Reliance and rehabilitation

I wrote yesterday about Singur and Nandigram and the enormous issues involved in rehabilitation.

Today's ET editorial (February 21) mentions Reliance's offer to those who would displaced by its SEZ.

At Singur, the government offered Rs 9 lakh/acre for monocropped and Rs 13.5 lakh/acre for multi-cropped land. Sharecroppers were offered 25% of the sum offered to landowners. No homesteads were affected: only cropped land was acquired.

The Tatas offered vocational and technical training for members of affected families and up to 3,000 have registered for training. Despite this, violent demonstrations were held by unregistered sharecroppers who got nothing and by landless labourers who fear they will have no work. The package is seen to be so inadequate farmers at Nandigram are on the warpath, and have killed a policeman.

Reliance has offered Rs 10 lakh/acre for paddy land and Rs 5 lakh/acre for unproductive land, which it says is ten times higher than the prescribed acquisition rates. Every affected family will have the option to send a member for vocational or technical training, or else accept an additional lump sum of Rs 3 lakh.

A stipend of Rs 60/day, equal to the minimum wage, will be paid during training, and this is an idea worth following elsewhere. On completion of training, Reliance says the trainees will get jobs at Rs 4,000/month. This may not be a formal guarantee, but the SEZs will create jobs aplenty for these trainees, an outcome likely at Singur too.

Reliance has made no provisions for sharecroppers or landless labourers. However, after developing the SEZ, Reliance will return to each family 12.5% of land acquired. This will be really valuable land: developed land in a top industrial zone can fetch Rs 5 crore an acre.

Reliance will also leave untouched the homestead land of villagers within the SEZ. So, each family will end up with homestead and additional land worth
crores.

As the edit notes, Reliance's offer does not cover sharecroppers and landless labourers. These form the larger chunk of those displaced. Still, it is an improvement on what we have had so far. Better rehabilitation packages have been opposed on the past on the ground that these would render projects unviable. The fact that companies are now coming forward to improve their offers does undermine this claim.

None of this would have happened without the violent protests in Singur and Nandigram and the government's decision to put the SEZ issue in cold storage. So, for the nth time I say: Thank God for Indian democracy!