My letter to Baijayanta Panda MP...on reading his article.

Thanks for the very persuasive and interesting article. Two points you have made with which I very much agree are:
1. Your suggestion of: "dictating a major revamp of land acquisition policies. Because it will be hard to get farmers in lush, irrigated lands ..,, to be evicted even if the government persists with the line that theirs is sub-optimal "single crop" farmland. ,,, without first having a concrete and lucrative alternative in hand, including retraining and jobs, not just cash compensation."
2. Not using police.. or using police with patience.

It is clear that Nabin babu has learnt from his earlier traumatic experiences in Kashipur and Lanjigarh.

However you have not touched two points which needed to be mentioned to make it more factual and useful.

1. BJD is no cadre based party, so Navin babu could have only used lumpen because they don't have any cadres - the luxury that WB, CM had, and has misused.

2. The fact that land records are out dated and need to be updated before area is targeted for acquisition, more in detail, rather than indirectly in the last paragraph. Technology use to update land records is very necessary.

Additionally:
The contradiction that CPM is opposing the very SEZs they are implementing in West Bengal, and using of the same age old method - while using different rhetoric. Consequently their natural allies are up in arms and finally because they have used same decrepit way of dealing with dissent. A sad let down for the now active and vociferous(??) civil society of India. I personally thought CPM would do it differently and set a gold standard for R& R. They initially showed signs of meeting this expectation, when they accepted the right to compensation, of share croppers in addition to the land title holders.

Lastly, and though it is a digression from the issue you have handled so nicely, I am compelled to mention some questions that need to be addressed by the decision making authorities. A a lot more transparency of terms in MOU and the contracts would be highly desirable. Some unanswered questions going around are:

1. Why should Orissa give away Iron Ore at $0.57 cents while world price is $84.10 and rising? I have calculated that for each 1 million tonne plant give away is $350 million per year only for Iron Ore. You add subsidy of free water, coal, infrastructure etc and the numbers get astronomical.
2. And the icing on the top of cake is the SEZ status. Why should you give it for a steel plant?
3. Why should the state give free land, when they are coming to Orissa because other sources have started charging market price?
4. Why TATA land in Gopalpur is not being taken back, as an example to other potential defaulters?
5. Why can't they form a cartel like the OPEC between the 3 state Governments - Jharkhand, 36 Garh and Orissa to get market price and more for iron Ore.
6. Why there are no escalation clauses in the MOUs or are there? International market price has gone up from $34 to $84 in last 4 years.
7. Why and how the externals are going to be taken care of?
8. Why with India(Orissa)'s high density of population is not being considered when companies are asking for land or being allotted land? Why can't the company town idea let go? And the residential high rises left to the local developers? Why incoming companies are not asked to grow vertically rather than creating more Tatanagars or Rourkelas, for which there is no land? After all India has 14 times more land to population ratio as United states.
9. Additionally, I really don't understand why the modern plants which need very few men and operators to operate, are demanding more land not less? For example I could never understand why TATAs demanded and got 3 times more land, than Maruti Udyog producing 3 times more vehicles. That too 30 years later? Are they into profiteering in land - knowing they will get it free?
10. Why is a criminal claim of 10 thousand acres of for an University, even being discussed? Even at 5 lakhs per acre it is upfront give away of 500 crores by GOO which is not flush in money anyway? Can't they build vertically rather than horizontally?

Thanking you again for excellent articulation of Govt of Orissa's and your parties' stand, and making some very good points. I like to again inform you that I highly appreciate your idea of "Pre-poning"/ upfronting the R & R issues rather than "Postponing" them, to the end. That way the embarrassment of RSP's land acquisition being not complete after 50 years wont be there.