A Village Awaits Doomsday by journalist Jaideep Hardikar attempts to decode the problems around land acquisition for development projects and the problem of displacement?of lives and livelihoods

A Village Awaits Doomsday

Jaideep Hardikar

Penguin

Rs.299

Pg 217

Mushtaq stopped running and turned to help Tabrez, who had fallen to the ground, bleeding, when he heard more shots behind him. ?I felt a numbness in my head,? he says. ?I sensed blood oozing out.? A bullet had grazed his scalp above his right ear, leaving an inch-deep gash.? Mushtaq, a six-foot tall well-built fisherman, is not a mere character conceived in a writer?s head and born at the command of his pen. This story is not an action thriller. It?s factual and about a truth far removed from our urban environs that has been staring right in the face of society, polity and paradigms of modern development in the country.

Mushtaq?s brush with bullets was on April 18, 2011, in the village of Sakhri-Natye in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, when peaceful protests against land acquisition for Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant turned into a violent confrontation with the police.

A Village Awaits Doomsday by journalist Jaideep Hardikar attempts to decode the problems around land acquisition for development projects and the problem of displacement?of lives and livelihoods.

Mushtaq and Tabrez are just two of the many real characters the author chooses to tell the story through. In a country dotted with raging land acquisition disputes and protests, it?s perhaps not really a task to find these people. And that misfortune is what this book seeks to put forth. While objectivity is not really a virtue of this book, honesty is. Hardikar keeps his routine reporting duties aside, explaining why in the introduction note in the book: ?I chose not to delve into the debate over whether or not a project was needed. That calls for another book. The issue for me was to see what happens to those who were or are being forced out for the ?greater public good??national interest. This, therefore, is their story.?

The author does well in terms of setting the tone right from the start by clearly admitting that he is looking at the problem from the view of those who are affected, people who mostly end up being a mass of nameless protesters, real people whom Hardikar chooses to call ?refugees of development?.

As this correspondent himself has covered several land acquisition disputes, including Jaitapur, one can?t help but find resonance of one?s own observations in Hardikar?s words. Through stories of villages and people struggling to grasp and claim their piece of earth and, in turn, their livelihoods, Hardikar brings to the fore a great socio-economic conundrum: stories of many Indias and Indians, separated by language, region, religion but everywhere with the same problem, similar agitations, frustratingly similar knee-jerk responses from the state marred with stories of force, violence, coercion all for the cause of development and resulting into a perpetual debate. And while the first part of the book documents stories of common people fighting for their own piece of land, the second section presents some analysis of facts, figures and the problem in all its multitudes. A problem of few vs many or many vs few? Hardikar touches upon various aspects to give a well-rounded view of the problem.

However, the analysis can?t really be called academic or possessing great insights. It?s neither loaded with charts, figures or heavy data. What we get instead is a simple interpretation. At one level, that works well for the book as it prevents it from being a highly technical academic publication. But at certain levels, it runs the risk of being over-simplistic. Perhaps that?s a fair bargain in order to at least get this glaring issue on book shelves, rather than being stacked away in some forgotten corners of libraries and thinktanks. As an attempt to bring the issue of land acquisition in all its ghastliness to the mainstream reader, A Village Awaits Doomsday does a commendable job.