as acquired both by the public and the private sectors, and whatever protests happened, they were largely confined to the local areas.
As compared to that phase, what we have been seeing in the recent phase is that the pressure on land resources has increased manifold in the face of higher rates of economic growth; the farmers are much more mobilized, well aware of their rights and are not willing to let go off their lands so easily. Since the early nineties, the employment situation has become a lot worse. In such a scenario, with there being no other alternative to earn livelihoods, peasants are resisting any attempts at dispossessing them of their lands because it is these land holdings which provide them with some sense of livelihood security. Also, the issue of compensation has come to be highlighted so much because land pricing is different from other goods' pricing since land cannot be produced and is available in fixed supply. The value of the same plot of land may vary, depending upon the future values of income streams that it can yield. And the future incomes in turn depend on the various uses to which the land can be put. This is one of the major factors why the farmers have been rising in protest, because they have been seeing the value of their sold plots rise enormously once the real estate developers acquire those lands! Farmers stand to lose not just their precious lands for a pittance, but also the activities which are carried on their sold plots hardly provide them with any employment opportunities.
What we have been witnessing in India recently because of large scale land acquisitions are two different types of reactions from the farmers. Those in the well off states like Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana have been fighting over the issue of the compensation they are being offered for their lands. These groups of farmers are well organized and have significant economic and political clout, and are thus in a better position to negotiate the land prices. On the other hand, farmers in the Central Indian states of Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand etc are largely small and marginal farmers who are less willing to part with their lands because that is the only source of livelihood which they have. But they are more often than not made to let go off their lands in return for meager compensations or none at all by using coercive means.
It has been often argued that displacement would inevitably accompany a development strategy. The experience of the now developed countries, particularly Britain, is quoted to put forth the point that industrialization results in a decline in the proportion of farmers and rural laborers in the total population; and that this process has always been associated with evictions. Those losing their lands and livelihoods are gradually absorbed in the industrial and service sectors as jobs expand. But there are two major flaws associated with this argument. The first one is that the rate of employment generation in the industrial sector was not enough to absorb all the people released from the countryside. Why Britain did not see the kind of protests that we have been witnessing in India recently is because of the large scale of out migration of the displaced population, and that is what prevented it from running into political chaos and conflicts. But today, the developing nations do not have that avenue open to them and as a result
