Punjab village revolts against SEZ

Wagah (Amritsar): The luminous green and golden yellow fields of Jeetha, a village in Punjab, are picturesque, pastoral and fertile. It is the soil that gave birth to the country's first green revolution. But now farmers fear the lush landscape will become a concrete jungle if the government of Punjab has its way.

The government wants the land for a Special Economic Zone and farmers who stand to lose everything are resisting.

“The government says this land is theirs and wants us to move. We are losing this house and 18 acres of land. This is our ancestral land. Three generations have built this,” says a farmer, Harjeet Singh.

The government has given its notification for the acquisition of 1218 acres of land, 10 kms from Amritsar. But the rates offered by the government are nowhere close to those of the market.

The Sahara group paid almost Rs 70 lakh per acre and the government is offering Rs 15 lakh for the same amount of land. In some instances, the difference could even be of more than a crore.

In response to farmers' protests, the government has moved to acquire 175 acres more.

“The Government is acquiring nothing. If the farmer wants to sell it he sells it. If he does not, he does not. That's purely his business we don't acquire land under section 4 or section 6. Only in Amritsar we had issued notification because it was the PM's commitment. But it has been withdrawn since then. DLF who is the promoter, will now have to acquire it on it's own,” says Punjab Chief Minister, Amarinder Singh.

But the industry is not what DLF is known for, and farmers call the Chief Minister's bluff.

"We live in perpetual fear. He is lying. Clause 4 has not been withdrawn,” says a farmer, Kundan.

Harjeet Singh adds, "No the notification has not been withdrawn. Infact, the government is acquiring more and more land. Ask us what is happening. We are getting wiped out.”

“Why are we protesting then? Let the CM announce the same in the papers,” says one of the farmer leaders, Sukhdev Singh Kokrikalan.

What is more important is that the farmers are perilously close to the Pakistan border. The government is okaying industry defying conventional wisdom. So forget agriculture, is the government even serious about industry?

“50 per cent of the land can be converted into residential and commercial activity and not for industrial purpose. Even if they don't do anything on the rest 50 per cent, it will make lots of money. Industry is just an excuse for getting into SEZs,” says an MP, Sukhbir Singh.

Jeetha stands to lose 400 acres of its most fertile land, land that gives it three crops a year. Despite instruction from the commerce ministry that such fertile agricultural land cannot be acquired for Special Economic Zone, there is very little clarity on the ground or even compliance.

The Commerce ministry says wasteland should be acquired for SEZ and double-cropped land should be restricted to 10 per cent. However, in Amritsar, nearly 100 per cent of the acquired land is agricultural which is the reason the resistance is growing.

"We will not sit silently in the face of force. We have to die anyway, why not die in the fields? Why die of hunger in the streets,” says a farmer, Hida Singh.

So while the government claims that the area will become a self-sufficient zone and employ 5,000 people, it is important to note that Jeetha and the six other villages are already self-sufficient and sustain more than 12,000 people.

(With Deepika Kaura in New Delhi)

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