Land acquisition, to be or not to be

Land acquisition, to be or not to be

  Land acquisition, to be or not to be, is the issue before the government, political parties, social activists and socially conscious intellectuals, and everyone seems to be addressing the issue with myopic vision and prejudices.
  Unlike other living beings, who consume necessaries in their natural form, humans produce necessaries of life by transforming natural resources provided by the mother earth into useable form with their individual and collective labour power. During this production process, humans learn more about the laws of nature and use this knowledge for improving efficiency and productivity of human labour and Mother Earth.
  Earth provides not only crops and minerals as raw material for production, but land also for housing infrastructure and industries for productive activities. When a piece of land is good for a single category of activity then there is no problem but when a piece of land can be put to various uses, there can be a conflict of interests and in such a situation, normally the rate of return on the perceived cost of the land will decide the land use.
  A problem arises when the land is owned in parts separately by different people. Land divided in small plots, say few hundred square meters, though owned by different individuals may still be suitable for agriculture, but for infrastructure or industry a minimum size of land, few to hundreds of hectares may be required and if such land is owned by different individuals, then there is problem because of differing perceptions about the cost of land. Those who are politically or economically more powerful may demand a much higher price for parting with their piece of land or may refuse at all, rendering the infrastructure or industrial development prohibitively costly and unviable.
  Only government is in a position to consolidate, by acquisition through enactment of appropriate law, fragmented plots into minimum land mass necessary for the infrastructure or industrial development. But successive governments have been failing to enact appropriate law because on one hand they have been guided by the interests of powerful sections and not of the  weaker sections. On the other hand, in land acquisition, the interests of land owning feudal class and the interests of industry developing capitalist class are antagonistic and government of the day does not know how to resolve this contradiction.
  When agricultural land is converted into industrial or commercial use, its value increases or in other words ' surplus value is created '. This surplus value must belong to the society and not to any individual, landlord or industrialist. If government formulates policies to utilise this surplus value  for the benefit of the society at large, the riddle of land acquisition and industrial development will be solved.

Suresh Srivastava
16 July 2015

MAKE IN INDIA, WITH CAUTION

MAKE IN INDIA, WITH CAUTION


Mr Rohit Azad, teaching Economics at JNU, on his blog wrote an article criticising Prof Jagdish Bhagwati's article published in Economic Times of 9 January 2015. While Prof Bhahwati made a strong case for PM Modi's 'Make in India' and (sell abroad), Mr Rohit opposes an export driven approach, claiming it to be in contradiction with a domestic demand driven approach. Both authors seem to be missing that in today's world, both domestic and export markets are inter-related and capital is interested in maximisation of rate of return only. Below are comments by Mr Suresh Srivastava.
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Mr Rohit Azad's article 'Prof. Bhagwati's has got it wrong' appeared on 9 January 2015 on rohitazad.wordpress.com.
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Suresh commented on January 11, 2015

Lenin had observed that ‘in view of the extreme complexity of the phenomena of social life it is always possible to select any number of examples or separate data to prove any proposition.’ Present day neo-Marxists, with their petty bourgeois consciousness, fail to understand ‘value’ correctly with its form and content and hence, consider capitalist mode of production and capitalism, synonymous. They choose data and arguments at will, to prove what they want to prove. Evaluating ‘Make in India’ per say, in isolation with domestic and international Socio-economic formations, is a futile exercise.
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Rohit replied on 12 January 2015

So, are you suggesting that what is proved here is wrong? Instead of prices, you can use the labour theory to prove exactly the same set of assertions, so please let me know where is the argument wrong? By the way I have not used any data to prove any thing here.
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Suresh commented on 14 January 2015

In modern world, with the development of technology, boundaries have broken down for products and money, which can travel across the globe, wherever needed, in no time, and commodities and capital have become truly global. But to produce any commodity, human labour power can be expanded only where the worker is present, and hence creation of value in manufacturing or in distribution will continue to be local.
Newly created value is split into two parts, wages and surplus value. Wages have to be disbursed locally to the worker. Surplus value is shared amongst various owners of the assets and of money or, means of production needed to set the labour power into motion to create new value. The share in the surplus value could be termed rent, interest, profit etc. The surplus value in the form of money is free from any geographical constraints and can move globally at will.
Sharing of the surplus among various players depends upon their respective strengths, and the state as a moderator between various conflicting classes is the most powerful arbiter. Whosoever can influence a state within the national boundaries or various states globally, will get the larger share in the surplus produced nationally or globally.
Every effort to increase efficiency and productivity of human labour through cooperation and large scale production is innate quality of human society, and hence liberalisation of economies for globalisation is progressive and must be supported. Marx in his speech on 9th January 1848 before Democratic Association of Brussels stressed, 'But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free trade.'
The problem is in individual, disproportionate appropriation rather than social appropriation of the surplus value, which is produced collectively.
Any effort to oppose the natural forward movement of global integration of various national economies is counter-progressive and reactionary. Every effort to curtail the share of private appropriation and to augment the share of social appropriation of the surplus produced, is progressive and revolutionary.
Every socially conscious intellectual, who understands Marxism as a scientific world outlook, must support globalisation to ensure large scale production and distribution, and must participate in every movement which may push for collective ownership of resources rather than for individual ownership and may augment share of social appropriation of the surplus value produced.
In his famous pamphlet 'Marxim and Revisionism', written in 1908 on Marx's 90th birth anniversary, Lenin warned, 'Whoever does not understand the inevitable inner dialectics of parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy—which leads to an even sharper decision of the argument by mass violence than formerly—will never be able on the basis of this parliamentarism to conduct propaganda and agitation consistent in principle, really preparing the working-class masses for victorious participation in such “arguments”.' CPC, with correct understanding of Marxim, was able to follow Lenin's warning to understand correctly the contradictions in the Chinese Society, and to evolve the concept of 'New Democracy' as elaborated by Mao in his famous pamphlet. 90 years of the history of CPC in successfully leading the Chinese people through revolutionary transformation of Chinese society on socialist path testifies relevance of Lenin's warning.
In the same pamphlet, characterising revisionism, Lenin observed, 'Needless to say, this applies to bourgeois science and philosophy, officially taught by official professors in order to befuddle the rising generation of the propertied classes and to “coach” it against internal and foreign enemies.' And the history of 90 years of communist movement in India, which, in the absence of correct understanding of Marxism, first disintegrated into more than 40 fragments and the fragments now trying unsuccessfully for unprincipled unification, testifies Lenin's observation.
For more on my views on left movement in India, please see my various articles on my blogs 'marxdarshan.blogspot.com' and 'marx-darshan.blogspot.com' and old issues of Hindi quarterly 'Marx Darshan'.

Suresh Srivastava
14 January 2015