Do Bigha Zameen 2

Continuation of previous post:

Should agricultural land be used for commercial purposes ?

My answer is NO. I know, there is an alternate opinion on this which says that setting up of a manufacturing plant would result in creation of direct employment which would result in a greater GDP growth resulting finally in more purchasing power at the hand of the deprived.

All of the above are true except the last bit.

The problem is - those who are affected are seldom benefited. Unskilled labour accounts for a very small percentage of the total employment generated by a manufacturing plant and unfortunately almost all agriculturist (aha ! got a 'better-sounding' name for a farmer) in our country fall in that category.

It is also true that a developing country will have a general shift from an agriculture based economy to services based economy but the price that India will have to pay for that will have serious repercussions for India. Since, the choice has been made, we must be prepared to have a more fragmented disparate society. A society, which will be a lot less coherent than what it is now, a lot more fragile and seeped in mistrust and a strange concoction of anarchy and transient peace.

Using agricultural land would most likely render many homeless, jobless. Where would these people land up ? Most likely, they would migrate to the more populous, opportunity-filled cities causing severe strain on the existing infrastructure of the already saturating cities of India. What would they turn to for sustenance ? While it would be too pessimistic to assume that most of them would turn to anti-social means, it would not be too much of a travesty to assume that a fair percentage would. What are the implications of that ? In the context of the basic mistrust that would result from the initial land acquisition fracas and the economic disparity - it would just compound into a more unsafe India.

What in the final analysis it might mount to, is that, the very aspirations of the society that we are trying to fulfil - economic liberation, peace and prosperity for the general mass, by all such means would be destroyed by the process of 'getting there'.

Does it mean that we stop industrialization ? Definitely not. But our growth story has to be inclusive. If we think of the rural India as a burden and something that can be disposed off with - we might be in for a very very rude awakening.

Amartya Sen, in spite of being a socialist, somehow made sense when he highlighted this a lot many years earlier as a possible problem which we will have to face.