Pradhan Mantri Ki Mann Ki Baat Jhoot Baat

All India Kisan Sabha condemns the callous attitude of the Prime Minister towards the massive wave of protests against the Land Acquisition Act Amendment Bill 2015 across the country. The Prime Minister through his Mann Ki Baat sought to convey a distorted picture on the new Amendments to the Land Acquisition Act by twisting facts. The Prime Minister in effect has misused the official media to spread lies and mislead the Farmers. Land is the sole source of livelihood and dignity for the Farmers, agricultural workers, share-croppers and the other dependants on land. Its value is far beyond the pittance the Government is offering in terms of compensation. A Government which has miserably failed to provide relief to Farmers reeling under crop loss in vast areas of India is now making a callous promise that Farmers will get a “good” price for land. The Prime Minister is indulging in an exercise of lies, deceit and demagogy to ensure smooth take-over of productive land for corporate profiteering and real estate speculation. The BJP-led Government is mistaken to think that the Farmers and other dependants on land will trust the false propaganda using Government machinery.

The Government has in effect reinstated the most draconian provisions of the Colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894 and removed the necessity to seek consent of the Farmers and other dependants on land as well as done away with the Social Impact Assessment altogether. The class of Projects under Section 10 A will continue to be exempted from these requirements. There will be no safeguards for food security as even fertile multi-cropped land as well as productive rain-fed land can be acquired without any restriction. The possibilities of some rehabilitation and resettlement benefits to dependants on land other than owners of the land have been totally discarded. There is no proposal for a Land Use Policy at National as well as State Level. The Government claim of offering job to one person of a family is like uprooting a family from their main source of livelihood and giving a token job to one person of the family. It also does not address the problems of a wide cross-section of dependants on land.

The Government in the new Amendments has expanded the definition of Industrial corridors to include land up to one kilometre on either side of the designated road or railway line for such Industrial Corridors. This is in violation of our demand that for such Projects only that much which is actually required bare minimum must be considered legal. According to a calculation the Delhi Mumbai Infrastructure Corridor alone through 6 States will pass through 14,41,726 sq.km and over 50 percent of this area is agricultural land. Similarly for the Capital of Andhra Pradesh over 7000 Sq.km of fertile land is being acquired. There are innumerable such examples.

Over all this is the fact that the Government is trying to arrogate to itself the right to decide what is “good” for the people without taking their opinion or Consent or having a Social Impact Assessment. This is unacceptable. On 23rd March the Martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev nation-wide protests were held and struggles will intensify under the banner of Joint Forum Against the Land Acquisition Bill 2015.  5 Crore signatures will be collected against the Bill across the country, Conventions at State and District level, Village level Padayatras and united actions across the country have been planned. A meeting with different political parties has also been fixed for 2nd April, 2015. It has been decided to carry forward this unity of mass and class organisations against all instances of indiscriminate land acquisition and for land rights.

Sd/-
Amra Ram, President
Hannan Mollah, General Secretary