With a minuscule 1% fallow land available in the state, the West Bengal government is trying to identify unutilised land for industry in the face of a concerted campaign by the opposition against using agricultural land for industry. Yet, in a state which is trying to woo back industry ? and managed to a certain extent to do just that in the past three years ? it?s becoming increasingly difficult to acquire land.
Farmland in West Bengal constitutes 62% of the total land, while fallow land is only 1% and forest land comprises 13%. The urban and industrial sectors constitute 24% of the total land. Fallow and unculturable land in the state is classified into four categories ? fallow, culturable wasteland, permanent pasture and other grazing land, barren and unculturable. These are mainly located in districts such as Birbhum, Bankura, West Midnapore, Darjeeling and coal mining blocks of Bardhaman.
Of these, while Birbhum, Bankura and parts of West Midnapore are backward and Naxal-stricken ? Lalgarh where the recent Maoist flareup happened is in West Midnapore ? Darjeeling is in the grip of a fierce agitation over Gorkhaland. Following land reforms and better farming practices, the state is now able to produce 1.47 crore tonnes of rice, much higher than its domestic requirement of 1.37 crore tonnes. It had in fact set a target of producing 1.55 crore tonnes rice in 2009-10.
This has prompted the state to think of acquiring farm land for industrialisation in West Bengal. In a recent article published in CPM organ People?s Democracy, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said: ?The rise in agricultural production has led to a situation in which the peasants do not get the remunerative prices? The number of landless people has started increasing… Under the circumstances, the farmland, in some measure, has to be utilised for industrialisation.?
This has drawn flak from the opposition. Trinamool supremo and Union minister of Railways Mamata Banerjee said: ?Many small and medium factories are closed in West Bengal for years. The state government should first encourage setting up industry on the land belonging to the closed factories,? she said.
In fact, that process appears to have started, with the state government announcing that it is looking at opening up land locked in closed factories for industry. There are other concerns too. In 1993, a committee appointed by the state government comprising, Nirmal Mukherjee, former governor of Punjab, and Debabrata Bandyopadhyay, former Land Reforms Commissioner of the state, cautioned against continuing with further fragmentation of agricultural land as was being done under land reforms.
Instead, the committee proposed consolidation of the land. With the input cost for farming rising, less than a bigha farm lands are becoming economically unviable in terms of credit requirement, the committee said.
In fact, the state is far behind in getting its agricultural credit requirement from the banks. It is likely to receive a credit of Rs 6,358 crore in 2009-10 from the banks for agriculture and allied activities against a minimum requirement of Rs 10,000 crore as found by the expert committee (Datey Committee) on banking structure in India.
State Agriculture Minister Naren De brushed aside the concerns, saying fragmentation of land due to land reforms has not been a problem so far. ?With micro finance institutions playing a big role, credit to farmers is not a problem in the state,? he said. In power for over three decades, the Left front -led government has had the last word in every issue, but for how long?