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What Modi Surrenders for Fat Cats of Big Business
There is an enduring myth about the lemming, a rodent which inhabits the Arctic region, that they are prone to mass migration towards the steep cliffs of the Norwegian coast and, following their leader, topple over, one after the other, into the raging sea below. Much like the BJP over the Land Acquisition ordinance. (Bhakt behavior is therefore explained)
The ordinance has been re-promulgated and the BJP is now irretrievably committed to its bizarre lemming-like behaviour, hoping against hope that the nine amendments they have introduced after the debate in the Lok Sabha will exculpate them from the charge of being anti-farmer and pro-corporate.
It is a vain hope. The amendments are eyewash, designed to buy the support of their own allies, within and without the Sangh Parivar (a law so stupid that even sanghi organizations like RSS who routinely talk stupid have a problem with it!
), who have fierce reservations over the course of action that Modi has chosen to take. The amendments do nothing to alter the vicious undermining of the interests of the most discriminated against segment of the Indian population - the kisan and the khet mazdoor. This segment makes up close to 60 per cent of the electorate. It has close ties to their near and dear ones who have migrated to urban slums. Together, they constitute well over three-quarters of all voters. Rural India's share of the economy is, however restricted to 13 per cent of GDP, a decline from about 50 per cent at Independence. That is where they now stagnate, while a tiny sliver of the urban elite corners much of the fruit of faster growth.
How pathetic is their condition is unveiled in the 2015 Economic Survey, which claims that GDP has registered well over seven per cent growth in the past year of mainly the Modi government, but left agriculture lagging behind at a whisker over 1 per cent.
Just 1.1 per cent. Even this minuscule one per cent advance masks the fact that while one or two commercial crops have fared relatively well last year, almost all others have registered negative growth. (waiting for Bhakt to come and defende Modi's shining agricultural growth with 'links'. Modi has 100% flopped in economic managemet)
For all of Modi's tears and protestations that he knows poverty, the fact is that he is now much better acquainted with the fat cats of industry and infrastructure than he is with the poverty-stricken kisans and khet-mazdoor (well known how he siphons of 1000s of crore from AMbani Adani etc. strting with campaign fuding). While Gandhiji's goal for the nation was to "wipe every tear from every eye", Modi's is to shed copious crocodile tears for the poor while bringing the bright smile to the super-wealthy.
That is why the principal objective of the 2015 amendment to the 2013 Land Acquisition Act has been to create a "special category" of economic activity that totally exempts these sectors from the two essential provisions of the 2013 Act: one, Social Impact Assessment in consultation with the affected persons and the affected area through the gram sabhas and panchayats, on the basis of which "fair and just compensation" will be determined; and, second, exemption from first securing 70-80 per cent consent of those who will be losing their land before acquisition proceedings are initiated (AMbani want land....go take land!). Modi's amendments exempt "special category" projects from these key requirements. He does not want to give space for affected persons (both land owners and labour losing their employment and livelihood), local communities, local bodies or their elected representatives to have any voice or say in determining whether they should be forcibly deprived of their land, their chattel, their livelihood, their customs, their usages and their integrity as an organic family.
Chief among the "special category" of exempted economic actives are "industrial corridors" and "infrastructure". For what else does big business want quasi-free land? It wants cut-price land to put up manufacturing units and physical infrastructure. Neither will provide substitute employment or livelihood to those who are being forcibly deprived of their property and the employment derived from working the land. Almost all the benefit will go to those who had nothing to do with the land until it was forcibly acquired.
Big Business wants to thrive on Governments filching the land from the aam kisan and handing it over to them, so that they get the land dirt cheap and then sell the surplus at hugely inflated prices. The aam kisan is to be compensated at a multiple of the circle price, when everyone knows that four times that bogus rate is not even one-fourth of what the surplus land will fetch when it is resold, as all the evidence shows it will.
This fundamental exploitation is at the heart of the "special category" that Modi has created to favour his crony capitalist friends. He has covered up his real purpose by adding "affordable housing" to the list of exemptions and started strumming his guitar with the usual chauvinistic appeal to "defence" by placing it among the exempted categories. It won't wash because none other than the Defence Ministry itself had informed the Standing Committee on Rural Development, of which I was a member, that they saw no need to exempt land acquisition for defence industries and defence purposes from the full purview of the 2013 Act. One reason that may have weighed with the Ministry then might have been the fact that nearly 1.5 lakh hectares of land acquired for defence use is lying unutilized with the defence authorities, in some cases going back half-a-century or more!
Moreover, "affordable housing" in rural villages rarely requires land acquisition because the housing is built on panchayat land or state government land; in urban areas, "affordable housing" usually comes up in the same location as the jhuggi-jhonpdis. Clearly, Modi's main objective - indeed his sole objective - is land-grabbing to the detriment of the same peasants he claims to be gathering to his bosom so as to flog the land to his corporate moneybags at a fraction of the true market price and at an even smaller fraction of the anticipated rise in land values.
The kisan is no fool. He knows that it is neither a passionate desire for national defence nor housing for the poor that drives the man. They know that his innocent expression -"special category" - is really aimed at making the rich infinitely richer and gravely depriving the poor to fill party coffers.
Why is Modi in such a desperate hurry to push through his goals by ordinance and possible by the rarely used parliamentary route of a joint session of both Houses? Is it just to secure the majority that is eluding him in the Rajya Sabha? Or is it the fundamental plank of his programme of thrusting the "Gujarat model of development" on the whole of this hapless country?
The key to the Gujarat model was rampant land acquisition to pass on land to the private sector at throwaway prices. A classic case was in Kutch where some 1,500 acres were acquired by Chief Minister Modi and passed on to his favourite corporate house, who used a small portion of the land for their own use, and held on to the remainder to sell at a market price that was around 200-300 times the rate at which it was allotted to them. Another example was at the Special Industrial Zone in Hazira, where one of India's major construction companies received land at a discounted price that was zero point something of the rate at which micro-industries subsequently secured land in the same special industrial zone. (The above estimates have been obtained from knowledgeable articles in the prestigious academic publication, The Economic & Political Weekly, Mumbai).
Particularly worth noting is that a huge portion of land was acquired by Modi's Gujarat government from tribal populations. According to figures supplied by the erstwhile Planning Commission in its Twelfth Plan documents, whereas tribal people constitute only 8 per cent of the state's population, 76 per cent of those dispossessed and displaced were Gujarat's unfortunate tribals. No wonder they massively voted against him. Alas, their share of the electorate was so small that such mass deprivation did not result in electoral losses for so callous a government.
Modi, therefore, decided that the centre-piece of his economic "reforms" programme would be to transpose the "Gujarat model" to all of India. Hence the tearing hurry to take the ordinance route and, failing its endorsement in the Upper House, deploy the NDA's brute majority in a joint session of both Houses. There are contra-indications from the ground.
Many of his allies and all of the Opposition are up in arms against this outrage. So are the bulk of the 60 per cent of the electorate directly adversely affected. Gujarat is not India. Compared to most of the densely -populated states of the country, there are large tracts of arid dryland and wasteland in Gujarat that can be forcibly taken over without effective political opposition. Also, Gujarat's forests are available for exploitation by any ruler as ruthless as Modi.
But India is not Gujarat. When multi-cropped agricultural land is taken over, Modi is quite wrong in thinking he can ride roughshod over protesting kisans. Moreover, a united Opposition will come to the rescue of the deprived kisan and khet-mazdoor wherever and whenever there is takeover of rich agricultural land (which was prohibited under the 2013 Act). They will have to face the electoral consequences - particularly in UP and Bihar where the national destiny is crucially determined.
The newly-minted Janata Parivar is waiting in the wings to win back the states it lost to Modi in 2014. And a newly-minted Congress, immediately after its Rahul-led rally on 19 April against the land acquisition amendments, will lend its might and weight to the cause of the kisan against the depredations of the merchants of disaster.
This is the BJP's lemming moment. The countdown to the end of Modi's achche din has begun.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. NDTV is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
There is an enduring myth about the lemming, a rodent which inhabits the Arctic region, that they are prone to mass migration towards the steep cliffs of the Norwegian coast and, following their leader, topple over, one after the other, into the raging sea below. Much like the BJP over the Land Acquisition ordinance. (Bhakt behavior is therefore explained)
The ordinance has been re-promulgated and the BJP is now irretrievably committed to its bizarre lemming-like behaviour, hoping against hope that the nine amendments they have introduced after the debate in the Lok Sabha will exculpate them from the charge of being anti-farmer and pro-corporate.
It is a vain hope. The amendments are eyewash, designed to buy the support of their own allies, within and without the Sangh Parivar (a law so stupid that even sanghi organizations like RSS who routinely talk stupid have a problem with it!
), who have fierce reservations over the course of action that Modi has chosen to take. The amendments do nothing to alter the vicious undermining of the interests of the most discriminated against segment of the Indian population - the kisan and the khet mazdoor. This segment makes up close to 60 per cent of the electorate. It has close ties to their near and dear ones who have migrated to urban slums. Together, they constitute well over three-quarters of all voters. Rural India's share of the economy is, however restricted to 13 per cent of GDP, a decline from about 50 per cent at Independence. That is where they now stagnate, while a tiny sliver of the urban elite corners much of the fruit of faster growth.How pathetic is their condition is unveiled in the 2015 Economic Survey, which claims that GDP has registered well over seven per cent growth in the past year of mainly the Modi government, but left agriculture lagging behind at a whisker over 1 per cent.
Just 1.1 per cent. Even this minuscule one per cent advance masks the fact that while one or two commercial crops have fared relatively well last year, almost all others have registered negative growth. (waiting for Bhakt to come and defende Modi's shining agricultural growth with 'links'. Modi has 100% flopped in economic managemet)
For all of Modi's tears and protestations that he knows poverty, the fact is that he is now much better acquainted with the fat cats of industry and infrastructure than he is with the poverty-stricken kisans and khet-mazdoor (well known how he siphons of 1000s of crore from AMbani Adani etc. strting with campaign fuding). While Gandhiji's goal for the nation was to "wipe every tear from every eye", Modi's is to shed copious crocodile tears for the poor while bringing the bright smile to the super-wealthy.
That is why the principal objective of the 2015 amendment to the 2013 Land Acquisition Act has been to create a "special category" of economic activity that totally exempts these sectors from the two essential provisions of the 2013 Act: one, Social Impact Assessment in consultation with the affected persons and the affected area through the gram sabhas and panchayats, on the basis of which "fair and just compensation" will be determined; and, second, exemption from first securing 70-80 per cent consent of those who will be losing their land before acquisition proceedings are initiated (AMbani want land....go take land!). Modi's amendments exempt "special category" projects from these key requirements. He does not want to give space for affected persons (both land owners and labour losing their employment and livelihood), local communities, local bodies or their elected representatives to have any voice or say in determining whether they should be forcibly deprived of their land, their chattel, their livelihood, their customs, their usages and their integrity as an organic family.
Chief among the "special category" of exempted economic actives are "industrial corridors" and "infrastructure". For what else does big business want quasi-free land? It wants cut-price land to put up manufacturing units and physical infrastructure. Neither will provide substitute employment or livelihood to those who are being forcibly deprived of their property and the employment derived from working the land. Almost all the benefit will go to those who had nothing to do with the land until it was forcibly acquired.
Big Business wants to thrive on Governments filching the land from the aam kisan and handing it over to them, so that they get the land dirt cheap and then sell the surplus at hugely inflated prices. The aam kisan is to be compensated at a multiple of the circle price, when everyone knows that four times that bogus rate is not even one-fourth of what the surplus land will fetch when it is resold, as all the evidence shows it will.
This fundamental exploitation is at the heart of the "special category" that Modi has created to favour his crony capitalist friends. He has covered up his real purpose by adding "affordable housing" to the list of exemptions and started strumming his guitar with the usual chauvinistic appeal to "defence" by placing it among the exempted categories. It won't wash because none other than the Defence Ministry itself had informed the Standing Committee on Rural Development, of which I was a member, that they saw no need to exempt land acquisition for defence industries and defence purposes from the full purview of the 2013 Act. One reason that may have weighed with the Ministry then might have been the fact that nearly 1.5 lakh hectares of land acquired for defence use is lying unutilized with the defence authorities, in some cases going back half-a-century or more!
Moreover, "affordable housing" in rural villages rarely requires land acquisition because the housing is built on panchayat land or state government land; in urban areas, "affordable housing" usually comes up in the same location as the jhuggi-jhonpdis. Clearly, Modi's main objective - indeed his sole objective - is land-grabbing to the detriment of the same peasants he claims to be gathering to his bosom so as to flog the land to his corporate moneybags at a fraction of the true market price and at an even smaller fraction of the anticipated rise in land values.
The kisan is no fool. He knows that it is neither a passionate desire for national defence nor housing for the poor that drives the man. They know that his innocent expression -"special category" - is really aimed at making the rich infinitely richer and gravely depriving the poor to fill party coffers.
Why is Modi in such a desperate hurry to push through his goals by ordinance and possible by the rarely used parliamentary route of a joint session of both Houses? Is it just to secure the majority that is eluding him in the Rajya Sabha? Or is it the fundamental plank of his programme of thrusting the "Gujarat model of development" on the whole of this hapless country?
The key to the Gujarat model was rampant land acquisition to pass on land to the private sector at throwaway prices. A classic case was in Kutch where some 1,500 acres were acquired by Chief Minister Modi and passed on to his favourite corporate house, who used a small portion of the land for their own use, and held on to the remainder to sell at a market price that was around 200-300 times the rate at which it was allotted to them. Another example was at the Special Industrial Zone in Hazira, where one of India's major construction companies received land at a discounted price that was zero point something of the rate at which micro-industries subsequently secured land in the same special industrial zone. (The above estimates have been obtained from knowledgeable articles in the prestigious academic publication, The Economic & Political Weekly, Mumbai).
Particularly worth noting is that a huge portion of land was acquired by Modi's Gujarat government from tribal populations. According to figures supplied by the erstwhile Planning Commission in its Twelfth Plan documents, whereas tribal people constitute only 8 per cent of the state's population, 76 per cent of those dispossessed and displaced were Gujarat's unfortunate tribals. No wonder they massively voted against him. Alas, their share of the electorate was so small that such mass deprivation did not result in electoral losses for so callous a government.
Modi, therefore, decided that the centre-piece of his economic "reforms" programme would be to transpose the "Gujarat model" to all of India. Hence the tearing hurry to take the ordinance route and, failing its endorsement in the Upper House, deploy the NDA's brute majority in a joint session of both Houses. There are contra-indications from the ground.
Many of his allies and all of the Opposition are up in arms against this outrage. So are the bulk of the 60 per cent of the electorate directly adversely affected. Gujarat is not India. Compared to most of the densely -populated states of the country, there are large tracts of arid dryland and wasteland in Gujarat that can be forcibly taken over without effective political opposition. Also, Gujarat's forests are available for exploitation by any ruler as ruthless as Modi.
But India is not Gujarat. When multi-cropped agricultural land is taken over, Modi is quite wrong in thinking he can ride roughshod over protesting kisans. Moreover, a united Opposition will come to the rescue of the deprived kisan and khet-mazdoor wherever and whenever there is takeover of rich agricultural land (which was prohibited under the 2013 Act). They will have to face the electoral consequences - particularly in UP and Bihar where the national destiny is crucially determined.
The newly-minted Janata Parivar is waiting in the wings to win back the states it lost to Modi in 2014. And a newly-minted Congress, immediately after its Rahul-led rally on 19 April against the land acquisition amendments, will lend its might and weight to the cause of the kisan against the depredations of the merchants of disaster.
This is the BJP's lemming moment. The countdown to the end of Modi's achche din has begun.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. NDTV is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.
Nough Said! 
Shooo....
How much of that she's sent to her Italian family is anybody's guess! 
Shooo...
