Protests and Enclosure in India and China

25,000 landless farmers India are embarked on a 600-kilometer march to New Delhi. It began on October 2nd, and is scheduled to end on October 30th. From Agence France-Presse:

"[Puthan Vithal] Rajgopal, a 59-year-old engineer, said he and the people following him believed the lack of land reforms was creating "tiny pockets of vast wealth" in billion-plus India, where 73 percent of the population lives off the land. The marchers want India to introduce iron-clad legislation on holdings, deeds and tenancy rights -- replacing the current system where ownership can easily be disputed and taken by the rich and powerful. "Forty percent of Indians are now landless and 23 percent of them are in abject poverty," said Rajgopal, who heads a campaign group called Ekta Parishad, or Unity Forum. Many of the marchers say debt-ridden farmers or those who lost their land did so because of the absence of clear-cut land rules. Such conditions have bred Maoist insurgency in 172 of India's 600 districts and farmers are killing themselves in 100 other districts," Rajgopal told AFP as the mass of misery reached Palwal, 70 kilometres from New Delhi. "So we want to ask the government, 'What are you governing? Where are the fruits of the reforms in these districts?,'" he said.

A government plan to set up tax-friendly Special Economic Zones across thousands of acres of farmland in a bid to lure overseas corporations has also led to sometime violent protests in at least two states. India's economy is expanding at around nine percent a year, with services and manufacturing clocking double digit growth. Being left far behind at just shy of a few percent is the farm sector and activists are increasingly pointing at a widening gap between the few rich and the hundreds of millions of poor.

"We have the growth process and the re-distribution process, but banking on one will be a fatal folly," commented Ram Upendra Das, and economist with a New Delhi-based think-tank, the Research and Information System for Developing Countries. "The challenge is to spread the positive reforms across the length and width of India and containing its ill-affects such as the widening of gap... We cannot have one at the expense of the other."

Among the marchers was Krishnand Prasad, who abandoned farming on a strip of land his ancestors had leased in the impoverished state of Bihar centuries ago. He was forced to give up after the landowner demanded 65 percent of the harvest. "Once we reach Delhi I will tell the government to give me my land back," the 79-year-old farmer said, hobbling on the dusty asphalt, one quivering hand on the shoulders of his near-blind wife, Samudri Devi. "Or else, we'll not go back home," she whispered. [Emphasis added]

Meanwhile, according to the Chinese government, there have been some 87,000 "mass incidents" in China in the last two years alone, many of them disputes over land between peasant farmers and developers. From AP:

XIAMEN (China) - It was a sight to behold: Thousands of protesters massed on the streets of one of China's most prosperous cities, demanding an end to the construction of a potentially dangerous chemical plant close to their homes. Demonstrators, many wearing yellow bands of cloth in a show of unity, faced down a wall of policemen, marching past skyscrapers and shopping malls as onlookers passed out bottles of water under the hot June sun. The protest led the government to halt construction of the US$1.4 billion (S$2.1 billion) facility, at least for now, and became emblematic of the simmering discontent facing Chinese leaders. As Communist Party leaders gathering in Beijing this week call for creating a 'harmonious society,' signs abound that the country is far from it.

As Communist Party leaders gathering in Beijing this week call for creating a 'harmonious society,' signs abound that the country is far from it. In China's wrenching transformation from a poor, largely agricultural society to a prosperous industrial one, the party is wrestling with changes that have angered many Chinese.

'Farmers have lost their land, workers of state-owned companies have gotten laid off, people living at the bottom of society struggle in their daily lives, there is a huge difference in incomes of the rich and the poor, and a large amount of violence exists,' said Ai Xiaoming, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University and an advocate for human rights and legal reform.

'These are signs of a disharmonious society,' she said from Guangzhou, the capital of prosperous Guangdong province, where rising land prices have touched off disputes between farmers and developers. The tensions pose a challenge for the authoritarian communist government, which
often tries to suppress dissent, and especially for President Hu Jintao. In power for five years, Mr Hu has made a priority of distributing the benefits of recent decades of speedy economic growth more evenly. He has used the phrase 'creating a harmonious society' and a related phrase, 'the scientific outlook on development,' as slogans for this campaign. Senior Communist Party members are expected to weave the ideologies into a final draft of a document outlining priorities for the next five years.

'We will spare no effort to solve the most specific problems of the utmost and immediate concern to the people and strive to create a situation in which all people do their best, find their proper places in society and live together in harmony,' Mr Hu told more than 2,200 delegates on Monday in the weeklong conclave's opening speech. Mr Hu's government has set aside billions of dollars in new farm subsidies, increased spending on social security, education and health care, and made public efforts to root out rampant corruption.

But it is an uphill task to ease social tensions. According to the most recent figures from the Ministry of Public Security, 87,000 'mass incidents' were reported in 2005, including a deadly clash between police and villagers over the seizure of land for a power plant. And just last month, thousands of demobilised soldiers sent to railway training centres rioted in at least three cities. Then there's the emerging middle class, whose investments in homes, cars and their children's education gives them a growing stake in society and an awareness of their rights.

'The amount of demonstrations is growing as social issues of instability are increasing. People's sense of safeguarding their rights is awakening,' wrote Wen Yunchao, a columnist for the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, who witnessed the June 1-2 protests in Xiamen. 'I will slap anyone who says today's China is harmonious.' In Xiamen, a tropical port city once known in the West as Amoy and once a haven for pirates and the opium trade, the demonstrations centred around construction of a Tenglong Aromatic PX (Xiamen) Co plant in the coveted Haicang district, a breezy suburb west of the city of 1.6 million.

The plant would have made the petrochemical paraxylene, which is used in the production of plastics, polyester and film; it can cause eye, nose or throat irritation and chronic exposure may result in death. Residents say they were kept in the dark about the project until details started trickling out in March. Soon, text messages, blogs, Internet bulletin boards and computer messenger services were abuzz. One phone message likened the plant to an atomic bomb being dropped on Xiamen. Talk of protest gathered steam. 'I felt that if everyone went, we could make a change,' said Wu, a 32-year-old resident who did not want his full name used for fear of reprisals and who carried his 3-year-old son to the protest. 'If my son asks me in the future 'Where were you when the project was being built, Dad?' I would feel ashamed if I had not dared to join the march.' After the protest, the State Environmental Protection Administration said it was conducting a new environmental assessment for the entire city, including the paraxylene plant. Less than four kilometres from the construction site, many apartments now sit empty because no one wants to live there, and real estate prices have plunged. Residents are not sure if their victory was final or temporary. [Emphasis added]