'Development cannot cost farmers their land': Tikait warns Bihar over satellite township push

Farmer leader Rakesh Tikait has warned the Bihar government that development cannot be accepted when its price is farmers losing their land, their livelihoods and their social security, as opposition builds against the state's satellite township programme.

The state has identified locations for twelve satellite townships near Patna, Muzaffarpur, Chhapra, Sonpur, Sitamarhi, Bhagalpur, Darbhanga, Munger, Saharsa, Purnia, Gaya and Dehri in Rohtas, as part of a plan to build new urban centres around its major cities. Land pooling is to be given priority in assembling the land the projects require.

Farmers' organisations have begun coordinating protests as consultations and land processes move forward. In Sitamarhi, the Bhoomi Bachao Sangharsh Samiti has submitted an eleven-point memorandum to Urban Development Minister Nitish Mishra against the proposed Sitapuram township, arguing that an agriculture-dependent district with limited land would gain more from farm-based industry, irrigation and river management than from an urban township. The delegation opposed the proposed land pooling and lottery system for landowners and warned that ponds, water bodies and farmland around the Riga Sugar Mill area could be affected.

The minister has promised a socio-economic impact assessment of the project and told the delegation that farmers' concerns would be addressed, with changes to the proposal considered if required.

Tikait's warning carries the weight of the 2020-21 farmers' movement, which he helped lead to the repeal of three central farm laws. His argument is not against towns or housing, farmer groups say, but against a sequence in which surveys and tenders advance before the people who work the land have been heard, and in which compensation is discussed only for title-holders while tenants and agricultural labourers, who hold no documents, face losing the work itself.

The government says the townships are meant to plan growth before it turns chaotic, with technical support for data-driven planning. Whether that planning begins with the consent of the villages inside the blue lines will now be the test.