Mention Posco and the first word that springs to mind is Orissa. Given the sea of troubles in which the Korean steel giant found itself in its attempt to build a steel plant at Jagatsinghpur in that State, both Posco and the Centre must have heaved a sigh of relief when Karnataka offered to play host with a generous offer of land. Posco seemed to have struck pay dirt when it signed the MoU 12 months ago. But that moment was all too brief, for now farmers in Gadag district of North Karnataka, close to the Bellary-Hospet mining belt, are building up a slow opposition to land acquisition by the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board, the mandated agency to acquire more than 3,000 acres for the steel plant. Will Posco witness an Orissa in Karnataka?
Quite naturally, the State authorities are sanguine that project will go ahead and that the process of land acquisition will not be hampered. Posco is said to have deposited Rs 120 crore for the initial land acquisition; the farmers, according to one official, want more compensation than they are being offered. But is the quantum of compensation the real reason for the emerging confrontation? The lands being acquired, or slated, for the project are rain-fed black-soil arable lands and farmers appear to want to continue cultivation; what is more, they aver that a lift irrigation scheme has already been sanctioned and so view the urgency to acquire land for the steel project as a bolt from the blue. This is the heart of the problem; for the farmers, the lands are still profitable. The State, bent on industrialisation, does not think so. Unlike in Singur, the farmers of North Karnataka have more than an emotional attachment to their land. In Karnataka, two economic view points appear to be clashing and this is a matter that the State Government cannot dismiss lightly. What it must do is engage the farmers in dialogue to ensure that the trust deficit implicit in the feeling of being let down on the promise of lift irrigation is filled before assuming that cultivators would buy its idea.
Gadag reveals yet another facet of the complex issue of land acquisition, not just in one State, but all over the country. Land is a State subject, to be sure, but industrial expansion and its detractors are not.