ABSTRACT
India has in recent decades seen an explosive growth in public protests against the acquisition of land for purposes of industrial use, including mining and large infrastructural projects. The acquisition of land has become a hot political topic that has contributed to the toppling of state governments and to several cases of aborted investment projects, even those deemed to be of crucial interest to the future economic growth of the whole country or a specific region (Oskarsson and Nielsen 2014). For the present central government, led by prime minister Narendra Modi, a suggestion for revising the law governing land acquisitions has become a political headache because of protests both inside and outside parliament against the new and more business-friendly version of the law. This increase in social activism and protests may easily be seen as a natural response to the increased economic activities in India over recent years, but if we look at the phenomenon through a historical lens, the new activism raises questions about how to interpret the rising protest activities. If they are natural phenomena to be expected, given the rapid economic development, how come similar protests were far less common in earlier times with high growth rates? To understand more deeply the causes and mechanisms that lie behind this increase in protest activities, we probably have to go further than just to see it as a natural, almost self-evident, companion to a renewed economic and especially industrial growth process. Overall economic growth rates may indeed have reached unprecedented levels in recent years, but industrial growth rates and infrastructure investments have previously experienced similar or even higher growth rates than today, albeit evidently from lower levels of economic activity. In terms of social conflicts, the situation today contrasts markedly to an earlier period when India experienced perhaps the most dramatic increase in industrial investment projects. In the period of the first three five-year plans, 1951-1966, under the leadership of prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s industry grew at a rate never to be achieved again. To a large extent, this growth was based upon the establishment of large industrial and infrastructural projects. Nehru had at the time termed the construction of these large-scale projects as the building of ‘the temples of modern India’ and this expression captures very well the optimism of the era and the uncritical embrace of the modern industrial future by practically all relevant voices in the political life of India. Even
among academic observers who were highly critical of the chosen strategy for economic development it had been acknowledged that India’s growth experience during this crucial early period had been ‘fairly impressive indeed’ (Bhagwati and Desai 1970: 4). Possibly the best picture of the mood and thinking of the leading figures of the Indian nation at the time was provided by Gunnar Myrdal in his monumental three-volume work, Asian Drama (Myrdal 1968). Myrdal noted specifically the spread and impact of the ideology of planning as being a part of the more encompassing ‘modernisation’ paradigm as an interventionist and rational approach to achieve development (ibid.: ch. 2 and 15). According to this rational planning ideology that Myrdal found to be dominant with practically no dissenting voices at the time, existing social conditions were seen as undesirably backward features that had to be reformed or changed in order for modernisation to progress. From the perspective of today’s tumultuous experiences with the promotion of rapid industrial progress, this raises the questions whether and to what extent this early period of rapid economic industrial progress had experienced similar waves of protests, how the policymakers of the time looked upon the inevitable associated processes of displacements of thousands of people all over India, and whether other socially active forces had been concerned about or had acted upon the displacements. If not, the question arises as to what may explain this significant divergence in the social response to a process of rapid industrialisation between the early period and the recent period. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a first survey of how the Indian authorities and organised social and political forces have viewed the early process of rapid industrial modernisation and whether they displayed any awareness of the ‘social costs’ involved. Second, some indications and examples will be provided of the limited but nevertheless existing protest movements at the time. Finally, the article will briefly discuss some of the likely explanations for the markedly different situation existing today where, as mentioned, protests are widespread and to be expected whenever new projects are initiated. It goes without saying that the explanations can only be suggestive, as what needs explaining is the (relative) lack of protest during the early period – ‘the dog that didn’t bark’1 – i.e. a counterfactual phenomenon, something that did not happen.
