Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Problem in Bengal. What is the underlying truth?



The controversy of Singur land is at its pick. So what actually is the truth behind all this controversy. Few days back the Bengal government’s work for the Singur land were appreciated and were considered as the best way to compensate the farmers. There are many issues in this case. First the land which is being provided is either single-crop land or double-crop land. This is not permitted in the Special Economic Zone rules to give the fertile land for manufacturing purpose. Here double-crop land is being given to TATA.

But if we look at the compensation it is high. The compensation for the single-crop land is Rs. 8.4 lakh per acre and 12 lakh for double-crop land. It is huge compared to Rs. 24,000 per acre given to the firmers in Maharastra. There is a reason behind this huge compensation. The land being acquired is close to N. H. 2 which connects Kolkata with Delhi.

Over 9000 farmers (94 percent of the total land to be acquired) have already agreed with the Bengal government’s proposal. So the government or the TATA motors will not face much problem with the opposition parties which are against this deal. But they have to keep patience to let the political problem calm down.

Another factor is that in Bengal rand reforms had started in last three decades. The work-force for agriculture have three distinct classes- land owners, share-croppers (persons who get the land cultivated and share the produce with the land owners) and the farmer who work on daily wage basis for the land owner and do the actual cultivation. So the compensation being offered is offered to the land owner and in some cases the share croppers. But the actual farmer is not getting any benefit out of this deal. If this deal carries forward the farmers are the person who will be affected more. They will loose their earnings as well as they will not get any compensation. So the government should work out some formula so that these people should not be excluded in all this process.

Another factor is that TATA wants 997 acre of land to manufacture 1 lakh car per annum. If we see at the Maruti Udyog’s plant its total land area is 300 acre and it produces 3.5 lakh cars per year. So TATA should give some explanation like why it needs such a large area which is more than 3 times of the area of Maruti Udyogs plant to manufacture one third number of car of Maruti.

Source: This article is an analysis of the editorial coloumn in Business Standard by Mr. A K Bhattacharya

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