Talk to farmers, don’t bully them

With India’s capital formation rate hitting rock bottom and unemployment inching upwards to touch 4.9 per cent mainly on account of rural joblessness, there should be no doubt that land needs to be acquired for industrial expansion. It is manufacturing activity that has the best chance to bring about economic growth, large-scale job creation, skill development and income growth in India.

According to the World Bank, 60.3 per cent of India’s land area was constituted by agricultural land as on 2012, compared to the global average of 37.7 per cent. The diversion of agricultural land for industrial purposes is inevitable. The recent land ordinance, which has rekindled an old debate, mainly undoes the need for a 70 or 80 per cent consent of landowners for land acquisition if the sectors involved are any of the following: defence, rural infrastructure, affordable housing, industrial corridors, and social and physical infrastructure projects including public-private partnership (PPP) projects.

While it is a fact that the UPA-era Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR), was in effect anti-industry because of the combined effect of a number of restrictive clauses, including the provision that land be returned if there is no utilisation after five years of acquisition, the NDA ordinance is not without faults. It is to be noted that the compensation, relief and rehabilitation clauses in the original Act have all been retained, indicating that the intent was not so much anti-farmer as pro-industry.

This article discusses matters of consent, rights and choices that have been thrown open by some of the provisions of the ordinance, while at the same time empathising with the government’s desperate efforts to kick-start growth in the five identified sectors.

The exercise of choice is at the heart of any democratic framework. Accordingly, India’s democracy must provide the right of choice to farmers and other landowners with respect to land acquisition. The use of state power to acquire land without majority consent is unfair. Therefore, the provision in the ordinance allowing for land acquisition even when, let’s say, less than 5 per cent of landowners provide consent, is an act of bulldozing.

However, for the five important sectors identified, 70-80 per cent consent is a tad steep; 51 per cent should work well. But the exercise of this choice will potentially amount to a veto against development, if it is not an informed one. Information is the operational word here. There is a need to educate the targeted populace on the benefits of industrialisation, and then give them the right to make an informed choice.

High quality rural infrastructure (rural housing, roads, irrigation, electrification) will also benefit the very farmers the Opposition claims to be standing by. In light of the latest Annual Status of Education Report that paints a gloomy picture of school education in rural India, building social infrastructure in the form of schools and colleges is a laudable move too.

The point is that the five areas of exemption are important sectors, and incentivising activity in these is perfectly reasonable. The question is why not try to make landowners/farmers see the same logic as the government and make them part of the decision? There is no harm in countering ignorance, if any, through information.

Farm incomes aren’t stable any longer; nor are they sufficient. Farm distress leads to either debt-fuelled suicides or migration in search of greener pastures. Already, non-farm activities contribute roughly half the total rural incomes, even as the share of agriculture in the labour-force plummets. If the rural population is already quitting their lands to move to unfamiliar urban centres for jobs, farmers will see perfect logic in job-creating industrial corridors running along their villages. That way, farmers get to stay where they belong, obtain gainful employment, and keep at bay the costs of migration including a sense of dislocation and alienation in faraway metropolises.

The case for putting information out there is made stronger by the sanitation and banking examples. A research survey published by RICE , shows that most of the rural population show a preference for open defecation, an unhygienic practice that leads to diseases. Those who can afford toilets don’t build one; worse, 40 per cent of those with the said infrastructure (many built by the government) still defecates in the open. Why? Because an act of imposition may seem to the villagers alien or an act of elitist transfer of behavioural habits. So, what is needed is not the imposition of physical infrastructure, but the spread of the idea of its benefits. India needs farmers to be part of its development, not feel alienated or disgruntled by it. This would ensure the achievement of truly inclusive development.

Farmers need to be convinced that saving money at the nearest bank is a far better option than hoarding cash under the quilt. That the banking correspondent, not the manipulative moneylender, is his true friend. There is no condescension in acknowledging that often decisions are not arrived at with one’s own best interests in mind, but simply due to lack of information. Here, the role of the state is to enable information for the biggest stakeholders (farmers/landowners) to be able to make the right choices for themselves. It is only when the state steps in with brute force that the populace feels victimised.

Unlike what some critics think, the diversion of agricultural land won’t have a dramatic bearing on food security given that the state is already sitting on excess foodgrain stocks worth ₹50,000 crore. This contention is also bolstered by the fact that rice and wheat make up almost 70 per cent of India’s agricultural produce by area. Moreover, increases in yield per hectare will further erase doubts over food security.

What will, in fact, have an impact on nutrition levels in the country is the fact that farmers shy away from venturing into growing vegetables and pulses. Two of the main causes for this are a higher risk of crop failure for vegetables and fruits and the lack of cold storage facilities, resulting in spoilage and lower price realisation. But just as ‘rural infrastructure’ rings a very loud bell here (as intended), generating consent rather than exempting its requirement seems like a better option.

The writer is a policy and research analyst