United lands of India

REGIONAL ROUNDUP

Most Hindi dailies accorded prominent coverage to the violence in Nandigram against the proposed takeover of land for the Salim integerated township/SEZ project. On the day after the violence, January 9, Dainik Bhaskar carried a report on the first page whose thrust was the political fallout of the protests at the centre. Reporting on FICCI's Annual General Meeting, the paper quoted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's declaration of a new rehabilitation policy for the displaced within three months. BJP leader L K Advani, at the same meeting, pointed to the incident exposing the CPM's double standards and asked for an all-party meeting to discuss the issue. In the same edition, an edit criticised the government in West Bengal for hiving off fertile land in Singur and Nandigram for the purpose of building factories/SEZs. No amount of compensation, the edit cautioned, would be good enough for farmers whose livelihood was being uprooted. Rajasthan Patrika also devoted front page coverage to the violence, noting that the bandh called against the proposed SEZ was a huge success in West Bengal. The report was accompanied by a photograph of the police trying to contain the demonstrating protesters. The paper, on its second page, carried a picture of demonstrators with placards, that read, "CPM Government, Stop snatching land for Salim group," "Punish farmer killers" and so on. Punjab Kesari said the violence was forcing a rethink in the UPA government with respect to all future SEZ proposals. It also reported a rumour that a couple of senior Congress leaders had received fat commissions from major corporate houses to get SEZs sanctioned. The paper ended the report by saying that leaders close to Congress President Sonia Gandhi had denied the allegation.

With parts of Bangalore engulfed by communal violence, the controversy over SEZs did not receive much attention in the Kannada press. The issue was carried as fairly routine news in the national pages of most Kannada dailies. Only the market leader Vijaya Karnataka had an editorial on the subject. "The fear that the SEZ projects may end as real estate ventures is genuine. There is very little understanding of the subject among the citizens, especially the farmers. Prime farm land should never be acquired for SEZ, particularly when Indian farmers are finding agriculture no more a profitable profession. The compensation for farm land acquired should be higher than the market rate. Since farmers cannot live off the compensation for the remaining part of their lives, an alternative livelihood has to be evolved," the newspaper editorial stated.

The SEZ issue didn't hit the first page of Tamil daily Dinamalar. However, one of its editions, dated January 20, carried a single column report on page one on the government's intention to tighten SEZ norms. During the past week, the daily carried reports on the Singur-Tata controversy in its main and business sections.

Leading Bengali daily Anandabazar Patrika wrote that West Bengal is preparing a detailed roadmap of the industrial requirements of the state. Bartaman spoke of the uniform rehabilitation package that the government is finalising. According to Aajkal, the CPM has launched a 45-day campaign to make the people in the areas where acquisition is taking place, aware of the benefits of industrialsation.