| Last
week I had occasion to drive to a village located some
distance outside Delhi. At least, I thought I would
be driving to a village outside Delhi, through rural
roads traversing many villages. And I looked forward
to experiencing on the journey some of the sense of
openness that comes to city dwellers when they visit
rural spaces. I had anticipatory visions of acres of
farmland under the rabi wheat crop, or glorious yellow
fields of mustard, all around me as I travelled.
Instead,
I drove for several hours along narrow paved roads bordered
on both sides by enormous walls. It was impossible to
see any "fields", because the entire area of farmland
all around had been enclosed into properties of the
(mostly urban-based) rich: huge palatial farm houses
surrounded by their manicured gardens and lawns, and
some vegetable patches that are the casual concession
to agriculture in these new manifestations of rurality.
The
walls along the road changed in character every so often,
as the ownership of the properties apparently changed.
But they had some characteristics in common: they were
all sufficiently high as to inhibit any curious passer-by
from observing anything behind them, and forbiddingly
preventive of any attempt at "unlawful" entry through
the extensive use of barbed wire and splintered glass
on top. These private walls were also typically quite
wide and imposing, so that the narrow "village" road
in between was not only hemmed in and sandwiched between
them, but also seemed like nothing more than a rather
forlorn passageway from these elite residences to the
nearby urban centres.
The
"villages", or what remained of them, had become little
clusters of habitations and small shops along the road,
hemmed in to such an extent that the only openness came
from the sky above. Even trees had been removed from
most of the road, to allow for the encroaching and demarcating
private walls to establish their defining presence.
The
shops and petty commercial establishments too reflected
the material change that has overtaken this countryside,
dominated by real estate agents that specialised in
farm houses, hardware shops for construction activity,
the occasional auto repair shops that advertised their
ability to deal with SUVs, and the new staple of such
environments: the private security agencies for the
protection of the new wealthy residents. Even the inevitable
small kirana shops were interspersed with the outlets
of large corporate retailers and the occasional designer
boutique for furniture and artefacts.
It
is hard to figure out when exactly this happened or
how long the transformation took, but it appears that
the process is now almost complete. A large part of
the rural area around Delhi and its satellite cities
has been converted into the private playgrounds of the
rich, the site for their occasional rest, recreation
and celebration, and is only nominally farmland any
more. It is not held by small peasants, or even by those
who get the larger part of their income from farming,
but by those who see this as one more piece of attractive
real estate in a portfolio of land holding.
In
the process, the attributes of the villages of these
formerly completely rural areas are changing fast, not
only in terms of ownership and cultivation patterns,
but also in terms of the material means of support of
the local population and their lifestyles. The question
of course arises as to what happens to the villagers
themselves, a significant proportion of whom must have
lost their lands to these new urban entrants, and others
who would have formerly worked either as rural labour
or in providing the farming community with various local
crafts and services.
It
is likely that this process is not something that is
confined to Delhi – reports from other major metros
suggest that similar things are happening in the rural
areas around Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai
as well, to take only a few examples. The irony is that
all this is of course still classified as land under
agricultural use, with all the attendant economic and
legal implications.
There
has been much discussion, debate and outcry about land
use conversion in India recently. There is no question
that the transformation of land from agricultural to
industrial or other non-agricultural use, however desirable
the ultimate goal may or may not be, is a process that
is painful, fraught with conflict and redolent of class
struggle. This is now widely recognised, even by the
central and state governments, so that issues of compensation
and rehabilitation have become high priorities on the
policy agenda.
However,
there is little discussion – or even awareness - about
cases where land is "voluntarily" sold by farmers to
bigger players, and officially still remains as agricultural
land. Yet, if the proliferation of private enclosures
in the rural areas around Delhi to create garden homes
for the rich is any indication, this is a silent but
extensive tendency that is dramatically affecting both
land use patterns and class relations in the rural peripheries
of many of our cities.
Unlike
some other land use conversion involving industrial
use, this process does not even create any new jobs,
and so is probably an even larger net destroyer of local
employment. So it is probably time for this process
to be taken note of and addressed, in terms of considering
whether such new development really deserves to be still
treated as farmland, and what is to be done about the
conditions of those who have been displaced by it.
This
is doubly important because this process is closely
analogous to the real estate development that is currently
the chief instrument of land use conversion in the rural
hinterland of urban areas across the country. The boom
in real estate and property has spawned more than an
explosion of high-rise construction in city centres.
It has generated very rapid and aggressive urban extension,
with new commercial, residential and entertainment-oriented
construction coming up in what were previously agricultural
areas, and transforming them also into effectively urban
locations.
In
the National Capital Region, for instance, that is the
area including Delhi and the satellite cities of Noida,
Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Gurgaon, it has been estimated
that land is being purchased from farmers, developed
and thereby diverted from agriculture at the rate of
around 10,000 hectares per year. This reflects the operation
of "market forces" in that there is no involvement of
the state in either regulating prices or ensuring fair
compensation and rehabilitation to all those who earlier
earned a livelihood from such land.
The trouble with such market-determined transfer is
that the farmers who were the original holders of the
land rarely get anything close to the real value of
the land because they are typically dealing with larger,
more corporate and well-informed buyers who can more
correctly anticipate the potential urban development.
The cash amounts involved may seem large to the farmers
at first, but are often frittered away in consumption
and do not enable the households concerned to sustain
themselves over time.
Most
of all, such a market process denies any possibility
of compensation and rehabilitation to other stakeholders
of that previous land holding pattern, such as tenants
and agricultural workers. That is why it is so important
for the state to be involved in mediating such transactions
and ensuring that adequate compensation is provided
in a sustainable manner. Of course such involvement
of the state must itself be democratically accountable
and directed towards serving the interests of the displaced,
rather than of the displacers.
However, the very fact that such real estate development
covers not just corporate and commercial expansion but
also residential accommodation, including possibly apartment
complexes and flats for the middle classes and the less
well-off groups, makes the political stakes more complex.
The group of beneficiaries of this process of land transfer
then contains many who would protest the more open land
grab by large corporates that is associated with the
development of SEZs.
But that is all the more reason why such land transfer
should not go unnoticed and why such silent displacement
– with possibly socially damaging effects – should not
be allowed to proceed in so unregulated a manner.
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