Sustainable Development Live Indian Cases - Tata Nano at Singur

The process of Land acquisition has become one of the most common issues in the recent times as a major logjam resulting in project delays, cost over-run, business worries and even abandoning of projects by various companies. Debates, disputes and violence have tarnished most of the governments land acquisition deals for projects by various companies in India. Protests against agricultural land acquisition, unfitting compensation or environmental damage associated with the acquisition are some of the widely quoted reasons for most of the protests.

Tata's Nano project in Singur (West Bengal), Vedanta Resource's project in Orissa, Steel giant Posco's project in Orissa and Raigarh project Jindal are some among the many examples where the entire project has been shelved due to the burdensome process of land acquisition in our country. Through this article we try to discuss the various challenges faced by corporates and companies in land acquisition in India, its social and business implications and the way ahead.

In most of the cases, the peasants who are less compensated when their agricultural land which has been feeding them for decades have been taken away from them by force for various projects by the government. In some other cases the objections and protests are initiated by various political parties to gain political mileage and secure their vote banks by supporting the underprivileged.

Although the act (Land Acquisition Act 1894) provides legality to acquire land for public purpose by the government, many activists and experts are of the opinion that a number of projects, which actually doesn't have any public purpose. Take the example of building SEZs (Special Economic Zones), where there were seizures of land from its owners at highly reduced rates, by misusing the Act. They show by various examples that even after lot of promises, the rehabilitation of the displaced have not take place properly. According to them, at the end it is only the underprivileged who pay hefty price for the so called development.

One interesting fact is that India has the maximum number of Special Economic Zones in the world inspite of extensive protests against the infamous exercise of land-grabbing. Taking the example of Posco project where the state government manipulated the land records to announce that no one occupied or ever inhabited the disputed land, there are many questions that pop up in anyone's head- Will the marginalised farmers get back what they lost ever? Will they ever be paid atleast their genuine due amount? How will one take in to account the loses other than the monetary ones? Where will this kind of ‘development' lead us to? How can growth be achieved in a way which doesn't hurt a big piece of the society? What is the way out? We shall look at the various cases that happened all over India to have a better view of the problem so that we can come up with an optimal solution.