In the second such incident in two months, firing by police and paramilitary has killed at least 4 people and severely injured 72 who were agitating against land grab by the NTPC at Badkagaon in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. The four killed include three young students Pawan Kumar (16), Abhishek Rai (18), Ranjan Ravidas (18) and a tailor Mohammad Mehtab Alam (29). In late August, Jharkhand police fired on anti-land-grab protestors who had assembled for a meeting with the management of the Inland Power Limited (IPL) at Gola in Ramgarh, Jharkhand, killing two persons, Dashrath Mahto and Premchand Nayak. 47 rounds were fired without warning at 300 protestors at Gola – proving that the force used was deliberately deadly and not merely aimed at controlling or dispersing a protesting crowd.
The BJP’s Jharkhand Government headed by Chief Minister Raghubar Das has shamelessly defended the police firing that has claimed 4 young lives. The police and administration are blaming the villagers and claiming that the innocents killed were ‘outsiders.’ And the Modi Government itself has stepped in to defend the killing, with Union Minister Jayant Sinha, who is also the Hazaribagh MP, blaming the protesting villagers for ‘provoking’ the firing.
Outright police and CRPF terror is being unleashed after the firing on the villages of Chipa Khurd, Dadhi Kala and Kanki Dadhi in Hazaribagh – villages that have been protesting land acquisition for mining projects for the past decade.
Ever since Jharkhand was formed, its rulers have been committed to grabbing land to honour corporate MOUs as well as government projects – spilling the blood of Jharkhand’s villagers who resisted the land grab and asserted their rights over land, forests and water. Jharkhand’s first CM Babulal Marandi – then in the BJP and now founder of the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha – presided over the Tapkara police firing on adivasi protestors against land grab. The Congress-JMM Government also has fired on the anti-NTPC protestors at Hazaribagh itself in 2013, killing one person. The Hazaribagh agitation against NTPC faced another firing that injured several people in 2015.
Protests began when NTPC began acquiring 8,000 acres across 28 villages for mining in 2006, paying compensation of a mere Rs 2 lakh per acre. The compensation was increased to Rs 20 lakh an acre but that amount also is far below the standards set by the Land Acquisition Act 2013. Moreover, the consent of the village Gram Sabhas has not been obtained.
The land that the NTPC is seeking to turn into a coal block is some of the most fertile in Jharkhand. Land losers are mostly small farmers, who have been holding ‘coal satyagrahas’ in protest for the past two years, digging coal by hand and selling directly to traders, paying a royalty to the Gram Sabhas. In the past few months, the protesting farmers had been on a ‘kafan satyagraha’ (shroud satyagraha) blocking the mining being conducted on forcibly acquired land.
The recent Singur verdict of the Supreme Court, vindicating the protests against land grab, ought to serve as a warning to the Jharkhand Government and the Modi Government that are unleashing brutal repression on farmers in order to grab fertile agricultural land without the consent of farmers. Villagers stand to lose not only land but livelihood, and diversion of fertile agricultural land should be avoided because this endangers the food security of the country.
Bulldozing democratic processes of Gram Sabhas and grabbing land at gunpoint cannot be the model of ‘development’ in a democratic country. Union Minister Jayant Sinha has accused the protesting villagers of pursuing ‘vinash’ (destruction) instead of ‘vikas’ (development). In fact, it is his Government at the Centre and his party’s Government in Jharkhand which is unleashing destruction in the name of development. The war-mongering at the borders continues even as the Governments wage war against India’s own farmers.
