The Rs 1,500-crore Nano car project may be running late because of land dispute at Singur, but other mega projects in similar situations are finding their way out gradually.

The Tatas themselves have overcome opposition to their six-million-tonne steel plant in Kalinganagar, Orissa, and managed to hold on by putting in place a special programme called Tata Parivar to help people affected by the project.

Its joint venture with Larsen & Toubro for setting up a port at Dhamra in Orissa, meanwhile, claims to be moving ahead despite sustained opposition from Greenpeace. The environmental group had raised concerns that the project will endanger the Olive Riddley turtles, whose breeding ground is located there.

Officials at the Dhamra Port Corporation Ltd (DPCL), the joint venture company of Tata Steel & L&T, say that all necessary clearances have been obtained and 25% work on the project has been completed as well. ?We have revised the project cost from Rs 1,700 crore to Rs 2,400 crore due to additional facilities that we intend adding,? say company sources.

Similarly, Posco and Vedanta Resources have got some relief from the Supreme Court for their projects located in Orissa. Posco, for instance, has got the go-ahead from the apex court to clear forests to produce 12 million tonne of steel a year at Paradip.

Vedanta, on the other hand, has been permitted by the Supreme Court to mine bauxite at the Niyamgiri forest to feed its alumina plant at Lanjigarh. This project costs Rs 4,000 crore and has been under the spotlight since the Niyamgiri forests are ecologically sensitive. The Supreme Court in its recent order has directed Sterlite Industries (India) Ltd, a Vedanta group company, to partner with a state agency for a permit to mine the forests.

With the forest clearance in place, Posco is working hard at putting together a relief and rehabilitation package (R&R) for the people displaced by the project. The Rs 52,000-crore project by the Korean steel maker, the largest foreign direct investment into India, has been in the news because of issues concerning acquisition of forest land for the project and rehabilitation of people living there.

Company officials claim to be working closely with the local community to thrash out a solution. ?Our attention is at expediting the project by taking the local people into confidence,? says an executive with the company on condition of anonymity.

But even as the company grapples with these issues, there are some who’ve managed to find a way out rather fast. A case in point is JSW Steel in West Bengal. The Sajjan Jindal-promoted company has implemented an elaborate model to manage stakeholders in the area of Salboni. The company is putting up a 10-million-tonne steel plant in phases on a plot of 5,000 acres at a cost of about Rs 35,000 crore.

According to Biswadip Gupta, joint managing director and chief executive officer of JSW Bengal Steel, the process of dialogue with the natives of the region began almost a year ago. ?Much of the land was vested with the government. But 500 acres was brought directly by us from the farmers,? he says.

JSW put in place a three-part package including direct compensation to farmers for land acquired, one job per family and shares equivalent to the land price given free of cost to land owners. ?We are constructing the boundary wall at this point and involving the local populace for the same. If you don?t involve the local population, they won?t get interested in the project. It has to serve their purpose as well as yours,? says Gupta.

Interestingly, corporate houses are realising the importance of this integration and involvement of local people at various levels. Traditionally, Indian industry, both public and private, has created employment opportunities for people in and around areas where it has set up shop. It has also been responsible for some amount of development in those areas.

The Tatas, for instance, built the town of Jamshedpur due to the location of its steel mill in that area. Many other companies have also undertaken similar work to build the area or region around their factories, plants or units. But as awareness levels concerning their rights grow, people affected by large projects are demanding more.

Companies today realise that dishing out token corporate social responsibility programmes is not going to help. People affected want tangible solutions. Take, for instance, the Bharat Forge-MIDC special economic zone in the Khed-Shirur area of Maharashtra. Acquisition of land for the multi-product SEZ, which totals 11,000 acres, is currently on. Phase I of the project involves 4,400 acres. A little over 3,000 acres has been acquired by MIDC. The formal approval from the government is still awaited, though.

The process, according to MIDC chief executive officer Rajiv Jalota, began almost a year and half ago at four villages out of the eight affected by the project. The company took the help of a local NGO to convince people to surrender their land for the project. “We offered a good package to them. A landowner’s expectation of compensation is dependant on the productivity of his land. If it’s very productive, he may not want to part with it. In our case, the land was mostly barren. We were offering a good price for it. That got the people excited,” he says.

But that is not all. MIDC has offered to give back about 15% of the land after development to the landowners at a comparatively lower price. Farmers are already said to be pooling in their resources to buy back their land. This way they can utilise the developed land for commercial activity, says Jalota. ?There are a lot of things that we are doing keeping in mind their needs and their socio-economic status.?

This need to focus on the precise requirements of people is what builds bonds between stakeholders and promoters, say observers. Promoters now realise that the need to build goodwill is imperative if their projects have to be a success despite the fact that land acquisition is done by the government.

?”You cannot ignore your responsibilities,? says Vikrant Gujral, vice-chairman and chief executive officer of the Navin Jindal-promoted Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL). The latter, for instance, has two steel plants coming up in the states of Orissa (Angul) and Jharkhand (Patratu). Being able to take the community into confidence around the plant site becomes important if the project has to take off successfully, he reasons.

This point is also reiterated by Arun Nanda, vice-chairman, Mahindra Lifespace Developers, the infrastructure and real estate development arm of the M&M group. ?It is important,? he says, ?to demonstrate to people that they can get economic prosperity from the project.? This is the model being followed by the company in Jaipur, for instance, where it is setting up a 3,000-acre SEZ in partnership with the state government.

Land acquisition at the Jaipur SEZ has been done under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, which is a piece of law that most state governments turn to if they wish to acquire land in the country. But care has been taken in this case to ensure that stakeholder interest is protected. ?We had the option of going in for land which was not barren. But we opted for the latter and wherever villages were located at the project site we left out those parcels of land. We, therefore, have an irregular landmass, but we were prepared for it,? says Nanda. The plan, he says, is to give back about 25% of developed land free of cost to land owners. This will be done by way of lottery,? says Nanda.

It?s important because land acquisition is the key bone of contention in a large project. One reason for it, say observers, is the Land Acquisition Act, which allows the government to acquire any piece of land in the country for a public purpose. Critics say that the flaw lies in the fact that land can be so easily acquired by the government for a particular purpose at a compensation package determined by it. Quite often, the compensation package offered by the government is lower than what the landowner expects, which tends to put the state as well as the corporate house, which is the promoter of the project, at loggerheads with the natives residing there.

In Singur, for instance, the resistance to the Nano car project is on account of 400 acres of land, which the Trinamool Congress insists was ?forcibly? taken away from farmers. It is asking for the land to be returned to the farmers immediately. The state government, meanwhile, has announced an alternative rehabilitation package for farmers. It is also talking to various stakeholders. The response of all of them will determine when will the Nano car project rev up.