Double standards must be second nature to the CPI(M). Consider this: in October 2006, it prepared a note along with its allies--the CPI, the Forward Bloc (FB) and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) -- for the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre laying down a strict set of guidelines for acquiring land for Special Economic Zones (SEZs). SEZs, the CPI(M)-authored note said, should not come up in agricultural lands. Also,"livelihood security" for the displaced families should be ensured after paying them compensation"in accordance with the future price of their lands" (that is, the price their lands would fetch once they're developed and sold to units coming up in the SEZ). Most important, the note demanded that the UPA governmentto ensure that companies developing the SEZs "provide equity stakes to the land-losers".
The CPI(M), even while it was preparing the note, was surreptitiously planning to go ahead with acquiring 10,500 acres of land at Haldia in east Midnapore district (Nandigram, where violent clashes took place over the past week, falls in Haldia) without honouring a single clause of the note it wanted the rest of the country to adhere to. First, most of the land at Haldia is not only agricultural, but also fertile on which farmers cultivate many crops in a year. It has now transpired that the local CPI(M) strongman, Lakshman Seth (who is also the local MP and Chairman of the Haldia Development Authority), had announced that the government would pay Rs 4.3 lakh an acre to those who sell their lands voluntarily and Rs 3.4 lakh an acre to those whose lands are acquired through the administrative fiat. This is hardly adequate compensation--in Singur, where too the Marxists had run into strong opposition, the compensation amount was Rs nine lakh an acre. The Bengal government had no plans of ensuring"livelihood security" for the 8000 odd families who stand to get displaced from Nandigram block of the district. None worth the name had been offered to those who lost their lands atSingur. The money planned to be offered at Nandigram was definitely not the "future price" of the land--the controversial Salim group of Indonesia that's to develop the proposed multi-product SEZ at Haldia will sell the land to unitsthat come to set up shop there at many times more than the throwaway rate of Rs 4.3 lakh an acre. And, the CPI(M)-led Left Front government in Bengal had no plans whatsoever to ask the Salim group to make the land-losers at Nandigram stake-holders in theSEZ.