Rampant Government Land Grabbing

Of late I am noticing increasing incidents of the thug government forcefully stealing poor peoples' - mostly farmers - land all over the country e.g., Singur  (West Bengal), Sanand (Gujarat), POSCO (Orissa), Greater Noida (U.P.), and other smaller cases in Gujarat and other states which goes unreported and thus unnoticed.  This land grabbing has a nice cover-up name - land acquisition. But, this is not an acquisition of any sort.  In all these cases poor land owners are not willing to sell their land to the government. The reason they don't want to sell their land is because that land is their Home, it is their only source of income, it is their life's wealth, it is the place where they are living since ages. In short, it is their private property. Many of the farmers who willy-nilly have to sell their land are also not happy with the price which government is paying them.

And when the buyer is not voluntarily ready to sell his land and seller still forcefully takes his land away from him then it is not acquisition but is a simple theft. Government is stealing the private property of poor people to give it away at dirt's cheap price to some of the corrupt corporations who want to build their plants on that land. This is a classic example of fascism where corporate houses loot people by colluding with government. People - who seeing these big corporations working in cahoot with government immediately jump to conclusion that this is the menace of capitalism - need to understand that this in no sense is a free market capitalism. In a free market corporates will go and buy land from those farmers directly without using any governmental force. If the farmers voluntarily want to sell their land then only businesses can buy it in a free market e.g., Apple's CEO Steve Jobs did exactly that when he refused to grab the lands of some people - through local government - who were unwilling to sell it to him. So, please don't start blaming capitalism mindlessly when you see such events taking place.  

What are the implications of this land grabbing?
Whenever humans violate the workings of natural law (in this case violation of private property rights), the dire consequences are bound to follow. I list some of the implications of this event below.
  1. First and foremost this is a case of sheer injustice done to the poor farmers. Government who purports to exist to safeguard individual citizen's private proerty rights itself is violating those fundamental rights. This is going to result in increased income and wealth inequality in Indian society, which politicians always say they want to remove! People many times say that, rich is becoming richer and poor becoming poorer, and for which they mostly blame the free market capitalism. But, here we have a clear evidence of government as the root cause of these inequalities, which always is the case but people can't see it due to governmental propaganda rhetoric against capitalism. Government is making rich more richer and poor more poorer!
  2. This land grabbing is also going to result into resource misallocation in the economy in the form of farm land - which is vital for food production - being forcefully converted into industrial waste land. It won't be very surprising to see these resulting into severe food shortages in future, especially if something goes wrong with the monsoon season. And these food shortages coupled with government inflationary endless money printing will result into severe rise in food prices. And when that will happen I am sure stupid Indian politicians will tell us all to eat Tata nano cars, just like New York Fed's president Bill Dudley told Americans to eat iPads when prices of food and energy is rising there rapidly!!!
Mainstream media reaction
MSM reaction to these events is pathetic and reflect the kind of ethical values based on which their master government and they operate their businesses.The mainstream media which mainly works as a mouth piece of government propaganda has reacted to these event in their usual way by blaming those poor farmers for obstructing the growth and development of India! No media talking head is pointing the finger to the injustice done to these poor people. No one is talking about the violation of private property rights of these people. Basically no one is concerned with 'Justice'! For them the word 'Justice' is an alien animal. We just need to remind ourselves that when the society starts to violate the ground norms of Justice, Peace, Cooperation etc., of societal organization then time is near for its collapse through conflict and chaos.

Conclusion
If Indian people want to organize their society on the basis of grudnorm of Justice, Peace, Cooperation, Conflict Avoidance, Propserity and Civilizatin then the stolen land of poor people should immediately be returned to them because it is their private property. Respect of private property rights is an absolute necessity for organizing society without creating chaos. If peopel won't raise their voice against these wrong doings against poor people then it won't take long when the same kind of wrong doing will start to take place with them also!

We need to understand that growth and development cannot take place on the corpses of innocent people. If Indian society choose such growth and development policies then its collapse is guranteed.

 

Comments

  1. hello sir...i am going to conduct the First Lecture of my life today that too on the subject of "Business Ethics". Yesterday, was recaaling the whole incident of Singur while preparing for lecture...& to some extent got clarity about ethical business..Sir what does Ethical Business mean according to you?

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