The following is an excerpt from the fifth chapter of ‘After Messiah: What Comes When a Great Leader Goes’ by Aakar Patel, published by Penguin.
https://thewire.in/rights/aakar-patel-after-messiah-book-land-law-seize
The pattern of the case that had been filed against them was from a familiar playbook that had been used by the government for decades. At the core of the issue was land, which was owned and inhabited by indigenous communities and required by large companies—required to build giant plants and the attendant mines to feed them ore. Still more land was then required to store—dump, really—the toxic waste products of the industrial process.
The state had laws under which it could arbitrarily seize private property, but this capture was couched as being fair and in the interest of all. The first step of the acquisition was that those who owned the fields and mountains and streams were informed through gazettes in government offices that their property was in the process of being taken over.
A simultaneous process of taking over some land and then pressuring the rest to give more would begin. In time, the owners of adjoining lands would have less incentive to resist because the borders of their property would be encroached on—not just physically but also through the noise and the emissions and the waste, the poisoned waters and the ash settling on their fields.
Their ability to negotiate the terms of their fate, and that of their children and of their ancestral inheritance, began to diminish from the moment someone somewhere circled their property on a map. The state here was an opponent, even an adversary, when it felt that its interests clashed with those of the communities. The agents of the state, the lower bureaucracy, the police, the district magistrates, had no incentive to protect the rights of the communities and of individuals. They had their orders and targets to achieve, and it was the other side, the corporate firms and their owners, that had leverage over them, far more than the protesting individuals who were seen merely as obstacles.
The mineral wealth lay not under the cities but in the deep heart of the country. The things that went on and concerned the people of these parts did not occupy the minds of those in the cities. They did not have to vacate their flats so that the ground below could be dug up for coal or bauxite. They often had the power to veto what could and could not happen outside their homes.
by Aakar Patel
25/09/2023