Title: Why is India facing growing conflict over land? - BBC News
Headings: Why is India facing growing conflict over land?
Why is India facing growing conflict over land?
Why is land so important in India?
Why does India need to acquire land?
How much land has been acquired?
Why did protests against land acquisition begin?
What does the Land Acquisition Law say?
What changes has the new government made to the law?
Is the opposition to the new bill justified?
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Content: Most affected landowners were paid little. Many were never paid. Non-owners who were dependent on land for livelihoods were routinely not paid. Very little resettlement or rehabilitation was done, and what was done was shoddy. Tribals and dalits (formerly known as untouchables) were the worst sufferers. It was a severely unjust system that ruined millions of families and in the process produced modern India - its infrastructure, irrigation and energy systems, industrialisation, and urbanisation. Why did protests against land acquisition begin? Criticism of the way the government was acquiring land had been building from civil society groups from the 1980s. Non-governmental group Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada movement) became the spearhead of resistance to a controversial dam project and a training ground for a generation of skilful organisers against forcible land acquisition. The turning point came in 2006-7 with the setting up of tax-free special economic zones to attract foreign investment and violent resistance to government's plans to set up a chemical hub in Nandigram in West Bengal.