Click to play videoMohali, Punjab: House numbers in villages near Mohali may leave visitors confused, for you hardly find addresses numbered as 1,64,00,000, 1, 40,00,000 or 7,00,000.
The numbers don’t mean there are lakhs and crores of houses in these villages—it means the price at which farmers sold their land and brought property.
Gurpreet Singh is the proud owner of House 1,64,00,000. He sold his 4 acres for Rs 6 crores 40 lakh. With the new money, he bought a house, cars and a new way of life.
"I don't depend on anyone and I have quit agriculture. We lived in a joint family but not anymore. Only my father had the money once and we were dependent on him. The shopping for the entire house used to be done at one go but now we can shop when we like,” says Gurpreet.
The money enabled Gurpreet to live a new kind of life. He bought 34 acres, opened a shop and shifted his kids to an English medium school. Gurpreet’s daughter wants to be a teacher.
The new money has led to new ambitions and new dreams. "I don't want to work in the fields. I want to be a policeman,” says Parvinder Singh, a farmer’s son.
“I don't want to do farming anymore and I want to live in the city like others,” says Gurpreet Singh, a farmer who sold his land for a good sum of money.
For Gurpreet and other farmers who sold their land to private players, suddenly there is a deluge of choices. But not all have that luxury. The Government has over the years paid farmers a pittance and taken away their land for railway tracks, power lines, housing colonies. Gurpreet's grandfather, Jeet Singh, is one among many whose land was acquired by the government.
"They (the government) forcibly acquired my land. I was paid a pittance for land worth crores. The government later sold the same to the electricity department for seven crores per acre. I have nothing," says Jeet.
Private parties are willing to pay huge sums, but still farmers are being forced into a losing deal. They can't even choose whom to sell their own land.
"The government acquired our land forcibly. It cheated us, and split Rs 6 lakh between three brothers," says farmer Pal Singh.
This hunger for land means expanding cities and vanishing farms. It also means that neo-rich Gurpreet Singh might be driving into a new future, but there are many like his grandfather who turned refugees in their own land.
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