The debate on the losses or gains in revenue due to the special economic zone (SEZ) policy is tantamount to missing the wood for the trees. In any event, the debate on numbers is by itself subject to assumption-based opinions across a spectrum of economists, who may not always agree. Besides, it is too early to generate data to enable anyone to speak with conviction. Let us not fall into the trap of numbers, but look at the larger picture. The fact remains that nobody has ever questioned the merits of SEZs or its economic potential. And there is a broad political consensus in the country that the SEZ policy is here to stay for good.
Cuts, too, has done a study recently for the ministry of commerce, but we did not toe their line blindly. We undertook an extensive field survey to see what is happening on the ground. Fourteen SEZs across the country were visited to look into the larger impact (both upstream and downstream) of the functioning of SEZs. We found that SEZs, in addition to export and investment growth, have had a very profound impact on the surroundings, signalling a positive trend, and a significant change in the mindset of the local people.
The new generation SEZs, such as at Chennai, Sriperumbudur, Hassan, Bangalore, Manikanchan etcetera, have created a tremendous local area impact in terms of direct employment, formal and informal activities, consumption pattern and social life in and around SEZs. They are creating jobs for a large number of semi-skilled workers. Wage rates are rising and are higher in SEZs than those outside.
The HSL SEZ at Hassan, Karnataka, has recruited mostly women who have graduated from one of the 80 odd schools in the district. It has, so far, employed approximately 1,700 women from nearby villages. Prior to the establishment of the gems & jewellery SEZ in Manikanchan, artisans used to migrate to Gujarat and its neighbouring states in search of employment, but now with the establishment of the Manikanchan SEZ, they are going back to West Bengal. One has to visit these SEZs to see the energy and vibrancy in the productive environment.
Turning to the question of land acquisition, which has, alas, been skewed by the debate on the Nandigram and Singur episodes, one can strongly argue that land has to be acquired for setting up industries, and land-use change does happen. Recently, in...an interview to The Telegraph, Kolkata, the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen emphatically said, “Prohibiting the use of agricultural land for industries is ultimately self-defeating”.
Land acquisition is a state subject in India. Unfortunately, the liberalisation process in the country has not been matched by reform in the rent-seeking patwari system of the states. Girish Sanghi, MP and industrialist, argued at a Cuts’ parliamentarians meeting at New Delhi on May 3, 2007, that once the SEZ application is approved by the Board of Approval, on the basis of a State Government recommendation, there should be no need for any administrative/legal requirements for land conversion.
According to the commerce department, only 0.000012% of India’s cultivable land will be used for establishing SEZs. Following the land-acquisition related controversies, an eGoM has decided that state governments would not buy land for private entrepreneurs and that only barren/wastelands or single croplands would be acquired for SEZs by them directly. There is now a consensus across political parties and CSO/NGOs, against the acquisition of agricultural land by private SEZ developers even at market prices. On the crucial issue of rehabilitation of landowners, another government policy is in the making to ensure that the dispossessed are suitably compensated.
Demolishing the romantic argument of farmers in love with their land, Sharad Joshi, MP, observed at a May 2007 meeting that in today’s changed circumstances, they are ready to sell it for their own betterment. If given the option to sell their land (obviously at ruling market prices), which amounts to voluntary retirement from farming, and gain employment in industrial activities, they will opt for it. This has been corroborated by many, including Cuts staff via personal interviews with farmers.
One innovative model to deal with rehabilitation came up in the case of the JSW Steel plant in Salboni, West Bengal, where farmers were compensated with cash, shares in the company taking over the land and also an assured job to each family. Even if the land-owning company fails, the landowner gets the market price for his land.
In conclusion, the imperatives of SEZs in the present context are clear, but some caveats should be recognised. There may be a potential threat of land being diverted to the real estate business, as opined by Rahul Bajaj, MP and business tycoon. At the same meeting, he said that the larger non-processing area will attract developers for the development of shopping malls, recreational facilities and...
even golf courses. These are some of the concerns which need to be tackled head on before the country can realise the benefits of the SEZ policy.
—The author is with Cuts international, an advocacy group. These are his personal views....
Pradeep S Mehta
Posted: 2007-09-12 00:00:00+05:30 IST
Updated: Sep 11, 2007 at 2345 hrs IST
Financial Express
Monday, November 17, 2008
One billion Indians, one billion ideas
A nation, at best, is an imagined community. At worst, it’s an idea whose time has not come or has become stale. The idea of India falls between two stools — living and dying, rising and falling every minute. And yet, there are more ideas mushrooming every day, helping, conflicting and destroying each other, and becoming new again. The idea of India, with its ancient traditions and young energy, is never a dull thought.
In a nation where the word for yesterday and tomorrow is the same — kal — future passes into the past in a jiffy and an idea can have only a few moments of glory. Jawaharlal Nehru, sitting in dank prison cell, tried to connect the past with the present with a panorama through ages in his The Discovery of India, creating an idea of India as a “unified whole” on the threshold of a giant leap forward. The idea was born a few months before the ancient civilization turned into a nation state amid bloody chaos at the stroke of midnight. Even as the world saw us as a horror of squalor, Nehru’s idea gave hope of a New India.
As the nation broke free from Gandhi’s idea of India as a loose confederation of self-sufficient villages and began setting up ‘modern temples’, it kept experiencing the rituals of making and unmaking as different forces pulled it in opposite directions. V S Naipaul captured India’s many struggles in A Million Mutinies Now, an acidic attack on the idea of “unity in diversity”.
The revolutions that Naipaul saw in 1962 failed to destroy the idea as India’s democracy remained defiantly anomalous. In the Nineties, Sunil Khilnani’s The Idea of India underscored the strength of Indian democracy — the result of a long struggle by the silent majority against the despots and colonialists; democracy was also the glue that kept India together.
By this time, the country’s success was being measured in terms of GDP and its collective happiness fluctuated with the sensex. And New India began to dominate the national discourse, giving birth to a host of new writers with a vision for the future. The most prolific among them was former President A P J Abdul Kalam, who churned out four populist books, all dealing with a single theme: how to make
India a developed country. In his
2020 — A Vision for the New Millennium, the rocket scientist presented a few action plans for the country’s young people; in Envisioning an Empowered Nation, he talked of networking the thoughts of one billion people towards a common goal; and in Ignited Minds, he addressed the young directly: surge ahead as a developed nation or perish in perpetual poverty.
Since living in a developed nation is still a fantasy in India, Gurcharan Das’s India Unbound, which argued that India’s new economy was unleashing the country’s “animal spirits” and will make the “giant elephant” into a truly global power, became a bestseller. The middle class lapped up Das’s ideas on why “India needs to embrace capitalism more wholeheartedly, for all the costs and risks.”
With capitalism itself under scrutiny, Shashi Tharoor’s idea of post-colonial India —The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone — in which he analyzes the changing nation, makes more sense, with the writer saying the road ahead may be a bit bumpy for its one billion people.
One billion people means one billion argumentative minds,
and maybe one billion ideas of India. Maybe there are many Indias, living in different time zones, hopping back and forth between reality and mythology, slipping in and out of consciousness. Maybe Nehru was wrong in trying to “discover” the nation. Maybe, we needed to invent it. Maybe, Gandhi’s experiment with rural swaraj was not such a bad idea. Maybe Ambedkar’s idea of democracy — one man, one vote and one vote, one value — was an idea we should have pursued with greater care. The possibilities are immense. We can all keep trying to invent India. After all, it’s just an idea.
In a nation where the word for yesterday and tomorrow is the same — kal — future passes into the past in a jiffy and an idea can have only a few moments of glory. Jawaharlal Nehru, sitting in dank prison cell, tried to connect the past with the present with a panorama through ages in his The Discovery of India, creating an idea of India as a “unified whole” on the threshold of a giant leap forward. The idea was born a few months before the ancient civilization turned into a nation state amid bloody chaos at the stroke of midnight. Even as the world saw us as a horror of squalor, Nehru’s idea gave hope of a New India.
As the nation broke free from Gandhi’s idea of India as a loose confederation of self-sufficient villages and began setting up ‘modern temples’, it kept experiencing the rituals of making and unmaking as different forces pulled it in opposite directions. V S Naipaul captured India’s many struggles in A Million Mutinies Now, an acidic attack on the idea of “unity in diversity”.
The revolutions that Naipaul saw in 1962 failed to destroy the idea as India’s democracy remained defiantly anomalous. In the Nineties, Sunil Khilnani’s The Idea of India underscored the strength of Indian democracy — the result of a long struggle by the silent majority against the despots and colonialists; democracy was also the glue that kept India together.
By this time, the country’s success was being measured in terms of GDP and its collective happiness fluctuated with the sensex. And New India began to dominate the national discourse, giving birth to a host of new writers with a vision for the future. The most prolific among them was former President A P J Abdul Kalam, who churned out four populist books, all dealing with a single theme: how to make
India a developed country. In his
2020 — A Vision for the New Millennium, the rocket scientist presented a few action plans for the country’s young people; in Envisioning an Empowered Nation, he talked of networking the thoughts of one billion people towards a common goal; and in Ignited Minds, he addressed the young directly: surge ahead as a developed nation or perish in perpetual poverty.
Since living in a developed nation is still a fantasy in India, Gurcharan Das’s India Unbound, which argued that India’s new economy was unleashing the country’s “animal spirits” and will make the “giant elephant” into a truly global power, became a bestseller. The middle class lapped up Das’s ideas on why “India needs to embrace capitalism more wholeheartedly, for all the costs and risks.”
With capitalism itself under scrutiny, Shashi Tharoor’s idea of post-colonial India —The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone — in which he analyzes the changing nation, makes more sense, with the writer saying the road ahead may be a bit bumpy for its one billion people.
One billion people means one billion argumentative minds,
and maybe one billion ideas of India. Maybe there are many Indias, living in different time zones, hopping back and forth between reality and mythology, slipping in and out of consciousness. Maybe Nehru was wrong in trying to “discover” the nation. Maybe, we needed to invent it. Maybe, Gandhi’s experiment with rural swaraj was not such a bad idea. Maybe Ambedkar’s idea of democracy — one man, one vote and one vote, one value — was an idea we should have pursued with greater care. The possibilities are immense. We can all keep trying to invent India. After all, it’s just an idea.
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