INDIA: Private university halted over land scandal

The drive along the spectacularly beautiful coast of India's eastern state of Orissa, which links the ancient temple towns of Puri and Konarak, cuts through the heart of the Balukhand Wildlife Sanctuary. So when the state government allocated 8,000 acres of protected and fertile land for the new private Vedanta University, opposition was huge - even though the state has few higher education institutions.

Local rallies, marches, sloganeering saying 'Vedanta go back' and 'No to privatisation', and candlelight marches that continued for months have successfully brought the plans to a halt.

"The Vedanta University project will not benefit us in any way. I don't have money to send my children to private school. How can I send them to such an expensive private university? The only thing Vedanta will do is take our farmlands away," said Babuli Hunda, a local farmer who has been protesting for the past three years.

The confrontation between the state government, the university's private sponsor and the people has snowballed into a wider controversy over allotting land to private higher education institutions at a time when a law to allow in foreign providers is making its way through the Indian parliament.

Orissa's Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik signed an agreement with the London-based mining company Vedanta Resources Corporation in 2006 to set up Vedanta University, with financial backing from British-based mining and metals magnate Anil Agarwal.

"The land allocated to Vedanta is not a wasteland. At least 3,000 farmers will lose their livelihood if the university comes up," said Lingaraj Pradhan, President of Samajwadi Jan Parishad, a local political party based on Gandhian non-violence principles in Bhubaneswar, the state capital.

"Part of the land allocated also belongs to the Jagannath Temple. It is a religious site and the government has no business allocating temple property to a foreign-based organisation," Pradhan said.

Orissa's Chief Minister proclaimed that the proposed university would be world-class. It would focus on research and the best faculty would be hired. A research and development park would serve as an incubator for spin-off companies and it would even have Olympic-standard sports facilities.

The Orissa government also promised a four-lane expressway from the new campus to the international airport near Bhubaneswar, 70 kilometres away. The campus would have a railway station and the area would be developed into a large university town that would house a permanent population of 500,000 in addition to 100,000 students.

For a state that has few higher education institutions of quality, this was the perfect blueprint, and the huge sums committed by Agarwal were seen as a major act of philanthropy.

But it has united villagers, farmers, local and national NGOs and activists, international rights organisations like Amnesty International and members of the Dongria Kondh tribe displaced by Vedanta Mining's activities in Nyamgiri Hills.

"For the Anil Agarwal Foundation, Vedanta is not about higher education. When the foundation faced opposition for illegal and unlawful mining in Orissa's Kalahandi district, it came up with the university idea as a gimmick to draw attention away from the controversy," Sudhir Patnaik, a social activist and writer (unrelated to the chief minister) told University World News.

Patnaik added that a 'world-class' university would not necessarily serve the needs of one of India's poorest states.

"Our government colleges and universities are a shambles. There is a huge shortage of faculty, the labs do not have material, and the quality of teaching is abysmal. Instead of investing in improving the educational opportunities for students of the state, the government is focusing on inviting foreign investment for private institutions that only the rich can access," Patnaik said.

Notably, the Memorandum of Understanding between Vedanta and the state government contains certain clauses that place the interest of the state second to that of the investor.

The university would have complete autonomy with regard to administration, admissions, fee structure, curriculum and faculty selection. It would also have immunity from the state government's reservation system, which sets quotas for entry for socially and economically disadvantaged lower castes and tribes who make up 38% of Orissa's population.

"The fee structure will be on par with international universities and there will be no special provision for the poor-but-meritorious students of Orissa. How many students of Orissa will get the chance to pursue their studies in Vedanta University?" asked Bhimeswar Swain, the convener of Vedanta Viswavidyalay Sangharsh Samiti, the organisation spearheading the protests. Its grassroots in Bhubaneswar includes activists, farmers and local people opposed to the university.

"Students from European and other Asian countries will come to this university as it would be cheaper for them. So this university would serve the purpose of rich and foreign students mostly," Swain said.

According to the Lingaraj Pradhan, big businesses should not be allowed to further their commercial ambitions behind the guise of investing in higher education. "The first opposition we had to Vedanta was its need for 8,000 acres [3,237 hectares] of land. Why would a university need so much land if it did not plan subsidiary estate and tourism activities?" Pradhan queried.

Protests forced the government to reduce the land allocation to 6,000 acres. This is still 10 times the area proposed for eight prestigious new Indian Institutes of Technology. Other major universities typically sit on 500 to 600 acre sites.

Following consistent protests, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests withdrew the conditional environmental clearance for the project issued in May 2010.

And in November 2010, the Orissa High Court quashed the land acquisition process for Vedanta and directed the authorities to return the acquired land to its owners. The court responded to several public interest litigations filed by activists and locals that alleged the Orissa government and Vedanta did not follow land acquisition laws governing private companies.

While the opposition continues to keep a close watch, the future of Vedanta University is now uncertain.

In January, the Anil Agarwal Foundation appealed to the Supreme Court challenging the Orissa High Court verdict of November 2010. But the apex court ordered a status quo in respect of the land acquired or sought to be acquired, thus putting the project on hold.

With Vendanta halted, the wider issues have come to the fore. "There is a big need to look at land allocation policy, especially when big private players and universities are eyeing India," said Sudhir Patnaik.

"Vedanta is like any of the foreign universities that the neo-liberal policies of the central government have encouraged. Once the foreign universities come, they will get prime land at subsidised rates, but they will not provide subsidised education to the state's students, Patnaik told University World News.

Prafulla Samantharay, president of the Orissa rights group Lok Sakthi Aghijan, said the Vedanta controversy was an important lesson for other state governments.

"Most state governments are blindly encouraging private participation in higher education. But they are not bothered about issues of access to these institutions by students in their own states. Both private players and foreign educational institutions cannot come to India and say they will ignore equity because they will provide quality," Samantharay said.

"The government cannot give away rich farmlands for a pittance irrespective of what private players promise. Setting up world-class universities is not bad. But doing that at the risk of displacing the poor and ignoring the needs of local students is what we are opposed to."

Comment:
The article seems to directed at the local politicians who can't see the immense benefits of such a project. The author should have interviewed some intellectuals/academicians to establish their views on this project.

Nirakar Sshoo

Comment:
The Vedanta University as envisioned is audacious in its goals and that naturally leads to scepticism. Also, the Orissa government's style of functioning does not include going out to the public and convincing them of the importance of a project. That plus the existing reputation of the promoter in Orissa has somewhat doomed the project.

However, if one overlooks that for a moment and analyses this project from a "project feasibility" perspective, then this university, if established as envisioned, could have a historical impact on India and especially Orissa.

Several of us did a thorough analysis of this and came up with a report dated January 2011 available at bit.ly

A Facebook page www.facebook.com/vedanta, maintained by some of the supporters of this university, includes individual articles by many people (some are academics) about their positive thoughts on Vedanta University.

Professor Chitta Baral,
Arizona State University