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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | A very special case by Partha Chatterjee

A very special case by Partha Chatterjee

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published Published on Jun 19, 2011   modified Modified on Jun 19, 2011

I must begin with two disclaimers. The Singur land development and rehabilitation bill, 2011 was moved in the West Bengal legislative assembly last Tuesday by the industries minister with whom I happen to share a name. However, I believe he does not share any of the opinions or sentiments expressed below. Second, I was a persistent critic of the Left Front government when it was in power and what I say here are not the views being expressed by the Opposition in or out of the assembly. I am looking at the new piece of legislation principally as a historian of Bengal’s land system.

The Singur bill is a special legislation of a very exceptional kind. It deals not with the land acquisition laws as such but only with a particular case of acquisition of 997 acres of land in a specific place. It deals not with all landowners whose lands were acquired in that particular case but only with a small set of “unwilling owners”. It annuls the lease agreement with Tata Motors and transfers the land back into the possession of the government because the public purpose for which the land was acquired, namely, the setting up of a factory, had “totally failed”, but it is not meant to apply to numerous other such cases where land acquired by the government has been lying unutilized for decades. Most crucially, the bill claims that there are agitations “endangering safety and security in the area which unless properly handled urgently, serious law and order problems are likely to develop”. In short, the Singur bill is an emergency legislation for an exceptional case.

It is not unprecedented for a legislature to enact an exception to the law. The special provisions of reservation for Scheduled Castes and Tribes in government employment and educational institutions, for instance, are exceptions to the fundamental right of equality of citizens, but the exceptions are part of the Constitution (even though their validity has to be renewed from time to time, marking once more their exceptional character). The legislation protecting the rights of bargadars enacted in West Bengal soon after the Left Front government first came to power laid down exceptions to the legal rights of landowners. Examples of declaring the exception through administrative directives, without tampering with the body of the law, are legion. Government authorities will allow squatters to remain in their illegal settlements on public and private lands or vendors to set up stalls on city pavements — often for entirely justified reasons — by identifying exceptional circumstances that require the suspension of the law in that particular case, without enacting a new law that would affect the rights of legal owners and licensed shops and establishments. Looming behind all of these cases of constitutional, legal or administrative exceptionalism, we may notice the presence of a groundswell of political opinion, expressed through agitations and mobilizations, clamouring for what is believed to be a justified exception. Is the Singur bill an exceptional law of this kind?

I am afraid not. There is general agreement now that the manner in which the land was acquired in Singur was heavy-handed, unilateral and non-consensual. Even the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leaders have conceded as much, even though they are still reluctant to admit that there was intimidation, physical assault and even the killing of those opposed to the acquisition. Leaving aside the demerits of the Land Acquisition Act itself, about which a lot can be said, there is little doubt that in the case of Singur the law was applied in a way that was tyrannical. What does the new bill do to redress this? Unlike the legislation on bargadar rights in 1979, for instance, this bill does not specify a class of citizens which is being given the special protection or benefit of the law. Rather, it allows the government to “return equivalent quantum of land to unwilling farmers who have not accepted the compensation” for the land taken from them. These “unwilling farmers” are actually named individually, along with the size of the plot acquired, in a schedule attached to the bill. In other words, the entire piece of legislation is designed to reward around 2,800 listed individuals who are members of a few hundred families, mostly from the neighbourhood of Singur.

What is wrong with this? Several things. If the Singur acquisition was unfair and unacceptable, then surely every landowner whose land was taken away was a victim, because the compensation package that was offered applied equally to all. The land acquisition law does not require that a landowner must be willing to part with her land. Whether willing or not, everyone’s land was physically acquired in exchange for the offer of compensation, as prescribed by the law. The Singur bill will now enable the government to return an equivalent amount of land only to those who did not pick up their compensation cheques. Clearly, this discriminates between two classes of victims. Already we hear farmers in Singur complaining that they had been coerced by CPI(M) activists to accept their cheques and not join the agitation. In view of numerous reports of the degree of terrorization in the area at the time, there is ample reason to believe that some of these complaints are true. In any case, how can the law presume to judge, without the benefit of a judicial procedure, the willingness or otherwise of the victims of an oppressive action of a previous government? It is the present government which is arbitrarily making that judgment on behalf of the law.

In fact, the new government may be said to be rewarding those who resisted the law at Singur and, by comparison, penalizing those who gave in because they did not have the fortitude or resources to fight. The Land Acquisition Act itself stands intact, ready to be used by this and future governments. Not only that, the government cannot avoid the charge of enacting a special law to reward a tiny, albeit rather special, group of its own partisan supporters. Given the incredibly narrow focus of this exceptional piece of legislation, this conclusion is a compelling one.

There are other elements of exceptionalism in the Singur bill that concern the lease agreement with Tata Motors and its rights and culpability. I am sure there are many managerial and legal luminaries who will sort out this friendly tussle between industry and government. I have nothing to say on that matter. There is also the question of sharecroppers and labourers who have lost their livelihood. Since they are people without any title to the land, their interests are notoriously difficult to protect through land laws. It is not surprising that they are not mentioned in the Singur bill.

To be fair, there are good political grounds for the new government’s concern to do something in Singur. That was the agitation that propelled Mamata Banerjee on a trajectory that finally led to what was once almost unthinkable — the ouster of the CPI(M) from power in West Bengal. She is now riding the crest of a wave of resentment against the former regime. She embodies charismatic power of a kind never seen before in West Bengal’s politics. She feels compelled to respond to the deep frustration of a people fed up with a government that is so bound by rules and procedures that instead of delivering services all it does is encourage the bully and shelter the corrupt. Certain of her charismatic power, she does not mind being arbitrary in order to do good. There is something utterly disarming about a chief minister who can tell a legislative assembly that she does not understand the law.

It has been said that the law can be used to perpetuate tyranny, just as arbitrary power can be used for the good. The difficulty is that the desire to produce immediate results by legislating in an arbitrary manner can subvert the very foundations of a legal system by making it unpredictable and incoherent. Regardless of protestations to the contrary, the Singur law will now become the source of a spate of litigation seeking exemptions from or redress for the application of the Land Acquisition Act, whether in the past or the future. More importantly, just as the Left Front, guided by the belief that it was acting for the future welfare of the state, has now paid the price for its arbitrary use of power, so might the present government come to regret its current penchant for arbitrary action to achieve the good. And those radicals who are now applauding the Singur bill as an act of historic justice would do well to remember that the next time the good doctor Binayak Sen has to run to the Supreme Court, he will be seeking the protection of the law against the arbitrary powers of a vindictive state government. The good of the people is a laudable thing, but it is doubtful that there are easy shortcuts to that goal.

The writer is Honorary Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

The Telegraph, 19 June, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110619/jsp/opinion/story_14121137.jsp

Tagged with: Land Acquisition



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