Farmers who gave land for capital can’t find jobs

They get up to ₹50,000 for leasing an acre of land for construction of new Andhra capital but are forced to switch to another occupation to earn a livelihood

I can’t do anything else except farming. With the land being taken away by the government for capital, I have no other work to do. MANNAVA MURAHARI , farmer

AMARAVATI: Until a couple of years ago, Mannava Murahari was a hard-working farmer, struggling all through the day in his twoacre plot to grow vegetables.

Now the 55 year old is idle. Like all the other farmers in Krishnayapalem, a village in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, he surrendered his land to the state government for its construction of Amaravati. Formerly villages and farmland, the area has been getting developed as the new state capital since 2015.

The project has transformed the daily lives of everyone in the area: major landowners, smallscale farmers, tenant farmers, and daily labourers alike.

Murahari was sipping tea at roadside stall in his village. “I can’t do anything else except farming,” he said. “With the land being taken away by the government for capital, I have no other work to do.” A man named Prasad, who had less than an acre of land in Venkatayapalem, described a similar predicament. Wealthier farmers, he said, were able to buy land in other districts, whereas those who had only small plots were stuck aimlessly subsisting on the annual government handouts. “We have no resources to buy land elsewhere to do farming,” he said.

According to Ch Sridhar, the commissioner of the Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority, as many as 27,000 farmers, across 29 villages, have surrendered nearly 35,000 acres under ‘land pooling’. This is a system in which landowners voluntarily give their land to the government. In exchange, they start receiving an annual fee. When development is finished, the government returns a portion of their original holdings.

In Amaravati, farmers are being paid ₹30,000 to ₹50,000 per acre. Once the capital city is built, the farmers will receive both 1,000 square yards of residential land and 250 to 400 square yards of commercial land per acre they gave up initially.

Most larger landowners quickly adjusted to this new economic order. Besides using the annual money to buy new land elsewhere, some have shifted into real estate or set up restaurants for the government employees now moving to Amaravati.

“I had no other option but to get into the real estate business,” said Nandakishore, a 30 year old whose father gave away eight acres under land pooling.

For farmers who had less land to give and less capital on hand, the transformation of daily life has tended to be more bewildering. Many had known only farming their whole lives and are now jobless. Except for a few pockets of vegetables and fodder, there has been no agriculture in these villages for last couple of years.

Some former farmers have managed to learn another trade. Rama Rao set up an iron shop that does brisk business every day. Subba Rao became a real estate agent. “We had two acres of land that have now gone into the core capital of Amaravati,” he said. “We need something to eke out a livelihood.”

Murahari seemed convinced of the overall benefits of land pooling. “Even if we struggled in the fields all through the year, we never used to get a return of ₹50,000 per acre,” he said. “We have not lost anything by giving our lands. Except that we have no work to do now.” The unemployment caused by land pooling harms tenant farmers and agricultural labourers most, said Alla Ramakrishna Reddy, an MLA from the YSR Congress party.