Source: The New York Times
22 Feb 2011, JIKARPUR, India — When the state of Uttar Pradesh announced plans to confiscate farmland for a toll road to the Taj Mahal, a grimly predictable plotline ensued. Protesting farmers, angry over low compensation, blocked road work. Frustration boiled into fatal clashes with the police. Then opposition politicians arrived to pillory the state government and pose for photos with farmers.
Next, though, came something less predictable. Rather than the usual standoff, the state’s chief minister increased payments to farmers and offered them annuities for the next three decades. The new policy also gave farmers stakes in residential developments being built alongside the toll road, known as the Yamuna Expressway, and promised jobs connected to the project.
Today, the Yamuna Expressway is again under construction, and if some farmers are still not satisfied, the project is now regarded as a tentative sign of progress in India’s wrenching fights over land, one of the most serious yet seemingly intractable challenges facing the country.
Angry confrontations between farmers and business interests occur in every corner of India, yet India’s coalition national government is deadlocked on reforming land acquisition laws written in 1894 during the British Raj.
The political paralysis has only deepened public cynicism about the ability of Indian politicians to get things done on critical national issues. But the Yamuna Expressway may point to a more promising trend. Even as the national government is stalled, some of India’s poorest states, facing rising public pressure to deliver good governance and economic growth, are making progress.
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