Delhi – a World Class city… and one of the initiatives taken to take the city towards that mark is making a Global Village on the land around the DND ( Delhi NOIDA Delhi Road)…

How is that happening? here is the process…

This land was being used for Farming, basically an agricultural land…

The question here is that who took over the land? Was it acquired by the Govt. or bought directly 1 to 1 from the people…. As per the Land Acquisition Act in our country, the govt. can acquire any land and/or asset for national purpose or development… One of such projects is the development of SEZs where the Govt. Acquires land and then hands them over to the corporates developing the project…

During one of such acquisitions, the people get compensaton for the land plus the structures if any on the land and the crop… They also get the compensation for an year of income… Also the training for an alternate livelyhood is the responsibility of the Project Sponser…

Now comes the question that I am struggling with…

How does the government compensate for the loss of Land? Where do we get alternative land from?

There is only an “X” amount of agricultural land in India… and everytime one of these projects comes up, some amount reduces from this “X” amount.. hence reducing the amount of land that we have for the farmers…

Alternative means of income and livelyhood might ensure that the people getting effected continue to live properly… but do we have any alternatives for the soil?
do we have any alternatives for the vegetables that were once grown on that land?
do we have any alternatives for the load on nature?

I guess no… and I am not how many of the people who read this agree to me… but I am not really keen on a situation when we start eating capsules instead of vegetables to match the required nutrition chart, when we start importing food grain instead of having our own…

All this in the name of infrastructural development and economic growth…

Is the tradeoff too irrelevent? or are we only looking short term?

P.s. This post is not about just one piece of land near the DND… this is about all the agricultural land which are loosing out on, slowly but surely…

Thanks a ton Bindiya for the time spent in talking to me about this and giving me more information…