The conflict over development that claimed the life of Stan Swamy

The death of Stan Swamy has led to an outpouring of outrage over the callousness of the Indian state in hounding an 84-year old Jesuit priest to his death. Opposition parties have been quick to target the BJP, notwithstanding the fact that the draconian UAPA law, which makes it hard to get bail and can be grossly misused, was passed by the earlier UPA government.

Sure, the state could have been gentler with the old man. But harping on that is missing the wood for one single, solitary twig. Fr. Stan himself drew attention to the fact that there were thousands of poor prisoners rotting in jail for years, although their trials were yet to begin. The process, as many editorials have said, has become the punishment.

But the law’s delay is not the central point of what’s at stake. The key issue here, for which Stan Swamy and many others have had to sacrifice life and liberty, is actually development, or rather the vision of economic development promoted by the Indian state.

Hard-fought Contest

Economic development is an intensely contested project, throwing up winners and losers. It has always been so, no matter what the political system. From the enclosure of the commons in England to Stalin’s expropriation of the kulaks, economic development has gone hand in hand with the extraction of surplus needed for capital accumulation from the land.

In the process, injustices are invariably committed, all in the name of development. As John Maynard Keynes put it: ‘We must pretend to ourselves and to everyone else that fair is foul and foul is fair, for foul is useful and fair is not.’

We sometimes forget that capitalism is a revolutionary force, sweeping aside venerable old institutions and ways of life. It is a hugely disruptive process, giving short shrift to moral niceties.

In Jharkhand, the contrast between the state’s mineral wealth and the poverty of its masses has for long been a source of discontent. The carving out of Jharkhand from Bihar was supposed to bring about rapid development among the indigenous population, but that was always a chimera.

The nub of the conflict is that control over tribal lands is needed to extract minerals and create modern industry in the state. The British government, after the revolt led by Birsa Munda, were forced to leave the tribals alone and passed the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act of 1908, which restricted the sale and transfer of tribal lands to non-tribals. The Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act, enacted after Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu led an uprising against the British in 1855, laid down similar restrictions in the eastern regions of the state.

Root Of The Problem

The BJP government in the state tried to water down these laws in 2016, through an ordinance which permitted the use of agricultural tribal lands for non-agricultural purposes. From the government’s point of view, this was needed to speed up development in a desperately poor state.

But the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes said these amendments omitted the need for taking the consent of gram sabhas and violated the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, 1996 and the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.

The change in laws led to large-scale protests and to the ‘Pathalgadi’ movement---the erection of traditional stone slabs in villages on which the Fifth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, which deals with the rights of tribals to manage their own affairs, was carved, as a mark of defiance. It was a desperate attempt by the tribals to preserve their traditional way of life. The movement led to repression by the state and to violence.

Stan Swamy, of course, had spent his entire life battling for the rights of tribals. He was a founder member of the Visthapan Virodi Jan Vikas Andolan, a movement for people displaced by development projects. To the state’s concept of ‘Vikas’ or development, he opposed ‘Jan Vikas’ or peoples’ development.

Two quotes bring out the crux of the conflict. In 2015, he brought out a study on undertrials in Jharkhand which said that poor tribals were rotting in jails on fabricated charges of being Maoists. The report said, ‘All this is part of the gross misuse of the criminal justice system by the state which favours only the rich and powerful to the detriment of the poor and downtrodden, and is now more and more unscrupulously in favour of the take-over of the economically poorest people’s land and the nation’s resources by both multinational and domestic corporates (corporatization).’

And here’s his quote on the pathalgadi movement: ‘As for the Pathalgadi issue, I have asked the question, “Why are adivasis doing this?” I believe it is because they have been exploited and oppressed beyond tolerance. The rich minerals which are excavated in their land have enriched outsider industrialists and businessmen and impoverished the adivasi people to the extent that people have died of starvation. They have had no share in what is produced.’

In other words, the clash between the Indian state and Fr. Stan Swamy has at its root the struggle between capitalist development and the forces opposed to it. In a revealing interview with India Development Review reproduced by Scroll.in, Fr. Stan talked about the success of the tribals in scuppering Arcelor Mittal’s steel project in the state.

In the end, though, the attempt to preserve the old ways of life is doomed to failure. Even in China, Deng Xiaoping said ‘Let some people get rich first’, a policy that led to unprecedented development in that country.

Fr Stan realised the difficulty of fighting the inevitable. In the interview cited above, he said, ‘There are many young Adivasis who have been educated and have good jobs, have built a house in Ranchi, and send their children to English-medium schools. But they have severed ties with the villages they come from.’ About those who stayed behind in the villages, he said they ‘cannot stand up and resist; if they do, they are put in jail. It’s a difficult choice for them. The young men say, “I cannot bear to stay back in the village and see my land being taken away; but if I resist, I’ll be thrown into jail. Let me instead leave this place, go elsewhere and earn money for my family.”’

All that can be done is to mitigate the hardships for those who lose out in the process, bolster their courage and give them hope. That is what Father Stan Swamy did all his life.