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Paying a heavy price for development

Bangalore Bureau

Byatarayanapura farmers yet to get compensation for notified land

The landowners are not happy with the compensation rate
Many of them are working as domestic help and labourers

— Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.

No work: Most of the farmers in Jakkur, for whom farming was the only source of income, are now struggling to earn a livelihood.

BANGALORE: It is a heart-wrenching story of riches to rags and, not surprisingly, one that has become a major poll issue in Byatarayanapura Assembly constituency.

Hundreds of farmers who owned agricultural land worth anything between Rs. 3 crore and Rs. 30 crore in Jakkur and 15 neighbouring villages of Byatarayanapura have, in the past four years, become daily wage workers, with many now working as domestic help and labourers.

Call it the darker side of Bangalore’s fast development, these people feel that they have become victims of this very process of which farmland acquisition is an important dimension.

Notification

The Bangalore Development Authority had notified for acquisition over 2,750 acres of farmland in 2004 for developing the Arkavathi Layout.

The landowners are not happy with the proposed compensation rate of about Rs 4 lakh an acre.

They say that the actual market price even at the time of acquisition was about Rs 2.5 crore to Rs. 3 crore an acre; that now rules at Rs. 6 crore.

Farmers demand that the Government should fix the compensation value at 50 per cent of the market value at the very least.

As the issue is mired in litigation, they are yet to get compensation even four years after their land was notified for acquisition.

The landowners now have neither land nor compensation money. As farming was their only source of income, they are now struggling to earn a livelihood. Setting their dignity aside, they have started sending their wives, daughters and daughters-in-law to work as domestic help in the posh apartments that have come up in their localities. Their sons work as labourers and domestic help.

Shattered

Sharadamma (65) has lost the right over her five acres, which would have fetched about Rs. 30 crore now. Sharadamma, who once lived a dignified life, shows her calloused hands. “See, I just finished washing the utensils in a house in that apartment block,” she says, pointing to a high-rise complex. “Years ago, I used to feed several guests in our house. Now, forget the guests, I do not know where the next meal will come from for my family.” Her family used to grow flowers, vegetables and fruit, besides managing the coconut plantation, which used to fetch a decent sum.

Sixty-year-old Channappa, whose two and a half acres of land was notified, sends his daughters Suma and Manjamma to the nearby apartments to work as domestic help. Their family depends upon their wages of Rs. 1,500 each.

Nagaraj, once the owner of two and a half acres of land, says, “I was an enterprising farmer who did not waste even an inch of land. Now I do not have any work. So I sit on the village ‘ashwatha katte’ (stone platform) hoping that I will be invited for some family functions so that we will get some good food. Earlier, I used to console myself by crying. But, now my eyes have dried up.”

The condition of Nanje Gowda, who used to earn well by practising floriculture on half an acre of land, is even worse. Mr. Gowda, who underwent a hernia operation at a cost of Rs. 70,000, says the people of his village pooled in money for his operation. “My son is a meritorious student who has secured 75 per cent marks in SSLC. But I have removed him from school and put him to work as a domestic help in the apartment. Otherwise, we have to die of hunger,” he says.

Floriculture

Mr. Gowda says Jakkur village used to earn several crores of rupees every year from floriculture alone. But now, the booming floriculture economy is history. He says that the collapse of the village economy has increased the crime rate among jobless youth.

The Janata Dal (Secular) has already made this a poll issue with party candidate and former MP C. Narayanaswamy blaming the Congress for the lapses and assuring the people of trying to get a better deal.

(With inputs from B. S. Satish Kumar, Divya Gandhi and Swathi Shivanand)

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