Farmer’s displacement found to be the key reason for extortion in Kolkata’s mega cities, AnSI

Kolkata, August 17: At a time when syndicates operating in townships of West Bengal are making headlines, startling revelations have surfaced in a recent book published by Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI) on the socio- economic developments centering around setting up of a mega city, Newtown Rajarhat, on the eastern fringe of the city. Syndicates are a euphemism for extortionists disguised as suppliers operating in the real estate and housing sector of the State mostly controlled by the politicians, reports thehindu.com.

The book titled Land, People and Power — An Anthropological Study of Emerging Mega City of New Town, Rajarhat deals with land acquisition and how conflicting development scenario and occupational change has led to alienation of the locals and emergence of syndicates. The total project area of the mega city is about 3,075 hectares of which 2,421 hectares have been acquired over many decades and since the land holdings is small, about 1.60 lakh people received a tiny compensation. An overwhelming majority of people, who received the compensation many moons back, are now land-, job- and moneyless. The book focuses on their life and livelihood.

“An active society [that] used to live on toil in land becomes jobless and inactive. This worklessness is a great problem for them as it brings many vices in the society. Syndicates are the best examples,” the book says. The anthology, which is result of years of fieldwork and research by over half a dozen anthropologists makes a disturbing comment about “uprooting a population forcibly from their land and livelihood and pushing them to totally uncertain avenues of livelihood”. It throws light on how syndicates are leading to political tensions in the area and raises question. Those who acquired the land cannot “escape of their responsibility” the authors said.

Explaining the rise of syndicates the book states “social malformation and moral deterioration in any society has a direct bearing with the disturbances in normal situation of which a society is used to, coupled with the problem of economic deprivation and insecurity.” The publication records 31 case studies of land holders, agricultural workers and locals whose lives have undergone huge change due to coming up of the mega city.

“They mostly spoke of their deprivation, especially those who could not rehabilitate themselves in a proper way. They were largely suffering from food insecurity and were dissatisfied with the process of land acquisition,” the publication says.

Kakali Chakrabarty, one of authors of the book and Head of Office, AnSI Kolkata, said that the syndicates are a mere reflection of the social tensions and insecurity in which the locals have been forced into due to coming up of the mega city. She pointed out that all the festival and rituals associated with farming and agriculture have vanished from a society that was primarily agrarian, uprooting the farmer from both livelihood and culture.

The book also speaks of how the environmental policies were ignored while planning for the metropolis where lakhs of trees were cut down, along with the loss of aquatic bio-diversity and diminishing wetlands.