Friday, March 16, 2007

Singur & Nandigram
Can govt be blamed for forcibility acquiring land???

Acquiring land and evicting people... If it is with good intention, is fine. At times lack of broader vision and lack of ability to see beyond the boundaries restrict people from having a long term perspective & understanding the brighter days ahead. But ultimately they are the one who would get benefited. Their sons and daughters would go to school and one day would come back as the manager of the plant, built on their erstwhile farm land.

I would again give the old example- given a chance, your kid would never like to go to the school. But you know, which is good for her, you can see beyond that playful day and opportunities ahead, which your kid can not... do u budge under her demands or send her forcibly to school...
Answer is obvious...

Political parties and so called intellectuals have ruined our ability think beyond boundaries and have turned ourselves into a "kup munduk"...
It is time to break free... and think free...

We shouldn’t get moved by what Mamata Banerjee, Sadhan Pane, Kshiti Goswami, Biman Bose, Anandabazar, Kabir Suman say... open eyes and think ourselves...
Want to march toward the light? or complain about the darkness, like we have been doing till date, forever !!!

2 comments:

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Another take on this : Turning arable land into SEZ's akin to basking the present in the glow of a burning future.
Consider this :
65% of the GDP is agarian.
This 65% is the sloth in the numbers, the manufacturing & service industries have grown by 20 - 25%, the net growth rate was pulled down because of flat/negative growth in agriculture.
2. An evergrowing population with very soon ~56% of the population under the age of 35.

3. Agriculture as an industry is the largest employer.

We are the world's largest economy with an evergrowing population of the young who, very soon will realise that they were born at the wrong time because all the good arable land got converted into shopping malls & SEZ & suddenly food & water are luxuries.

The nation, very slowly is getting pushed into an era of food scarcity. Developed nations had realised this & like they protect thier crude reserves, they are also protecting thier agriculture.

One solution to this affair :
1. Leave fertile arable land alone.
2. Make all SEZ's land which cannot be used for agriculture - This is a difficult one as such land is always inaccessible, so roads & other supporting infratructure needs to be built & why not? SEZ's don't bring in big revenue to the state.
3. Buy all arable land from farmers, combine them, employ the same farmers on a monthly salary, medical insurance etc & leverage the scale to turn around the industry.

Tese things will happen in due course, So what is the trigger to this turnaround? Simple, when the price of food goes up significantly to justify replacing malls with fields.
SEZ is only a part of the issue- if all the farmers work in SEZ's will the wheat sold in India be imported? How many people under the poverty line will be able to affoard it then?
What about inflation ? Low crude oil reserves, commercial civil nuclear energy still a pipe dream, biggest market for TB/polio & soon for AIDS, add to all of this - NO FOOD !!

Agriculture is our core competency & our strength as one wise general once had said : The army crawls on its stomach. Get this equation right & all SEZ's of the world will fall in place.

But hey - the catastrophe of food scarcity may not be too far off. With pulses touching Rs. 70/kg which is equivalent to 750g meat in bombay,( whatever happened to the food chain? animals were abovethe veggies ) Thanks to the myopic vision of the govt, We should be witness to the wonderful phenomenon of scarcity very soon... watch out, this opportunity will make many rich/ richer against the lives of fellow countrymen.
AM ( AM thinks we like screwing ourselves )