Saturday, March 17, 2007
S Gurumurthy on Nandigram and the SEZ Land Grab
http://www.newindpress.com/column/News.asp?Topic=-97&Title=S%2EGurumurthy&ID=IE620070315134046&nDate=&Sub=&Cat=&
The ELM in India always dimisses Gurumurthy with condescension, most of it undeserving. Here he defines what Nandigram means in the larger Economic polity in India. I am not sure if SEZ's are considered 'foreign territory' but the best way to characterise the present 'SEZ' fad is that it is simply a land-grab and Real-estate scam.
Taking away good, fertile, agricultural land for industrial gas-belchers is a bad idea (san starts fuming now!). Two-thirds of India is dependent on agriculture and we desperatly need to corporatise or 'co-operatise' (e.g. Amul project in Gujarat) agriculture. Read this article to see how much wastage happens in India (figures may be inflated as this seems a press-release from the food processing industry) http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/mar/16food.htm
Why can't India build solar powered manufacturing 'SEZs' in the arid desert of Rajasthan or the Rann of Kutch? That land is strategically a better candidate - not only as it will not diminish agriculture - it is also closer to ports on the Western Coast.
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2 comments:
Gurumurthy is wrong about some things
"If the CPM is entrenched in power in the state as if perpetually, the singular reason is that it acquired agricultural lands from the exploitative zamindars with the militancy that is its brand and distributed them to the landless."
This is such a load of commie propaganda. Commies won elections with "scientific rigging" and massive control of media (manufacturing consent) in Bengal and rest of India.
"The ideological anti-climax at Nandigram is that the very government which acquired the lands from the `exploiting landlords' distributed the lands in small lots is reacquiring them by force and in bulk to be handed over to `exploiting capitalists'!"
not true - Buddhadeb had already announced that the SEZ was not going to be built in Nandigram - the commies being CONTROL FREAKS could not tolerate that a part of their state was not under their ABSOLUTE CONTROL. That is why the police was sent in to retake CONTROL (not to take land for building the SEZ). The people who were protesting were the rebellious local cadres of the CPM themselves along with God knows who else.
The simple fact is that the Bengal commies screwed up. They are only experts at playing politics and hijacking existing institutions. They are incapable of building new institutions or running a complex industrial operation (because they do not have any common sense - by definition).
The statement about the wastage of food has to do with lack of infrastructure - but then to build infrastructure you will need land - land for warehouses, land for cold storage facilities, land for food processing industries, land for roads, land for railways, land for airports - and all of these have to be near the food producing zone.
LoL, Ghost -- I agree with you that industry needs to be more selective on where it sets up SEZs.
But I also agree with habc that Budda doesn't just want there to be industry -- he wants industrial plots that are under his control. He is trying to imitate his masters in Beijing, not recognizing that he doesn't have their absolute power.
And the latest
Chinese riots Hunan
show that even the Beijing overlords need to be increasingly careful in how they crack the whip.
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