The settlers were from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. They grew vegetables, flowers, wheat and rice on the land rented from people who once held land lease given by the irrigation department. Pappu of Kaimur district in Bihar had rented about 6 ha at Nayabaans close to the Okhla Bird Park and DND flyway for Rs 6,000 per hectare for a year. While he farmed, his younger siblings studied in a makeshift school. He lost his month-old vegetable crop and has nowhere to go.

“They just came in the evening and trampled all over the vegetables and flooded the fields. Had they at least given us a notice we would not have sown crops. I had invested Rs 15,000-20,000 on wheat.”

said Sauraj Singh Kashyap of Hapur in Uttar Pradesh. H C Malhotra, a member of literacy organization Gyan Jyoti Vidyalaya, which set up the makeshift school in the area, said “These people have not made permanent structures on the riverbed. They were merely making a living out of agriculture.”

The irrigation department said it had cancelled all leases in 1999 but people continued to possess the land. “About seven people had pattas over this 25 ha. They filed cases in court and the hearing is on,” said a department official. “This was not a demolition exercise, so a court order was not needed. We just removed people who had encroached upon the department’s land,” added the official.

Sohanpal of Dallupura village in Noida does not agree.

“The land was given to us in 1948 when the British left, and ever since my family has been cultivating it. My case is being heard in the sub divisional magistrate’s court in Dadri,”

he said.

What development?

The Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department got some land in the National Capital Territory along the Yamuna Pushta road in 1956 for its maintenance. It is now transferring 362 ha of it in Delhi and 32.5 ha in Noida to the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority, also called Noida authority. The places where the land is being transferred are Madanpur Khadar, Sarita Vihar, Jamia Nagar and patches between Chilla Regulator and the Shahdara railway bridge. About 55.5 ha in Madanpur Khadar and 128 ha in Sarita Vihar and Jamia Nagar have been transferred.

The Noida authority said the land is being transferred for development but refused to specify the kind of development.

“The irrigation department is unable to do any development there because it does not come under its purview. We will take up development in accordance with the Masterplan of Delhi 2021. I cannot comment on the land in Noida,”

said Rajpal Kaushik, senior town planner of the authority.

Kaushik also said the Noida authority would request the Delhi Development Authority for change of land use, deepening people’s suspicion that it plans commercial development on the floodplain. Under the Delhi master plan most land near the Yamuna is for greenery and recreation.

An official of the irrigation department said the Noida authority would develop a green belt on the land. “Why can’t the department do so? By next year, I am sure there will be construction near the Okhla Bird Park,” said Anand Arya, a bird watcher who regularly visits the park.

This will make it difficult for industry to set up projects, CII said. Assembling land from numerous owners is not a task which the corporate sector can undertake effectively. The government should retain its role of acquiring land for industrial development, as industrialization is key to job creation, CII said.

It further said that the clause ‘public purpose’ should empower the state to acquire land not only for infrastructure or defence purposes but also for developing land for economic activity.

CII criticized another provision in the bill that requires the acquirer to share the capital gains with the original owners or their heirs whenever the acquired land is sold. It is an impossibly onerous task for the private sector, the CII said. It suggested setting up state land bank corporations, that would acquire non-cultivable land, develop them and pass them on to the private sector.

The Ministry of Rural Development refused to comment on CII’s press statement saying that a group of ministers is vetting the bill. “We will table the bill only after the ministers submit their report,” said Rita Sinha, secretary (Department of Land Resources), Ministry of Rural Development.

In October 2008, a Parliamentary Standing committee had criticized certain clauses in the bill. In its report, the committee said the clause relating to states acquiring 30 per cent of a project land is vague and can be misused.

“The previous definition (which broadly says that the government will acquire land for projects that benefit the public) was much better and should be retained,”

the report said.

Land rights activists, however, hail the bill and say it offers a good chance to farmers for negotiating the price of their land with the industry.

“Industry’s reaction was bound to come as it cannot forcibly acquire land like the government does,” said S Parasuraman, director of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. According to Parasuraman, the entire process of land selling should be governed by market forces. “Otherwise, the process will get complicated as the price difference between acquisition prices paid by private buyers and the government will be huge. And nobody would want to give land to the government at low prices,” he said.

With less time left for the Parliament session, it seems unlikely that the bill will get through, said a CII official. And this will give industry a chance to push its agenda.

The trade talks at the World Trade Organization headquarters in Geneva collapsed in the last week of July. The Union minister for Commerce, Kamal Nath, said India would not accede to the demands of developed countries at the cost of Indian farmers. Nath seems to have become a hero in many quarters in the country and in other developing countries—and a villain amongst developed countries for allegedly scuttling free trade negotiations. But in reality, he has virtually complied with all conditions of the wto agriculture text, including almost zero farm subsidy reduction by developed countries. And the talks actually collapsed because the us did not want to make any commitment to cut massive subsidies to cotton growers.

India had three main demands before the commencement of the meet. It wanted reduction in subsidies to farmers in developed countries and increase in the number of special products—items on which developing countries have flexibility to raise import tariff because these items are important for food, livelihood security and rural development. India also wanted a simplified Special Safeguard Mechanism (ssm) that would allow developing countries to raise tariffs to protect farmers from surging imports. But at Geneva, India did not raise the first two issues at all. The issue of ssm was stonewalled by the us.

The real spoilsport

On the eighth day of the ministerial, the European Union brokered a proposal on ssms. The proposal said that developing countries could hike import duties/ tariffs to any level, if they could prove, in 60 days, that glut in imports or fall in prices of imported goods is inimical to domestic livelihoods, food security and rural development. The draft circulated before the meet talked of limits on hikes in import duties.

Six of the G-7 countries including China and India agreed to the proposal but the us blocked it. US trade representative Susan Schwab said ssms in the present form “were very protective for developing countries and could not be accepted”.

“This was an excuse because if all countries had agreed to the us proposal, the next issue on the agenda would have been cotton subsidies which the us wanted to evade”

said Bhaskar Goswami of the Delhi-based think tank Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security.

“In 2007, the us doles out three billion dollars as cotton subsidy. This came down to one billion in 2008 because 38 per cent of land under cotton had been diverted to corn and other bio-fuel crops. At Geneva, the us would have been asked to cut down the subsidy by 70 per cent and that would have created trouble in an election year,” Goswami explained.

The us has already lost a wto dispute on cotton subsidies. “In 2003, it was criticized for protecting its 20,000 cotton growers impoverishing millions of cotton growers in the four African countries—Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad. The impact has been also borne by Indian cotton farmers who were priced out and committed suicide under pressure of heavy loans,” said Devinder Sharma who is also affiliated with the same think tank.

Withdraw

Meanwhile, farm movements in India are demanding complete exclusion of agriculture from WTO talks.

“Developed countries want to protect their agriculture though heavy subsidies and high tariff barriers and at the same time want access for their products in the developing countries. There can be no agreement unless the developed world drastically changes its attitude. So we believe that wto has become ineffective and needs to be wind up,”

said Krishan Bir Chaudhary, the president of the nationwide farmers’ organization Bharat Krishak Samaj.

“Free market will only lead to more suicides. We have to be completely self-reliant in agriculture and food and not accede to the will of multi-national companies,” said Chukki Nanjunda swamy of another farmers’ organization Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, a farm organization.

The fact that wto director general Pascal Lamy has cut short his autumn break and is visiting India on August 10-12 and the us soon after shows how desperate he is to conclude the Doha Development Round which began in 2001. The talks might restart in September.

Farmers’ associations all over India were holding protests demanding exclusion of agriculture as an agenda in the World Trade Organization (wto) talks, even as the organization’s mini-ministerial debated ways to secure “meaningful market access in agriculture, manufacturing and services”. At the time this magazine went to press, farmers’ groups were apprehensive that the Union minister for commerce might sign a deal at this meet in Geneva allowing the entry of cheap agricultural products from the developed world. “That would be the last nail in the coffin of small farming in India,” said Sheelu Francis of the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective, an organization representing over a lakh agriculture workers in the state.

The draft for negotiations for the Geneva ministerial—the third draft on the matter—did not accede to most demands of developing countries, the principal one being substantial cuts in subsidies offered to farmers in the us and European Union. These subsidies end up lowering prices of agricultural products in the developed countries below the production cost of farmers in developing countries, giving the former unfair market advantage.

At the time this magazine went to press, the us had made an offer to reduce its permissible subsidies to US $ 15 billion—it had offered 16.4 billion last year. Washington is currently allowed to distribute more than US $48 billion in subsidies under wto’s agreement on agriculture, yes, US $48 billion. But the actual subsidies given to farmers in the us are only about US $7 billion. So the subsidy proposed at Geneva actually gives us the leeway to increase its actual subsidies—not an unlikely possibility given the recent hike in food prices.

There were more strings. The developing countries have to facilitate non-agricultural product market access. Union commerce minister Kamal Nath is not totally averse to the idea. But he also added,

“I hope the proposed subsidy cut is only their opening gambit and not their bottom-line. The subsidy cut really makes no substantial impact.”

“The Prime Minister thinks we should close this issue but unless India’s interests are met, we should not move forward,” Nath said on July 17 before leaving for Geneva. This statement has made farmers’ movements apprehensive that India might end up signing the agreement on agriculture at the mini-ministerial without any major changes.

“The minister seems keen to sign the Doha agreement of the wto when he says that it should be finalized soon. This when the Indian government knows that the us Farms’ Bill, 2008, promises up to us $ 307 billion in subsidies to farmers over the next five years,”

says Yudhveer Singh of the Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers’ Movement, New Delhi.

The Geneva meet is the latest in the Doha Round of wto negotiations—named after the venue of its first meet. The talks, which began in the Qatari capital in 2001, aim to slash subsidies and other barriers to trade “to help reduce poverty and spur economic growth in developing countries”.

According to wto’s categories, there are three kinds of subsidies of which only one is considered to distort production and trade, the Amber Box. With developing countries pressuring the developed countries to cut down on Amber Box subsidies, many subsidies have been move to the Green Box category—deemed as not trade distorting—and the Blue Box—trade distorting but permitted with certain conditions. Over 80 per cent subsidies are in the green and the blue box.

Singh put the reclassification in perspective.

“I asked farmers in Switzerland, if subsidies were cut down there. I was told that the same subsidy that was being given in the name of agriculture yesterday, comes in the name of environment now,”

he said. Bhaskar Goswami of the Delhi-based collective of scientists, policy makers and farmers, Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security offered further explanation.

“Countries are allowed to dole out subsidies to their farmers for food security. This is a Green Box subsidy. The us and the eu give out subsidies for cereals, oilseeds and pulses in the name of food security. But 60 per cent of all this is fed to dairy animals. So a subsidy given in the name of food security becomes trade distorting,”

he said.The latest text talks about disciplining such Green Box subsidies. “But there are no specifics as to how they will be disciplined. So this seems to be hogwash,” Goswami said.

In fact, if the draft for the Geneva ministerial is an indicator, some pro-developing country mechanisms of the wto could be on their way out. Amongst them is Special Safeguards Mechanism (ssms), which allows developing countries to protect their producers from losing out to imported products. Whenever a developing country faces a sudden surge in imports or a depression in domestic price beyond a given threshold, it can invoke ssms and slap additional import duties to protect its market. The new text, however, mentions that the tariff allowed under ssm cannot exceed the pre-Doha round level—they were very low then. Even Nath expressed disappointment at the new ssm rules in Geneva. “Are we expected to stand by, see a surge in imports and do nothing?” he asked in his speech on July 23. Negotiations were on when this magazine went to press.