Creating Hurdles For Industrial Progress Will Cost Telangana Dearly In The Long Run

West Bengal’s Singur episode came to my mind when Vikarabad District Collector and other officials were recently assaulted at Lagcherla village in Dudyal Mandal in Telangana with regard to land acquisition for the pharmaceutical industry. Telangana did not witness such violent protests in the recent past. The Singur agitation took a huge toll on West Bengal when it came to attracting investments. West Bengal is still struggling to shake off its anti-industrialisation image post the Tata pullout in 2008

Protests against land acquisitions by the governments are not new to the country. This is more so when it comes to acquiring land for industrial use.

For farmers and others, land provides economic stability. For many of them, it’s their main source of livelihood. Further, there is an emotional attachment to land in the country. So, they will not part ways with land so easily.

That’s the reason why farmers start protesting whenever any government proposes to take away their land.

The Singur agitation in West Bengal is a classic example of this friction between farmers and the government. In 2006, the Left Front, led by Communist Party of India (Marxist), came to power in West Bengal for the seventh consecutive time and its Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee announced in his first press conference that Tata Motors would set up its Nano car plant in Singur in Hooghly district. Over the next two years, this area witnessed continuous protests led by Mamata Banerjee, the then Opposition leader, against the car plant. This forced Tata Motors to shift its plant in October 2008 to Gujarat.

Interestingly, this agitation played a key role in Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress coming to power in West Bengal three years later in 2011. But it took a heavy toll on the State when it came to attracting investments. The scars are so heavy that West Bengal continues to struggle to shake off its anti-industrialisation tag post the Tata pullout.

The Singur episode came to my mind when Vikarabad District Collector and other officials were recently assaulted at Lagcherla village in Dudyal Mandal in Telangana with regard to a proposed land acquisition for a pharmaceutical unit. Protestors pelted stones and attempted to damage vehicles when the official team went there to hold a public hearing for the land acquisition.

Video recordings revealed that the officials, including a deputy collector, were chased out of the village. It was a rather unusual development considering that Telangana did not witness such violent protests in the recent past.

Ironically, the area for the proposed pharma project falls under Kodangal assembly constituency, which is represented by Chief Minister Anumula Revanth Reddy. This makes such violent protests more undesirable for the State’s interests in attracting investments.

But here, I would like to highlight Sri City, which paints a contrasting picture, one that generates positive vibes about industrial development. Incidentally, I am writing this column at Sri City, which I have visited after a gap of more than 10 years.

The transformation that Sri City has gone through in the last decade is tremendous, to say the least. This integrated business city, which is spread across 7,500 acres, is now home to 220 companies that employ nearly 62,000 people, over 75 per cent of them hailing from Andhra Pradesh.

The man behind the success of Sri City is the ever smiling Ravindra Sannareddy, who, literally, built it from scratch in the backward region of Andhra Pradesh bordering Tamil Nadu. He is a true-blue son of the soil and his brainchild is still a work in progress.

But let me save Sri City’s unparalleled success story for another day.

However, the key point I want to make here is that there are 14 villages spread across the land that has been acquired for the integrated business city. Sri City has been developed without destroying a single home and without displacing a single individual!

All the villages, most of the greenery, tanks and water bodies are now an integral part of Sri City, which comprises an export-oriented, highly-successful Special Economic Zone (SEZ), Domestic Tariff Zone, Free Trade Warehousing Zone and an Electronics Manufacturing Zone (EMC). More than 95 per cent of employable local people are given jobs in the business city which has fuelled reverse migration. If this is not an inclusive development then what it is?

It’s high time all other States take cue and adopt this development model while acquiring land for industrial and commercial development. It eliminates prospects of any sort of adverse impact, especially protests by locals.

In this backdrop, what has happened in Lagcherla is unacceptable. Farmers and other landowners have every right to oppose and protest the land acquisition for an industrial use. But attacking senior government officials is not a good sign.

Going by the sequence of events, it seemed to have been done in an organised way and fingers are being pointed at Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), whose working president is Kalvakuntla Taraka Ram Rao (KTR). He is now the most vocal face of BRS, which under the leadership of his father Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao, ruled Telangana for nearly 10 years till a year ago.

KTR was the minister for Industries and IT for more than five years. He personally knows how difficult it is to acquire land for industrial use and how challenging it is to attract investments these days. He is also aware that industrial growth is the key for rapid development. He has every right to politically oppose the Congress government in Telangana.

As the vocal face of the main Opposition party in the State’s Assembly, he can criticise the government. But creating hurdles for industrial development is not good for him and the State. Losing polls and power is always a bitter experience.

But as I wrote in many of my earlier columns, politics in India is a losers’ game. It’s those who are in power, who lose elections. So, BRS lost power because of the follies its leadership made. Therefore, there is no point in turning impatient so early, thereby creating hurdles for Telangana’s progress. If the violent agitation continues in Vikarabad district, it will have a debilitating impact on the State’s image as an investment destination as happened in West Bengal due to the Singur agitation.

However, BRS is unlikely to make any political gains from this agitation as unlike Trinamool Congress, which rode to power for the first time after Singur agitation, the pink party has already enjoyed power twice over and acquired land many times. Hope Telangana’s main opposition leadership is listening! On its part, the current Telangana government should emulate the development model adopted by Sri City while acquiring land for industrial use. That will make its attempt to achieve the State’s industrial progress easier.