Andhranews

Over 50,000 farmers from the remote Pen-Panvel tehsils of Maharashtra�s Raigad district assembled in Mumbai the other day demanding that the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) be done away with. A massive rally condemned the nexus between the corporate company Reliance and the Maharashtra government. On the same day, 25 trade unions in the Pune area opposed the �anti-farmer and anti-labour� SEZ policy and projects.

It was pure and simple land-grab by the rich corporate powers, builders and real estate owners in the name of export and economic activity. So in no uncertain terms the farmers warned against the usurping of their lands. They opposed the acquisition of land, the tax concessions of billions of rupees and the winding down of the laws of the land for the sake of corporate powers. But the state government did not react.

Some of us, NGOs, including representatives of Maharashtra, met Union minister for industry and commerce, Kamal Nath at his office in New Delhi to draw his attention to the anger of the restive farmers and agitating unorganised labour. We also told him about the acquisition of agricultural land in Haryana, Punjab, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh for industrialists on less than market price.

He assured us (whatever it meant) that the government of India did not want this to happen and gave us a copy of the letter he had written to the chief ministers. The letter had requested them �to ensure that the land acquired for the purpose of SEZs in the state is primarily waste or barren land. Agricultural land may be acquired only if necessary to meet the minimum area requirement.�

The minister does not realise that this little leeway that has been given is playing havoc. The states are acquiring agricultural land and in defence of this are saying that the Centre has allowed them to make up for the deficit in the size of SEZs from agricultural land. �I can�t help it,� Kamal Nath said. �Land is a state subject and the Centre does not come into the picture.� This may well be the Constitutional position. But it is the Centre which is behind the industry.

Surprisingly, the SEZs have come up first in the Congress-run states. So pet seems to be the project with the Congress that the party has taken to task a Haryana leader who challenged the state�s acquisition of 35,000 acres of agricultural land for an industrial house. Congress president Sonia Gandhi has voiced her opposition to the acquisition of agricultural land. So it is strange that she too did not listen to those who were objecting.

What I do not understand is why the government should come into the picture at all. Even today, the industrialists talk to the landowners directly and decide the purchase price. But when the government is involved, what happens is that, in the name of SEZ the government acquires agricultural land at a price which is way below the market price. SEZ promoters claim that they have given the state government a higher price for the land than the one for which it was acquired. Where does the margin go? Some of it may have been diverted to the treasury but some must have found its way to the pockets of political leaders.

The worst part about SEZ is that the uprooted farmers and casual labour have to fend for themselves. There is no proper rehabilitation plan. The authorities� plea is that when a farmer has been �paid� for the land, he has no claim on the government. But this would have been the case if the government had not requisitioned the land to begin with. After doing so, and making thousands of acres available to business houses at a cheap price, the government cannot shrug off its responsibility.

It can still tell the promoters to make the same size of uncultivable land cultivable to make up for the agricultural land which the government acquires for SEZ. The Centre does not seem to oppose the acquisition of one-produce land, knowing full well that two-third of the land in India is one-crop. In the name of development, the Central government appears to be bent on reducing the area that agricultural land occupies and hence curtail the quantum of food production.

While doing so, New Delhi is also scrapping environmental laws, a move that violates human rights. Since the aim is to locate the industry on prime cultivable land, no consideration is shown for the forests, the greenery and even the renewable sources of water. SEZs are the Central government�s dream projects for GDP growth and for competing with China. What we see is a fresh wave of a neo-economic agenda that was pursued by the Atal Behari Vajpayee-led coalition and is now being eagerly promoted by the Manmohan Singh government.

Kamal Nath said that the country needed to decide whether it wanted industry or not, and if the answer was �yes,� the government had no option except to acquire land. His argument would carry weight if he were to exclude cultivable land. There is plenty of banjar land or land which has been overused. The price for industry cannot be the ruination of farmers; and what about the labour? Land creates jobs for them.

Equally undemocratic is the manner in which the ministry of environment and forests is pushing through an anti-environment, anti-poor version of the Environment Impact Assessment Notification. Civil society and environmental activists have raised their voice against it. The ministry is acting in direct contravention of the federal character of our country. The government is not consulting the public at large, in particular, movements and networks that have repeatedly demonstrated against the lackadaisical concern of the ministry to environmental and social justice issues. The ministry has also given the state governments the status they have accorded the corporate sector.

Information provided by the ministry of environment and forests in response to an RTI request has confirmed that the ministry had only consulted the industry and its lobby groups, while comments sent by many people�s organisations were not even registered.
The ministry also brazenly admits that it has specifically consulted �apex industry associations� such as CII, Assocham, FICCI and CREDAI and that a draft of the final notification had been circulated to the apex industry associations and Central ministries.

The faulty notification issued to hand over the responsibility of granting clearance to a large number of projects to the state governments without any checks or counterchecks means that projects will be cleared indiscriminately.� According to new instructions, construction projects need not go for screening. They also do not need to conduct public consultation. Several large capacity projects have been left out of the notification altogether. All building and construction projects with less than 20,000 square metres of built-up area like Vasant Kunj Square Mall are now exempt from the notification. All in the name of development!

# posted by mashup @ 11:53 AM