I attended a public discussion day before yesterday (January 5 2007, Friday) in Bombay's Xaviers College on 'State, Development and People's Movements' in which Medha Patkar was one of the speakers. I present below some excerpts from her talk which I could jot down in my notepad. at the discussion a note on the Singur issue was handed out which can be read here (in English) or here (in Hindi).
Medha Patkar: "after the secular-communal divide in the country is the divide on the issue of development...its not about Singur (in West Bengal where Tata Motors has been illegally given a 1000 acres fertile land belonging to farmers) only...in Weste Bengal itself, 38,000 acres of land is being given to New KolkataInternational Development Pvt Ltd (name cleverly changed from Salim Group of Indonesia against whom the government was made to back out earlier)...another 40,000 acres is being given for a nuclear plant...things are changing fast in the name of development...in fact, it is looting...things have reached at such a serious state that in in Narmada, Singur (West Bengal), Pune and Raigad (Maharashtra), Punjab and Haryana, landowners or land cultivators, whose lands are sought to be grabbed under the Special Economic Zones Act or for dams and other development projects, are forced to say that they will resort to anything but not give up their lands...meanwhile arrogant state talk on SEZs continue...
what we are seing today is that the state powers-that-be are playing out a dangerous game against the people themselves from whom they got the power in the first place...the legalised noose of land-grabbing is hanging on all our heads...do not the people have a right on the natural resources around them?...land-grabbing is done strategically and cunningly by politicians, industry and their agents...in Lonavla (Maharashtra), for example, the agents of politicans and industry heads are buying lands on the periphery of the disputed SEZ-declared area...every acre of land is a land of 'sabyatha' for farmers...when i and few others went to Nandigram (where a chemicals SEZ is being set up) in West Bengal we were continuously, without-a-break, accosted and watched by state police forces as if we were terrrorists...but i say that even the policemen and policewomen who are set after us day in and day out are victims of the state policies...
in SEZ the tax being exempted for the industry is a loot in disguise...the fights you read about in the media between Chidambaram and Kamal Nath or between Kadam and Deshmukh on the tax issue are not genuine fights...they do not emanate from conceptual oppositioin to SEZ...
talk of accountability is selective...if the ransacked office of CPM (Communist Party Marxist which is in power in West Bengal) office in Nandigram open to everyone (police, media and pubic) for investigation then why is Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure imposed on Singur making it illegal for anyone to even visit the area...if this goes on then there will be no choice but for protests like that seen in nandigram to take the shape of a confrontation...
equitable and sustainable land use policy is needed without delay..."
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