Recent incidents of state oppression in China prove that West Bengal government adopted the Chinese methodology to curb the peasants' revolt against acquisition of land in Singur and Nandigram.
by Sagarika Roy
THERE IS a proverb – the Indian communists seek for an umbrella when it rains in Moscow or Beijing. China has transformed. Maoism has been shelved inside closets. Communism as a whole has been trailing behind across the world after it got a severe jolt in the Soviet Union in the early nineties.
Still, communists in India, particularly in West Bengal seem not to deviate from their big brothers’ path. The Left Front government has been in power in the state for the last 30 years. The steps being taken by it in acquiring land for industry and commercial purposes by evicting thousands of farmers from their lands, appear to have taken a cue from recent Chinese formula of evicting peasants for land acquisition. This has been well expressed in Singur and Nandigram.
In 2003, the government of Sanjiao town in Zhongshan province requisitioned a plot of land measuring more than 200 hectares of Panlong village for industrial development. Local people, though unwillingly, gave consent to the proposal. The town government provided compensation for land acquisition along with crop compensation to local villagers. The land was requisitioned in favour of a Hong Kong based business company to build factories at the price of 1,10,000 yuan per ’mu’. This was not disclosed as the villagers got compensated at a much lower rate – only a few thousands yuan per mu. Since the land was taken away, no effort for developing the land was taken. The peasants were promised employment in a proposed factory but even after three years, they did not get it because there was no response from the government or the business house for setting up the factory.
On January 10, 2006, thousands of villagers from Panlong village of Sanjiao town assembled at the office of the government. They claimed that it has cheated them in two ways . First, they have been given low compensation considering the rate at which the government sold the land to the business house. Second, they have not been provided any job as promised.
The second phase of the movement started on January 14 when they assembled at Nansan Road. A force of 2,000 policemen tried to break the blockade when some instigators threw bricks, stones and homemade bombs on police officers. Two police officers and three villagers were injured. In order to restore normal traffic and prevent the incident from escalating, the police arrested 25 suspected troublemakers. Four instigators were given a 15-day detention for disrupting traffic and the rest were discharged. The villagers claimed that police beat them at random, used weapons and a minor girl died in the attack. The government, however, refuted all allegations and said police was peaceful.
Afterwards, concerned departments of Zhongshan city and the Sanjiao town government responded actively to the reasonable demands of the petitioner villagers, meticulously persuaded and explained to them, and properly handled the problem.
Sanjiao town is an economically underdeveloped area in Zongshan, which is a commercial city in Guandong province of South China. Its proximity to Hong Kong has added advantage to its economic development, specially for the manufacturing industries. The city considers its eastern part, as a focus of development and to re-organise the fragmented industrialisation. However, the light and labour intensive industry imposes problem because of shortage of land in Zhongshan.
China’s growing economy is fuelling social tension. It is claimed that in Dongzhou, police shot a group of protestors against land seizures and 30 residents died in the shooting. The government refuted and admitted that only three died in the incident.
Recently, a wave of frequent, serious incidents linked to the problem took place in Guangdong too, only a few months before the initiation of the movement against land acquisition at Singur, followed by Nandigram in West Bengal. Both localities were under state government scanner for providing land to Tata Motors for manufacturing cars and an Indonesian Group for establishing a chemical Special Economic Zone (SEZ).
At Singur, the land requisitioned amounts to 1,000 acres where the state government tried to acquire 19,000 acres at Nandigram in East Medinipur without having any consent from local villagers. Both the areas became unstable and the government was shaken as opposition came from within the Left Front partners.
More particularly, Nandigram took the shape of a war zone as protests came from the residents of 38 villages. Several people died in police action and inter-party fights as well. The state government had to bid adieu to the proposed plots and announced that no land would be taken in Nandigram. However, at Singur, the opposition could not survive finally.
The incidents in China and in West Bengal have much resonance. The issue is same and in both places communist governments are in action. Both the governments are shifting to a new era with changed ideologies. Both the governments are sailing the same plank and their actions corroborate each other.
http://world.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=133306
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