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FDI and land use

Marcus Dam

The CPI(M) in West Bengal is working to allay fears about creating a special economic zone.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) in West Bengal is engaging with its Left Front partners to clear misgivings about Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's initiatives for massive foreign investment for a special economic zone and health city. The State CPI(M) had first got the endorsement of the party's Central Committee. The misgivings are over land acquisition for the projects for which an agreement was signed between the State Government and the Salim Group of Indonesia in Jakarta last month.

Talks are being held with the Communist Party of India, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, and the All India Forward Bloc to allay fears that agricultural land will be gobbled up for the special zone and health city to come up in South and North 24 Parganas.

The CPI(M) says there is no alternative to acquiring land for setting up industries if the State's economy it to be given a new direction. However, it insists the interests of the farmers who have benefited from agrarian reforms over the years will not be compromised.

Nearly 5000 acres will be required for the Salim project. Though it will be coming up on largely fallow land about 500 acres of arable tracts — mainly areas where mono-cropping is the norm — could finally fall within its ambit. The Salim Group has assured adequate compensation to the farmers to be displaced, apart from remunerative prices for the land.

Even before apprehensions were expressed by some Left Front leaders, Mr. Bhattacharjee had made it plain, at the signing of the agreement with the Salim Group, that "We cannot destroy our food security as ours has been an agricultural economy in which farming provides employment for 65 per cent of the population."

The primary deal signed with the Salim Group envisages an economic industrial zone including a township spanning 2,500 acres in South 24 Parganas, a high-tech health city in North 24 Parganas, and a four-lane 85-km expressway linking Barasat in North 24 Parganas to Raichak in South 24 Parganas.

There have also been rumblings from certain Left Front partners over the State Government's move to amend the land ceiling Act to facilitate the setting up of new industries. This, they fear, could open up agricultural land for conversion as industrial sites.

The CPI(M) is trying to convince the smaller Left Front constituents that this will not dilute land reforms. The administration has identified 40,000 acres across West Bengal that belong to industries that have been closed and could be used as sites for new projects.

The difficulty of acquiring some of these plots with leaseholders holding on to them even after their units have turned inoperative is, of course, another matter.

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