This along with incentives like payment of annuity for five years, job for one person from each displaced family and up to six cottahs (1 cottah=750 sq ft) of alternative land.
This is 25-30 per cent more than the current price of land in the area even if the additional benefits are not calculated. BAPL agreed to pay this much despite the fact that most of the project land yielded just one crop in a year.
In contrast, the government has continued to face resistance, so much so that on August 27, it agreed to pay an unheard-of Rs 10.14 lakh (Rs 1.014 million) an acre for land within 200 metres of a state highway at Katwa, a poorly developed district town 100 km north of Kolkata at the confluence of the Ganga and Ajoy rivers.
The market price was Rs 1.5 lakh (Rs 150,000) per acre. Sharecroppers ('bargadars' in local parlance) would get 25 per cent of the value of the land while agricultural labourers would get wages for 300 days in advance. Even then, the government faced resistance.
Image: Kolkata's Victoria Memorial. | Photograph: AFP/Getty Imagescom
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