Karnataka   

Farmland being acquired for SEZ?

MANGALORE: “The Board of Approval for Special Economic Zones has made it mandatory that no proposal for SEZs on prime agricultural land should be cleared.”

This was announced by Union Commerce Minister Kamal Nath on September 24 this year.

But eight villages on the outskirts of Mangalore present an antithesis to this categorical directive from the Centre—the villages have been notified for the Rs. 35,000-crore Mangalore SEZ project.

The villages are Bala, Thokkur, Kalavaru, Bajpe, Permude, Thenka Yekkaru, Delanthabettu and Kuthethur. These are places where it is tough to find a speck of brown soil; travelling through these parts the colour green extends as far as the eye can see; the undulating landscape is studded with cashew, arecanut, coconut, vanilla and betel leaf plantations, paddy fields as well as spice gardens.

Authorities of the Mangalore SEZ Limited make vehement claims that the land here is infertile and unsuitable for agriculture.

Yet, Bhaskar Kulal (40), a farmer with a miniscule land holding of 20 cents (20 per cent of an acre) in Thenka Yekkaru, manages to make a profit of Rs. 5,000 out of every yield of coconut from his land.

He hopes to make up to Rs. 15,000 once his trees are fully grown.

Sumati is a 55-year-old matriarch of a Dalit family of eight. For centuries, her ancestors worked as landless labourers in the same land she now proudly owns in Thenka Yekkaru — thanks to the land reforms of the 1970s.

A small natural stream irrigates the eight acres of land owned by Sumati; paddy is cultivated on 2.5 acres while the rest is an arecanut plantation.

Her land is so fertile that she manages get a yield in excess of 120 quintals of rice every year.

“My youngest son is the first graduate in our family. I could educate him only with the help of this land. We are very comfortable now and it is all a gift of this land. I will give it up over my dead body,” she wails.

Vittala Shetty owns 4.9 acres of prime agricultural land in Permude — he has 300 coconut trees in the land and each tree gives him about 500 coconuts every year; his 350 arecanut trees left him with a profit of Rs. 50,000 this year. He gets a harvest in excess of 30 quintals of rice per crop. He has three crops every year.

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