A Glimpse Into the Lives of People that the Highly-Contested Land Acquisition Bill Will Affect

A Kharia adivasi farmer sows seeds for a new crop in Sundergarh,Odisha. In the background, a railway line is being constructed that will cut through his lands, connecting the industrial district of Jharsuguda to the village of Serdega where public sector coal mines are located. Land acquisition for the line takes place under the Indian Railways Act, which is exempt from the consent and social impact assessment provisions of the Land Acquisition Act. This picture was taken in September 2014. Aruna Chandrasekhar

16 May, 2015

On 12 May 2015, the Lok Sabha referred the controversial land acquisition bill to a Joint Committee of Parliament, amidst mounting resistance from the Opposition and some of its allies. A thirty-member joint committee of the Parliament, which will comprise twenty members of Parliament from the Lok Sabha and ten from the Rajya Sabha, will submit a report of its findings on the first day of the Monsoon Session of the Parliament. The bill, which seeks to make the process of acquiring land for industry and infrastructure easier, has been critcised for diluting the need for consent from those whose land would be acquired. While the Bhartiya Janata Party has been refuting all claims that the bill is “anti-farmer”, the unrest caused by the bill has only been increasing.

Through this photo essay, Aruna Chandrasekhar of Amnesty International shares glimpses of land acquisition and social conflict from across a diverse series of projects, geographies and communities that could potentially be at risk from a bill, that many believe threatens to diminish their rights.