om e 's Ali a - Land ss De elo en - Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, India Office

hectares each, five of them in Alwar
district alone) await formal approval,
having already acquired in-principle
approval. The largest of these is the
Omaxe SEZ planned in Alwar district
and may occupy as much as 6,000 ha.
of land, a good 1,000 ha. above the
legally permissible limit, as per changes
announced by the Government of
India in April 2007. Memoranda
of Understanding (MoUs) worth
Rs. 1,62,079 crore were expected to
be signed at the recently concluded
Resurgent Rajasthan Partnership
Summit 295. The state government
is facilitating land acquisition for
corporations, by amending or
breaking existing land laws. The mood
is restless and public anger is growing
over the state’s persistent failure to
obtain economic justice for the poor.
In Rajasthan the agriculture
department along with land
resources department is vigorously
promoting Jatropha cultivation for
bio-fuel development. In fact, a
bio-fuel development authority was
constituted in 2005 to oversee this
ambitious venture. The first task
of the newly formed authority was
to earmark 20,000 ha. of land for
bio-fuel crops and 500 ha. for non
bio-fuel crop cultivation under a
Introduction
wasteland development programme.
The land was proposed to be given
to private entrepreneurs under lease
initially for a period of 30 years,
renewable for a further 20 years
depending on the success of the
programme. A large number of
social activists and concerned civil
society members view this venture
as a land grab movement aiming to
facilitate the appropriation of land
by business houses, compromising
the interests and needs of the small
and marginal farmers.
While the state government has
been blatantly promoting corporate
interest, the administration is
simultaneously engaged in denying
the rightful claims of the adivasi
people over forest land on which
they have been surviving for several
years. A series of circulars issued by
the Ministry of Environment and
Forests (MoEF), intends to facilitate
resolution of disputes related to
forest land between adivasis and the
state government. While honouring
the MoEF guidelines the Rajasthan
Government issued a notification in
early January 1990 for regularisation
of forest land under people’s
possession prior to 1980, to be
accomplished within a period of six
9