July 26, 2007	Thursday	Rajab 10, 1428

MUNDHA KHERA (India): It’s a hot, humid Sunday morning in northern India, but the oppressive heat does not deter a group of about 15 farmers from trudging door-to-door, offering advice and sometimes warnings.

“Do not sell your precious land. Even if you are offered millions of dollars, do not sell. It is your only source of livelihood,” Mahavir Gulia, the leader of the group, tells a villager in Mundha Khera, 100 kilometres from New Delhi.

“Sell your land and you will lose your identity,” he warns another as the group winds its way through the cluster of austere mud, brick and cement homes.

Gulia is trying to spell out the dangers to locals whose land has been earmarked for a Chinese-style business enclave — a joint venture between the Haryana state government and Reliance Industries, India’s largest private conglomerate.

“We want to be sure our fertile land that gives us three crops a year does not end up as part of the Reliance empire,” he said. “We don’t want Reliance to colonise us. Land is what sustains us farmers with food, respect and dignity.”

In Neemana village, 10 kilometres away, Pratap Singh, 75, understands the message — but a little too late.

Eight months ago, he was the owner of a 20-acre (eight-hectare) fertile field that yielded three harvests a year.

“My sons were lured by the promise of good and quick money. They persuaded me to sell most of my land to the big company,” says Singh, squatting on the sandy floor of the one-room house that he and his wife share with a buffalo.

He did get some cash, but it did not last him long in the world outside his usual farming routine.

“We have a saying here that our land is our mother,” Singh added sadly.

“How can you get any respect when you have sold your mother?”

Singh’s land is now part of the 25,000-acre Reliance-Haryana government Special Economic Zone (SEZ) — a project encouraged by the Indian government to spur industrialisation, infrastructure development and push economic growth into double digits.

For foreign and domestic corporate giants, the SEZs are a tempting option — promising a way around the country’s notoriously slow, corrupt and spirit-crushing bureaucracy.

But opponents say the government is merely sidelining the still-crucial farm sector — stealing labour and prime land from a sector which employs more than 60 per cent of the workforce and generates more than a fifth of India’s gross domestic product.Journalist-turned-activist Praful Bidwai says the years 2006 and 2007 ‘will be noted in history for the launch of the Great Land Grab’.

“It’s happening across India,” added social activist Vandana Shiva, pointing to farmers’ protests in the Communist-ruled West Bengal state in March.

Fourteen farmers were killed when police entered their village to evict them from land designated for a SEZ — causing a furore and polarising public opinion.

Not that land grabbing is a new concept in India — tribal peoples have long seen their forest land shrink with the march of urbanisation.

But SEZs are different, says Shiva.

“These are enclaves of privilege, insulated from the laws of the land — whether it is labour laws or environment laws.”

So far, India has approved 303 SEZs and set aside 1,400 square kilometres of land on which they are to be built.

According to India’s trade ministry, the 126 enclaves already operating have generated 32,578 jobs, and this will swell to 1.5 million by December 2009. It also hopes SEZs will generate 25 billion dollars worth of exports in 2008-2009.

While the figures look impressive, critics argue that Indian democracy is suffering.

“When there is large scale displacement of people involved, you need their consent. In a democracy, people have the right to decide their own future,” said prominent community activist Aruna Roy.

“All the villagers should decide — not just the village headman.” She also points to what she sees as the irony of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government — elected on a pro-poor platform in May 2004, but aggressively pushing through the SEZs.

“It’s a case of schizophrenia,” Roy said.

Those who may end up profiting from the affair are India’s Maoists, who have seized on the land grabbing issue and already hold sway in much of the impoverished east.

“Agitations like the Maoists’ insurgency are triggered by the repeated failure of governance to deliver basic rights,” says Roy.—AFP