Special Economic Zones, the new mantra of develpment in our nation, promised to make our nation one of the most investor friendly and one with high rates of development. To say the truth, the SEZs do fulfill these goals. But the cost at which this happens is a worrying factor. The entire concept of SEZs are specially designed to benefit the investor, the investor and the investor alone! The sole reason why the government promotes this is to boost the figures of annual growth percentage, export income, FDI and increase in per capita income.
Our nations recent obsession with SEZs can be attributed to the reasons stated above. The government cannot take any measures of its own to raise the quality of living and so they try to paint a rosy picture of the situation by announcing high growthrates, rise in per capita income and the best and the easiest way to do that is to sanction Special Economic Zones where interested parties and investors are allowed to setup their enterprises without having to pay taxes, the land is provided by the government, labour and union laws are not followed as the workers are not allowed to join a trade union and in short, the company can do as it wishes in the land alloted by the government.
The SEZs help only in creating overblown development figures but do not represent the true situation in the country. The first problem with the SEZs come from the way land is acquired from the occupants. In India, land can be acquired by the government at a price that is decided by the government. But when SEZs are setup, the industrialists need land that has access to resources and amenities like water, roads, electricity ets and in most parts of the country, land with these facilites is used for agriculture. So prime agricultural land is taken up for establishing SEZs and the farmers are removed from their land- their only source of livelihood- to make way for industries. The farmers are left without a source of income once they are deprived of their land and the compensation they get is nothing when compared to what they have lost. It is not just their source of income that has been taken away, but an entire way of life, customs and traditions, as they have been practising agriculture for generations and when one day they are asked to leave, everything that they have held on to in their entire lives is being thrown into jeopardy. The only beneficieries from all these are the ones who get to set up an SEZ as they get the land free of cost, they get cheap labour from those displaced by the SEZ, raw materials are easily available, the government too provides various incentives like electricity at lower rates and they are also exempted from various taxes.
The advantages claimed by the government for establishing SEZs are that they generate employment, increase industrial productivity and output, promote development of our nation and reduce poverty. Well, all these advantages have their own negative effects as well. They generate employment by displacing farmers and so they generate employment by threatening the livelihood of hundreds of farmers, they increase industrial production by adversely affecting agriculture and the claim that they lead to nations development is hollow as they are exempted from taxes and infact increase the number of poor by displacing people from their livelihoods.
The concept of SEZs is a good one as it can, if implemented in the right way, serve the nation and the people. But in our nation, politicians, industrialists and middle-men are all out to make profits for themselves and do not bother what is the price that others have to pay for their greed. The politicians want statistics, to make it seem that they are doing their job and the industrialists exploit this to suit their needs and the common people are the ones affected. The lives lost in Nandigram and the hundreds displaced and remaining to be displaced due to land acquisition for SEZs are calling out for justice and asking us 'why do we have to pay the price for a few people to fill their pockets?'
The government must stop acquiring pristine agricultural land for SEZs and must pay due compensation for all those moved from their lands along with arrangements made for their rehabilitation. SEZs must not become places where the owners can do anything and can get away with it by giving an excuse that it is a special economic zone. The workers must have their rights and the goverment should ensure that the SEZs do only what they have been permitted to do and do not divert the land for other purposes to make illegal profit especially because it is easy to convert the land acquired under the pretext of taking it up for SEZs into real estate hubs and other ventures.
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