The former finance secretary and former Indian ambassador to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), S.P. Shukla, has demanded that the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act be repealed.
Mr. Shukla was speaking at a national convention against SEZs organised at Gorai village on the outskirts of Mumbai on November 25 and 26. came together to resist the anti-people model of development that SEZs represented. Farmers, fishermen, labourers, activists, artists, and academicians from 13 States participated in the convention.
Decimation of local peoples
Mr. Shukla said India was following the Australian and American way to becoming a superpower. He pointed out that those countries “had blood on their hands,” as their model of development involved decimating the disempowered local population consisting of Aborigines and Red Indians respectively. “Why do you want to be a superpower?” he asked, indicating that a pro-people model of development was needed in place of the SEZ Act that disregarded peoples rights.
Employment myth
Till date, 1046 SEZs have been approved by the Union government, including 206 in Maharashtra that would require over 1.5 lakh acres of land. The convention pointed out that the track record of these zones showed that instead of increasing employment and generating infrastructure for public good, they were private land grab exercises for the profit of corporates.
Social activist Medha Patkar said, “These nations [of corporates] within nations are a threat to the sovereignty of the country.” Recounting the experience of the Reliance Maha Mumbai SEZ in Raigad spread over 35,000 acres, Ulka Mahajan of the Sarvahara Jan Andolan said, “The compensation offered was Rs.10 lakh per acre, while the market price of just the adjacent land was Rs.1.2 crore.”