SEZs – ANOTHER MASS LAND GRABBING IN THE NAME OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

Corporate mafias new avatar is SEZs by  grabbing thousand and lakhs of acres of land in the name of SEZs.  Today democracy is in danger because of political and corporate greed.  All the democratic countries acting for the welfare of corporate sector only.  In a democracy the role and size of nation states and corporate sectors is expanding rapidly on a day to day basis, while the smaller unbargainable individual and citizen groups right is shrinking and they are exploited by the state and corporates.  What is happened in Nandigram, Siliguri and other parts of the country in the name of development and SEZs.  Wherever corporate industrialized democracy , there is a danger to the billions of lives of poor citizen.  The political and corporate greed taking its toll through  bigger industrialization and real-estatization  in democracy by snatching away the right and livelihood of the innocent citizen. 

In India there are many restrictions for an individual hold some land or money and other properties.  At the same time, a company/ corporate can hold any large amount of money/land other properties.  The size is unlimited.  When the ruler was a king the interference in public life was very limited.  During kings rule before British invasion, our economy was agrarian. Development was inclusive and every individual was accommodated and absorbed in agrarian economy and old caste system.  During king’s rule there was less intrusion in private life.  Today,  state-nation and corporate sector  making intrusion in every individual life and individuals becomes slave of the state and corporate sector.  Thus democracy pushed us into complete slavory and bankruptcy.

In future there are many challenges all the democratic countries are facing?   We need to define and role of state/nation and corporate sector? Whether industrialization should be done at the cost of agriculture and agrarian economy?  Why many square kilometers of land required for setting up an industry even if the actual usage of land and industry is sometime below 1%.   How much wealth can an individual/ corporate hold?  Is a stronger state/ corporate is good for the country at the cost of freedom of individual citizen?  Why the role of the nation-state/ corporate is restricted to individuals life? 

Even the British is very careful when it come to development.  There was no forceful and imposed development at the cost of innocent poor citizen.  There was proper rehabilitation when it comes to replacement and displacement through development. 

Coming back to SEZ, it is a special exploitation zone.  The SEZ zone acting like an independent country.  Most of the cases, many of the existing laws are not applicable to SEZ.  What is the difference between a new independent country and SEZ?  Some of the SEZs size is more than an independent country like ‘Vatican’. That means we are making hundreds and thousands of smaller countries like SEZs in India at the cost of poor citizen! On the other hands, large number of SEZs also affect our national integration. Who knows few years after, they will not ask independence from India considering the size of acquisition!

India’s share in global export is below 1.5%. India’s population; is more than 10% of total world population.  So whether such special  export/economic (exploitation) zone required for India considering our population, geography and rich poor ratios in the country.  Is it a new idea for corporate/ multinationals idea of evasion of taxes and indirect investment in land and properties and thus create a scarcity of land and resources to large section of people?

Most of the political parties have a unique voice in fastly implementing the SEZs for pleasing big corporate and multinationals, except some odd small voice here and there.  One surprising fact is that when poor is getting exploited, our system keeps a studied  silence! The judiciary and media should have strongly reacted to avoid such Nandigram type situation.  The faith of the judiciary is eroding rapidly due to over shadowing other issues in the judiciary.  In such a situation people expected a strong reaction and intervention of the highest level of the judiciary to protect their fundamental rights of the citizen of Nandigram and other such places?  It is quite unfortunate and disturbing that in such a situation, they kept mum?  Even on Delhi sealing drive, the judiciary taken different stand and showed  no mercy to the poor citizen? 

 The time has come to think again about our democracy - what it stood for - SEZs?  Here Gandhigiri not going to work. We need another Subhash Chandrabose? We need a second freedom struggle from our own rulers.