Industrialisation is necessary, but not at the cost of giving up on agricultural land. No one should coerce the farmers to give up on their land. For them it is like snatching away the baby from the mother. While the POSCO deal is a burning issue now, it is essential to bear in mind that to bring about industrialisation we cannot ruin the life of small farmers.
To satisfy the big fish, we cannot compromise on the small fishes. While industrialisation is essential for country’s growth, we cannot let go off on the agricultural land because that will bring about a threat to our food security. To resolve such issues, I think the best way is to let the private investors and farmers have a direct deal, because if the government is involved then there are too many middlemen who come into play and in the process the farmers get a very raw deal. When the investors deal with government authorities it is easier for them because they just bribe two or three influential people in the system and get away with a deal that is advantageous to them. So for a fair deal it is best to have a system in place wherein the private investors can directly communicate with the local farmers and if they are willing to sell their land then the investors should pay them as per the market value and strike a deal.
However even in such direct deal there is a possibility of local land mafias and goons coming into play, who can coerce the farmers to sell their land. So to ensure that there is no coercion in the land acquisition process there is a need for strict penal code with severe punishment for coercion. Under no circumstances should farmers be coerced to give up on their land. There is no point promising them a job in the industry that is set up on the land brought for them, because that way we are only making way for more number of disgruntled landless labourers who in turn take recourse to anti-social activities like Naxalism.
While industrialisation is important, we also need to chalk out the right way of bringing it in. Even now that the Global Investors’ Meet Part two is coming up, we need to ensure that the investors set up shop on the barren and non agricultural land. There is no dearth of land here, there are hundreds and thousands of acres of non agricultural land which can very well be utilised for setting up industries. This way we can ensure that while industrialisation happens on one hand, agriculture is not compromised on and the investor-farmer direct dealing will ensure that there are no disgruntled landless labourers in our country.
The direct dealing will bring about more transparency and will ensure a win-win situation.
