India is a developing country. A developing country of which the most of the people still engage in farming. Now that in itself in not a bad thing. But the fact is that most of the Indian farmers are under-employed. Underemployed means that if a piece of land needs one farmer, there is one farmer, 2 of his sons and two of his grandsons working on it. And all of them are dependent on that one piece of land. What happens if there is a draught? Of course, it a financial suicide for the farmers, and in some cases it leads to a literal suicide. So what else can they do? Can they work and earn their livelihood in some other way, a way other than farming on the piece of land?
- They can move out of villages and find jobs in the cities. This is actually seen. Huge number of farmers, labourers do that. Since most of the villagers are not highly trained, they work as labourers and live in extreme conditions. They work as rikshaw pullers and sleep on the roadside, they take other low paid, high risk jobs.
- Or they can find jobs in the companies/industries in the village areas. But surprise-surprise! There are almost no industries in the villages in India. So this option is ruled out.
So what happens to the farmer? He either survives in poverty living in slums like Dharavi or he commits suicide.
What can be the solution? Well there are two things that we can do-
- Education – So that people can engage in economically high valued things such as financial services, technology services etc.
- Industrialisation in Indian Villages- Yes. Indian villages need more industries, so that farming families can diversify their source of income so that they don’t have to commit suicide in case of crop failure.
And both the solutions should go hand in hand.
Surprisingly in the recent times, I have seen a large number of people who work in private corporations because their parents migrated to cities, object to the second part- developing industries in villages.
One of the hindrances of having commercial entities in villages is getting the land for it. So the government passed a land acquisition bill to make the whole process a bit faster for Indian companies. Mind you, India is not and has never been a really good place to do business, it ranks behind even Pakistan in the ease of doing business. In the list here, India ranks 142 behind Pakistan at 128. Countries in the rest of the world really DO help their own companies, not India. USA helps Boing all the time, in fact one of the most iconic entrepreneurs in the world at present is Elon Musk. His companies- Tesla, Solar City and SpaceX have together received around $4.9 Billion in government support. Imagine ANY company receiving even a fraction of that support in India. The leftist-intellectuals would shout out the ears of the government while they would ask their sons to apply for Microsoft! Of course they don’t believe in hypocrisy in asking kids to get the most well paid jobs in private companies, while criticising private companies.
Since many of the people who oppose the land acquisition bill and also industrialisation are well educated and have good intentions, why do they want it? Here are couple of things that they believe in, and the rebuttal points for them-
- Taking a land when the farmer does not want to sell is cruelty– Well it is not cruelty. It would be cruel to not let them have any other opportunity to earn their source of income. If a kid wants to burn his hand, is preventing him from burning his hand a cruel thing to do? If farming is the only source of income(a low source of income at that), bad crops are inevitable, and that would lead to what? Financial ruins. We have a responsibility to provide them with alternate source of income. Imagine if you had only one possible occupation, farming. Would you have been happy?Whenever the government takes the land, it has owned the responsibility of providing more than market price for it as well as guaranteed job for that person. This might seem hard for the farmer in short term but would do him good in the long term.
- But this does not happen in a democracy- No it does happen in almost all the developed countries in the world. You can read the wikipedia page here and more interesting post by Balaji Viswanathan here.
- But taking of land when the owner does not want it! This has not happened in India- Yes it has. In India, there was zamindari system, which was abolished in various parts in phases. Zamindars owned around 40% of the cultivated land. There was a cap set on how much land a person can own and a lot of land was re-distributed to people who did not own land. Surely the zamindar’s private ownership rights were violated. But this has led to a lot of positive social impact in India, as compared to Pakistan-our twin at Independence of India where big landlords own vast tracts of lands and bonded labour is a common problem.
- But…these are poor farmers and you want to take even their piece of land- Yes. These farmers are poor because their only hope is the piece of land and that piece of land is unreliable financially. Imagine if you had a job where you could be fired every alternate year, and you had no other job opportunity! Imagine what would you have felt. That piece of land seems dear. But life is more precious. That piece of land can have a small government factory where the farmer’s family can find a stable source of income. Is that cruel? If that is, I would be cruel any day.
Most of the leaders when they were working on something big and positive, were criticised by others and supported by their own people. For example- Lee Kuan Yew, who is considered the founding father of Singapore, has always been criticised in world press for running a Nanny State. He put Singapore on the world map, from a third world country to a financial superpower. At present it is one of the safest and most developed countries in the world. He had to take many hard decisions as a leader. I hope that Indian leaders also find the strength to take hard decisions and take up criticism of leftists who want poverty to be removed without getting any industries! I think we should be magical, but not believe in magic!
After having been criticised in the foreign media for a long time, he had this to say-
If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one.
While I hope that India is not a nanny state, hopefully it would be a developed one soon 🙂
Cheers!
neeraj's 
Good Article. Farming and labor intensive industries should be propagated throughout India, after all we need jobs for the growing populace. Indian Government should also support industries which provide livelihoods to the masses especially the entrepreneurs who may have the potential of creating new jobs which do not exist right now. In fact, the government does support the industries in the form of revenue forgone and tax exempted. In 2014, $9.36 billion was exempted. I also agree that we need a land acquisition program if we need to build these industries.
However, the devil lies in the details.
Is the land acquisition bill in its current form farmer friendly?
For instance, let’s discuss the LARR Act which was done away with the present regime quite in haste. This act was discussed for more than 7 years before enactment, was passed unanimously only after going through two Parliamentary Standing Committees in 2007 and 2009, both headed by senior BJP leaders, but was abolished (using an ordinance, which should be the last resort) within a year, after partial enactment. Isn’t 1 year too small a sample size to determine whether it was good or bad?
LARR Act mandated obtaining the consent of affected families and placed a five-year time limit on projects after which the land would be returned to the owner if it remained unutilised. But the ordinance created special categories where no consent was required and there was no limit on the utilization of the acquired land.
Now any land purchases for affordable housing, defence and defence manufacturing, PPP (Public – Private Partnership) projects, which include private health and educational institutions, industrial corridors and rural infrastructure would not require any consent from the seller, not even 10% of the farmer need to agree to sell their land.
In reality, government creates SEZs and provides the land dirt cheap to the industrialist in the liue of creating jobs. These industrialists are more interested in getting cheap loans against these lands rather than start an industry there.
And this is just one aspect of the land bill. Who decides which land should be bought off? Who decides the fair price? Who decides which land is multi-crop, which is barren? Who decides what jobs should the family get in return and how long will that job last? Who makes sure that the compensation reaches in time and there aren’t any under the table demands from the poor farmers? Who decides which companies should the land be given to?
Things aren’t as black and white as they seem.
Totally agree that things are not black and white and that a land acquisition bill is needed which handles these concerns.
Although I would differ on some points- “government creates SEZs and provides the land dirt cheap to the industrialist in the liue of creating jobs”
SEZs do create jobs. Almost all my friends work in companies in Hyderabad, and Bangalore in companies which are set up in SEZs. If we don’t provides SEZs, the same opportunities go elsewhere in the world.
And the problem with 10% is that farmers in states like West Bengal don’t have free will, even if they do, they don’t understand what is the land bill about and don’t see its logical conclusion. So in my opinion, we can probably do a test whether that 10% should be there or not.
I think all the problems can be solved through discussions, but as you agreed, the idea of land acquisition is not in itself a bad one.
Cheers!
Very nicely written article..
Thanks bhai 🙂
Do share your thoughts on the same topic, would love to hear what you think because I remember that you were very enthusiastic about improving the rural life in college.