DEAN H. SALDANHA | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2007
Forced Acquisition serves private investors under the guise of “public interest.” But farmers in Greater Noida are banding together across caste lines to fight back.
IT’s a kidney-rattling ride to Maycha village in Western Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Buddh Nagar. The potholed stretch of dirt betrays the dire state of development in this fertile agricultural zone, yet neither road nor settlement will witness the improvements they deserve: both sit within the catchment zone of the UP government’s proposed eight-lane DelhiAgra Expressway. When completed, this “modern marvel” will reduce travel time between the national capital and the Taj Mahal to little over two hours. Meanwhile, Maycha village will be destroyed.
By and large, villagers had made peace with this fact. When the Ram Singh government acquired Maycha and thousands of other farming villages late last year, under the controversial “Urgency Clause” of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, the affected farmers were offered “market value” compensation, ranging anywhere between 250 and 400 rupees per square meter, turning many landowners into dollar millionaires overnight. While gossip in New Delhi spoke of the uncomfortably close connections between the Ram Singh government and Wadia InfraTech Ltd—the private company behind the expressway contract—opposition on the ground was mostly muted, limited to niggles over pricing calculations. If anything, farmers grudgingly accepted that such a modern and prestigious project served the greater Indian good.
But that situation exploded during a subsequent round of acquisitions a mere three months later. A further 400 villages were notified, in some cases as far as five kilometers from the proposed expressway. Here, it was announced, a company by the name of Shunya Futures would begin construction of the state’s first “Tech City,” a vast development “modeled on Singapore,” replete with “elite” residential colonies, commercial and industrial units, schools, hospitals, nature reserves, and even a waterpark. Further investigations revealed the Shunya Futures CEO to be none other than Sunny Wadia, dilettante son of shadowy Wadia InfraTech boss Bunty Wadia.
Anger and agitation swiftly followed, with farmers balking at the relatively meager compensation provided when measured against Shunya Futures’ projected revenues. Some even suggested the expressway itself was a smokescreen to benefit Ram Singh’s cronies.
On the back foot—with strikers blockading roads—the state sought to nip the protests in the bud. But the cat was out of the bag; in response to draconian tactics, in an unprecedented show of solidarity, farmers began to organize across caste lines, with Jat and Thakur landowners joining forces with cattle-rearing Gujars and the poor, uncompensated Jatav and Dalit workers who farm their lands.
According to Manveer Singh, one of the agitation’s leaders, “Farmers are not against acquisition blindly. In the past, many good things have come. But this project does not serve the common man. We have worked the land for generations, now we have been cheated of our birthright. But we will not give up our land without a fight.”
It should be noted this is not the first time the Wadia family has displayed such insensitive ambitions. Several years ago, Sunny Wadia’s proposed vision for Delhi’s “Yamuna Redevelopment Project” was roundly condemned before being unceremoniously shelved. Whether the Wadia scion’s much vaunted “techno-utopian” dreams can be realized in the more amenable Singh-Wadia Oligarchy of Uttar Pradesh, only time will tell.
DEVELOPMENT BEAT
A Tale of Two Singhs
DEAN H. SALDANHA | FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 2007
The proposed Shunya Futures Megacity project at the Yamuna Expressway has been the subject of fierce opposition in recent months. The deadlock seemed intractable, but intervention arrived from an unlikely source.
THE ongoing mass protest against the controversial Shunya Futures Megacity project has taken a surprising turn. As the violent demonstrations showed no sign of abating, the UP chief minister’s son, Deputy Leader Dinesh Singh, stepped into the fray.
In a dramatic twist, Singh arrived in Chanyakpur village yesterday morning, with an entourage of party youth workers and sympathetic members of the media in tow. Word had been passed to the protesters in advance regarding his arrival, while notorious local criminal Shiny Batia guaranteed his safe passage. Once inside, with TV cameras rolling, Singh gave his explosive speech.
“We who are in power can no longer treat our citizens with contempt. We can no longer fool ourselves by thinking you cannot see our ill intentions. You deserve more. I have no quarrel with development, I champion it. But this? This is not development. This is looting. If land is to be acquired, it must be done fairly. The people must be compensated, not only monetarily, but with jobs, with dignity, with a future. Not a Shunya future, a real future, a people’s future. Do you know what Shunya means? Nothing. It means emptiness. The poisonous and empty dreams of Bunty Wadia. They cannot go on. I stand here in solidarity with the men who toil this land and who are being cast aside. I send a clear message to my party, and to my father. Do not forget where you came from. Do not forget the people you serve, who gave you power. They can also take it away.”
GREATER NOIDA
ELI
Friday, June 8, 2007, 3:18 p.m.
“That motherfucker.”
Eli looks at Sunny’s juddering face in the rear mirror, grapples with the wide wheel of the Bolero, driving his master through the wasteland of fallow fields and derelict machinery that is now his kingdom.
Weeds sprouting.
Untended shrines.
Mangy dogs loitering beneath trees.
The black-shaded expression on his face.
His complexion like a coffin opened.
“He went over the line. He went over the fucking line. Who the fuck does he think he is?”
And Eli says, “Boss. Boss! Notice anything different about me?”
Sunny lights a cigarette.
His hands are trembling.
He takes a hip flask from his trouser pocket, fixes himself with a slug of vodka. “You shaved your pubic hair.”
“No. Very funny. This I do last week.”
Sunny almost laughs, takes another hit of vodka, looks out over the land. Calms a little. “What is it?” he says. “What’s different about you?”
“I give you small clue. You see Terminator 2?”
“What?”
“T2: Judgment Day. Have you seen?”
“Am I Osama bin Laden? Living in a fucking cave? Of course I’ve seen it.”
“So then?” Eli grins and touches his hand to his shades. “Look! See! I got this morning. Persol Ratti 58230. Count them, five-eight-two-three-zero. Very rare. Hard to find. Exactly same as in movie.”
Silence. Then . . .
“What movie?”
Eli is about to erupt in exasperation.
But he catches himself.
“Ahhh, very funny boss. What movie?”