operation Barga, some people became Bargadars and for them things are different. But it isn’t as if there has been a drive for landless laborer registration in West Bengal after that. In fact, Operation Barga came to a stop before its aims were fulfilled. Even the Bargadars did not believe that their Barga would last. Anyway, after Operation Barga, villages saw the growth of CPIM organzations and there was an effect of that on parliamentary politics as well. The old owners could not reverse the Bargas. A marvelous account of these times can be found in the memoirs of the director of land records and surveys of the time, Debobrata Bandyopadhyay.
Agricultural laborers, unregistered Bargadars, and sharecroppers make up at least a third of the population in any area. But within the context of land acquisition and its political debate, these people have no representation. One should notice that between 2006 and the recently concluded Panchayat elections, the Trinamul Congress has not changed a single line in their stance “unwilling farmers must be given back their land”. It’s the same demand. The Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee headed by them has spoken about saving lives and livelihood. This is happening everywhere. Whenever there is a parliamentary debate over land acquisition and either total opposition or compensation is raised, it is the interests of the land owners that get primary importance. Laborers and sharecroppers are simply being used to make the movement stronger. But they don’t figure in the “deals”.
After the ruling party faced resistance in Singur, the government temporarily gave sharecroppers a deadline for Barga registration, although steps weren’t really taken in that direction. Compensation for Bargadars was on the cards. There was some initiative in giving temporary jobs to laborers. But after the reverses of the Panchayat elections 2008, the CPIM is opting for land acquisition by entrepreneurs rather than the State. In such a scenario, laborers and sharecroppers will have absolutely no say in the deals. The entire bargaining process can be carried out secretly by the landowner and they wouldn’t know a thing. For over a decade, that is how small plots of farmland have been sold off for shops, factories, big houses, complexes, etc. throughout the countryside. Bardhaman, Hooghly, N. and South 24 Parganas, Nadia, East Medinipur and other districts have seen this happen, especially near the big roads and highways. The volume is surely greater than the land in Singur-Nandigram. Land agitation had the potential to pressurize the State into passing laws making it mandatory to obtain the consent of laborers and sharecroppers for acquisition and to guarantee their share in any compensation. But the way land agitation has been used as a means of parliamentary change even by the Naxals has made this potential a fading dream. The Opposition leader did go to Delhi once to demand the abolition or change of the SEZ Act and Land Acquisition Act. What has that achieved? I don’t know. What I do know is that during the Panchayat Elections I haven’t heard anything on this from the Trinamul. I can therefore assume that they don’t regard this as a pressing “public issue”.
By making “informal adjustments” for laborers and sharecroppers, the CPIM can regain its ascendancy over rural areas in no time. In that way, agricultural land would be used for big capital industry, and while laborers and sharecroppers won’t starve immediately, it is they who will be hurt the most in the immediate and distant future.
III. Corporate hands in rural Bengal
McKinsey is a global consultancy corporation. In May 2007, they prepared a study called “The ‘bird of gold’: The rise of India’s consumer market“. This was based on various government and private surveys. In 2006 they had created a similar survey on China (“From ‘made in China’ to ’sold in China’: The rise of the Chinese urban consumer”).
There is a chapter on the rural Indian market in their study. The rural population has been divided into 5 strata. Deprived (as of 2000, those who earned less than Rs. 90,000 yearly), Aspirers (Rs. 90,000 to Rs. 200,000), Seekers (Rs. 200,000 to Rs. 500,000), Strivers (Rs. 500,000 to Rs. 1,000,000) and Global (above Rs. 10 lakh annually). (Click here for a radically different picture based on the government’s NSS data).
In 1995, 90% of the rural population was deprived, and 8% were aspirers. In 2005, the numbers are 65% and 32%. And the projection for 2015 is that the deprived percentage will come down to 46%. In other words, the more advantaged strata will be the majority.
McKinsey says that while villagers do not want to spend on things like “entertainment”, they are eager to spend on education. And when people emerge from below the poverty line, the main thing they spend on is healthcare. And to do all this what they need is government-aided infrastructure, wide permanent roads which will enable them to spend on transportation.
McKinsey has speculated a lot in their report, no doubt. But the problem is that governments base their policies on such reports these days. That’s why even after the Nandigram massacre, Beni Santosa and his Salim Industries are sitting tight in West Bengal. And they will remain, like chronic diarrhea. The slightest smell of a potential market is enough, they will remain until they have sucked it up. After the Panchayat election results, the government has announced that district-wise Land Procurement Committees will be formed, and the newly elected opposition Panchayet members will be a part of such formations. Land will be acquired after consulting them. The Beni Santosa’s know only too well that such elements, lacking the organizational prowress of the CPIM, lacking in political vision and elected on the tide of anti-CPIM reaction, can be bought out with ease. The government has also made two more important declarations in the wake of the Panchayat results. The Chief Minister has welcomed privatization of rural healthcare, reserving government intervention only for the poorest. The private companies can partner up with the government if they want to. Or they can be independent. And in another declaration, the Finance Minister has said that every district will get its own “world class” university. As an aside, let us remark that “world class” is the official version of a despicable habit. Unofficially it translates to “next to MIT, next to CalTech, etc.” In the context of our private engineering colleges, it means “next to IIT”. A colonial hangover made modern, the world-wide hierarchizing of education. Needless to say, such plans are not being chalked out without corporate money.
Singur-Nandigram did shake corporations up to an extent (one is reminded of the corporate advertisements in The Anandabazar Patrika, exhorting people not to politicize industrialization, but remaining quiet when appeals against violence and land acquisition were spread!). The Panchayat Elections on the other hand have left corporate capital and neoliberalism benignly unperturbed. Whether the CPIM is perturbed or not is irrelevant to these global powers.
Translated by Kuver Sinha, Sanhati.
June 16th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
This is an important piece of analysis because it looks at the class basis of the opposition to the recent state-led land-grab movement. As Shamik points out, it is mainly the landless labourers and the poor and marginal farmers (who earn their livelihood primarily as sharecroppers) who form the core of the opposition in Singur. On the other hand, the class that owns land is willing to part with it if they get the correct price. CPI(M) is the representative of the latter, the land-owning class; the opposition, which includes right-wing populist parties like TMC and revolutionary left-wing parties, is the voice of the former, the landless and poor peasants. This aspect of the struggle is often forgotten and needs to be forcefully articulated.
It is instructive to contrast Shamik’s analysis with the picture portrayed by a CPI(M) sympathizer: http://www.macroscan.com/pol/feb07/pol170207Singur.htm
In this bizarre article, the CPI(M) sympathiser has argued that the opposition in Singur (and in rural West Bengal generally) is led by the land-owning class!
June 17th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Yet another praiseworthy work exposing the disturbing bonhomie between the Official Marxists and corporates that survive only on conditions of coalescence with the bellligerent neo-liberal global-capitalism. This unholy combine is a threat to subalterns who alone can reverse the global food crisis given proper state support.
Kudos to Kuver for excellent translation