From Nandigram and Singur, discontent over the acquisition of rural land for industrialisation in West Bengal is spreading. Burdwan district is the latest to witness pitched battles between villagers and the police

Up to 60 people, including six policemen, were reportedly injured in violent protests over the acquisition of 240 acres of non-farm land in Purshottampur village near Asansol town in Burdwan, for expansion of an Indian Iron and Steel Company (IISCO) plant. After the incident, the police arrested around 100 protestors demanding higher compensation and jobs in exchange for their land.

Eight hundred police personnel were deemed adequate to handle the 700 protesters who gathered to stop work at the project site on June 17. However, the 50 policewomen proved too few for the 300-odd women and children who formed a human shield in front of the main protestors, in a strategy similar to the one employed in Nandigram.

And so, women protestors were seen being dragged away to waiting buses while some took off their saris and lay on the ground to avert arrest. "We were agitating peacefully but the police attacked us with lathis and tried to molest our women. They abused us and threatened to kill us," said Chanakya Roy, a protester. "The police kicked me in the abdomen even though I told them I was pregnant. I lay bleeding till my husband rescued me," said another protestor Parbati Roy, wife of a daily labourer.

The protestors then turned violent and hurled stones and bricks at the police, hitting Deputy Magistrate Soumya Bhattacharya in the chest and injuring five policemen. In the lathi charge and firing of teargas shells by the police that followed, a dozen villagers were injured.

"A section of the people had been protesting for the past few days, but we went on with our land-filling activities. Today they tried to forcibly stop work and we had to control the crowd and arrest some of them. As far as I know, 80 people have been arrested so far," said Alokesh Prasad Roy, Sub-Divisional Officer, Haripur.

The Asansol administration had earlier taken recourse to Section 144 to prevent gatherings in the village, after villagers, agitating for jobs at the project site, stalled work on the site for three days. But the protesters vowed to fight on.

Unlike Nandigram, the residents of Purshottampur are willing to give up their land -- the government posted an acquisition notice 18 years ago, in 1989 -- to IISCO. Post-Singur, however, they are asking for more compensation and a job at the plant for one member of each of the 350 affected families.

IISCO did not take possession of the land earlier as it didn't have the money to initiate modernisation plans at the plant, deemed a sick unit in 1999. However, in 2006, when the prime minister announced a Rs 10,000 crore package, the project sprang back to life. That same year, the state began paying the affected families for their land.

The company says it paid Rs 40 crore for the 305 acres in Purshottampur, Nagrasoda and Hirapur mouzas (revenue divisions), about 260 km from the West Bengal capital Kolkata. Families in Nagrasoda and Hirapur, where 65 acres of the site lie, accepted their cheques but Purshottampur, with 240 acres, held out for a better deal. "We can part with our land, but only if we have a job in the factory and proper monetary compensation. If not, we will fight till our last breath," says a villager Guharani Samanta.

IISCO has succeeded in convincing only 10% of the families in Purshottampur to hand over their land. Mihir Rout, General Manager (Estate), IISCO, said: "It is not possible to provide them permanent jobs, though we can consider offering them temporary work."

Source: The Telegraph, June 18, 2007
www.tribuneindia.com, June 18, 2007
www.ibnlive.com, June 18, 2007
PTI, June 17, 2007