‘Raigad votes against SEZ in referendum’

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/09/23/stories/2008092352471000.htm

Mumbai, Sept. 22 A majority of people in the 22 villages in Raigad district have voted against the SEZ in the referendum process which was held on Sunday, claimed Mr N.D. Patil, senior leader of Peasants and Workers Party of India, who is spearheading the agitation.

The State Government is likely to announce the result of the referendum in next 15 days.

The promoters of Maha Mumbai SEZ, which includes promoters of Reliance Industries Ltd, want to set up 10,000 hectares SEZ in the district.

SEZ is expected to attract an investment of nearly Rs 40,000 crore and generate 20 lakh jobs.

Mr Patil said that although the Maharashtra Government has undertaken the referendum process, it is not necessary that the report would be tabled any time in the near future.

“When under pressure, the State Government acts in a circular manner.

“The report could be further handed over to a committee, which will take the further circuitous route,” he said.

Mr Patil said that the people of the district do not want SEZ and no amount of compensation from the corporate houses and government will change their view about selling their land.

A senior official in the industries department said that in the eventuality of referendum going against the promoters of the SEZ, the land acquisition process for the other mega projects and SEZs in the State will suffer.

“We will not be mute spectators; we are also prepared for a court battle,” Mr Patil said.

Raigad villagers participate in referendum on Reliance project
21 Sep, 2008, 1717 hrs IST, IANS

 

PEN/MUMBAI: Thousands of villagers around Pen area in Maharashtra’s Raigad district Sunday took part in a referendum to decide the fate of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Group’s proposed Special Economic Zone (SEZ).
District Collector Vinayak Nipun and Superintendent of Police Pradeep Digavkar were present to monitor the referendum – the country’s first on an industrial project – even as a huge security blanket covered Pen, around 150 km from Mumbai, a police official told IANS.
Residents of 22 villagers who will be affected by the Reliance Group’s mega-project came out in substantial numbers to give their verdict on the SEZ.
During the referendum, a small group of people at one village opposed to the project and raised anti-Reliance and anti-government slogans.
Around 10,000 farmers from these villages are reluctant to part with 3,415 hectares of land for the project, touted to be Asia’s largest.
Through the referendum, the district administration is ascertaining their views and recording their statements, which will be forwarded to the state government.
The villagers’ sentiments shall be taken into consideration before deciding whether the proposed Rs.400-billion (Rs.40,000-crore) project can come up in that region or not.
A district official said the outcome of Sunday’s referendum may be available only by early October.
The Reliance SEZ is slated to come up over 10,000 hectares in Pen, Uran and Panvel sub-districts of Raigad. However, the group has faced stiff resistance from the people of Pen, necessitating the referendum.
Meanwhile, Shiv Sena executive president Udhav Thackeray has offered to secure a better financial deal for farmers willing to sell their land for the SEZ.
He made the offer to a delegation of villagers that called on him in Mumbai two days ago and conveyed the sentiments of the local population regarding the SEZ.

Technorati Tags: SEZ,Referendum,Maharastra,Reliance

NHRC issues notice to centre on land acquisition act

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/2182007022612…

New Delhi, Feb. 26 (PTI): The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued notice to the Centre on a petition seeking amendment in the “out-dated” Land Acquisition Act 1894, which it alleged was being used “arbitrarily” against farmers to grab their land.

The petitioner P Pullarao, an economist from Andhra Pradesh, moved the Commission alleging that in the past three years many acres of land has been acquired under the Act, displacing over 10 million farmers across the country in the name of development.

“No explaination is being given by the state governments or officials. The land is taken away using the Act. Farmers are thrown away from their villages without ensuring them any proper rehabilitation,” he said.

Pointing out “flaws” in the current land acquisition procedure, he said, “the District Collector issues a notification of land acquisition. It is then followed by revenue officials giving notice of vacation from the property.”

While drawing the attention of the Commission to the various provisions under Special Economic Zones (SEZs) which does not allow any public hearing on the issue of land acquisitions, Pullarao said it amounts to human rights violation.

Terming the Section 3 (2) of Chapter II titled “Establishment of SEZ” as a “bully” act on the part of the government, Pullarao has sought intervention of the NHRC in the matter.

The section states that “any person who intends to set up a SEZ may after identifying the area make a proposal to the state government concerned for the purpose of setting up the SEZ”.

In Andhra Pradesh, alleged Pullarao, the officials had been grabbing the land by forcing the farmers to voluntarily accept the compensation whatever decided by them.

Seeking suspension of the land acquisition Act, the petitioner has urged the NHRC to direct the Ministry of Rural Development to amend it in a “sensitive manner.”

Taking cognisance of the complaint, the Commision has also issued notice to Andhra Pradesh to submit the factual report in the matter within six weeks.

Singur, Nandigram and Industrialisation of West Bengal-II

http://pd.cpim.org/2007/0128/01282007_nilotpal.htm

Nilotpal Basu

THE SEZ QUESTION AND NANDIGRAM

There has been extensive coverage on the stand of the Left parties on the current SEZ policy of the government in these columns. The major areas of our disagreement with the extant policy pertain to nature of the land use, extent of land use, the tax package and the rehabilitation package. The design of the current package of the government has undergone a qualitative change when SEZ rules were framed under the Act and process of approvals which has led to sanctions being given to 237 SEZ proposals.

This huge number immediately brings to the fore the contrast with China which had successfully executed the SEZ approach to ensure investment and employment generation. The total number of SEZs in China is only 6 and they are concentrated on manufacturing exports by linking these zones to physical infrastructure like port and other transport facilities. 

In India, apart from the already sanctioned 237 SEZs, the Board of Approval gave the ‘in-principle’ approval for another 166 SEZs within less than a year of the promulgation of the SEZ rules. A scan of the number and nature of these SEZs reveal a clear-cut picture of regional and sectoral imbalance. Of the 237 sanctioned SEZ proposals, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamilnadu account for 147 SEZs which is 60 per cent of the total sanctions. Again, 148 out of the 237 SEZs approved so far are in the IT sector. Further, preliminary studies are also revealing a major possibility of real estate activities in many of these proposed and sanctioned SEZs instead of actual manufacturing/processing activities which would have been desirable from employment generation point of view.

The crux of the difference between the government, on the one hand, and the Left parties, on the other, is on the nature of investment. Unless investments lead to production and employment generation, the stated objective of the SEZ policy will stand defeated. On the other hand, the present situation poses the danger of investment flowing into financial activities which can, at best, heat up the economy without any corresponding employment generation – a classic example of ‘jobless growth’. 

Nandigram in East Midnapur district of West Bengal is one of the seven SEZs sanctioned in West Bengal. The proposed SEZ will develop a mega chemical hub. The choice of this mega chemical hub in the Haldia region is the result of a long exercise undertaken by the government of India where this venue was chosen alongwith four other sites in the country. With the existing petroleum refinery of the IOC, the petrochemical plant at Haldia in the joint sector and the huge facility of Mitsubishi chemicals, this decision to have the mega chemical hub located here was a natural conclusion. Incidentally, the Haldia petrochemicals have led to 700 units in the downstream providing an employment to over 1 lakh people. The government of West Bengal has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Indian Oil Corporation to be an anchor investor for the project, while the Salim group will be the promoter for building the infrastructure. The Salim group will also build a 100 km six-lane expressway bypassing Kolkata and the new township at Rajarhat and Salt Lake, the eastern satellites. The expressway will be a major link and part of the central backbone of the road network in the state linking Darjeeling Hills in the north to the Sagar islands in the south. The expressway will also link to a bridge over Hooghly river which will connect South 24 Parganas and East Midnapur in the Haldia township.

Beyond this, there has been virtually no other progress towards the Nandigram SEZ. It has to be pointed out that unlike largely real estate-driven activities in the SEZs in other parts of the country, the West Bengal government has maintained and sponsored proposals for SEZs where 50 per cent of the total land will be used for actual industrial-processing activities with major emphasis on employment generation. 25 per cent of the land will be related to social infrastructure of this real economic activity. This position of the West Bengal government is identical to the position taken by the Left at all India level. The proposed SEZ at Nandigram will strictly adhere to this basis.

These columns have published the statement of the central committee of the CPI(M) describing the actual incidents in Nandigram. It is true that a particular document circulated by the Haldia Development Authority (HDA) had created confusion. The chief minister of West Bengal has categorically stated that no cognisance of that document need to be taken and that no progress on the project will take place until after widest possible consultations are held with elected representatives in the panchayat and the people of the area. As there has been no survey done and consultations held, the question of land acquisition does not arise before these processes take place. People’s Democracy has also editorially commented on the document by HDA. In any case, under the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act, HDA does not have the executive authority to notify acquisition.

Given these facts, therefore, the situation in Nandigram needs to be brought back to normal. Right now, roads, bridges and culverts remain disrupted with urgent need for repairing them. There is obstruction in doing that. This is putting the entire population in the four gram panchayat where incidents had taken place to great trouble.

It is only when such normalcy returns that a proper discourse on Nandigram SEZ can take place. There is no doubt that land acquisition will only take place if a credible plan for improving the quality of life and livelihood can be put forth. This is the overall approach of the CPI(M). 

Having stated all these, it is difficult not to comment on the nature of political forces that have come together in Nandigram. This conglomeration with BJP on the extreme right to the various naxalite groups on the extreme left, to put it most mildly, is strange and unprincipled. It is also important to note that distinctions need to be made between legitimate protest and planned violence.

With passage of time, all the pros and cons of the mega chemical hub project will be discussed and debated. No doubt, the compelling reason for any such project in the state will be premised on the question of employment generation and improving the lot of the poor and disadvantaged sections. As stated earlier, the Left Front had anticipated the need for such a project on the eve of the last elections. Therefore, the Left Front election manifesto had clearly stated: “Industrial parks have been decided to be set up in the task of modernising the traditional labour-intensive industries, and to make them competitive. Parks will be set up for foundry, jute, rubber, garments, textile, iron & steel, chemicals polymer, light engineering, and food” and “A minimum of four big industrial taluka and special economic zones will be set up in the state”.

It is with this manifesto that the Left Front had approached the electorate in the 2006 assembly elections. And, it is on the basis of such plans for the future that the Left received its massive mandate. Many personalities from different parts of the country who have now taken positions on the principles on which the state government is functioning may not be aware of the electoral commitments of the Left Front nor the nature of the mandate of the people. So far as the specifics of the project are concerned, no doubt, concerns will be addressed. 

PARTISANSHIP WITH THE POOR

The Left Front government in West Bengal has come back to office for the seventh time. This is unprecedented in the history of electoral politics of the country. The principle underlying reason has been the fact that the government has been partisan – partisan towards the poor. Lakhs of acres of land has been redistributed among the rural poor. Thousands of CPI(M) leaders and activists have laid down their lives to achieve the advance and empowerment of the poor in the state. And, it is with their support that the Left Front is trying to improve the overall economic situation in the state and develop industries. It will be foolhardy to assume that the CPI(M) can relinquish the achievements that the peopleof the state have scored. 

There is no conflict between agriculture and industry. But the nature of the industry, the manner in which it takes place is not completely under the control of the state government. In the present age of globalisation, the major direction of neo-liberal policies is aimed at de-industrialisation in third world economies. In the face of this, industrial development, particularly in manufacturing and processing sectors, is, in itself, a struggle against those policies. It is true that private corporate’s way of viewing industries and that of the Left will differ. Marx and Lenin had written a lot on this in the context of Luddites and Narodniks. The working class does not demand the closing down of an industry because it exploits them, they work for changing the nature of the ownership. As communists, we know that socialism is the future, and, therefore, the improvement of the material basis of the economic activities is important. But these struggles cannot overlook the specifics of the immediate context. The struggle for industrialisation in West Bengal will continue without giving up the struggle for consolidating and further improving agriculture in the state. The bottom line is the constant need for improving the conditions of the working people – be they in the rural areas or in cities. And, the lesson of learning from the people will never be forgotten. 

(Concluded)

Singur, Nandigram and Industrialisation of West Bengal-II

http://pd.cpim.org/2007/0128/01282007_nilotpal.htm

Nilotpal Basu

THE SEZ QUESTION AND NANDIGRAM

There has been extensive coverage on the stand of the Left parties on the current SEZ policy of the government in these columns. The major areas of our disagreement with the extant policy pertain to nature of the land use, extent of land use, the tax package and the rehabilitation package. The design of the current package of the government has undergone a qualitative change when SEZ rules were framed under the Act and process of approvals which has led to sanctions being given to 237 SEZ proposals.

This huge number immediately brings to the fore the contrast with China which had successfully executed the SEZ approach to ensure investment and employment generation. The total number of SEZs in China is only 6 and they are concentrated on manufacturing exports by linking these zones to physical infrastructure like port and other transport facilities.

In India, apart from the already sanctioned 237 SEZs, the Board of Approval gave the ‘in-principle’ approval for another 166 SEZs within less than a year of the promulgation of the SEZ rules. A scan of the number and nature of these SEZs reveal a clear-cut picture of regional and sectoral imbalance. Of the 237 sanctioned SEZ proposals, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamilnadu account for 147 SEZs which is 60 per cent of the total sanctions. Again, 148 out of the 237 SEZs approved so far are in the IT sector. Further, preliminary studies are also revealing a major possibility of real estate activities in many of these proposed and sanctioned SEZs instead of actual manufacturing/processing activities which would have been desirable from employment generation point of view.

The crux of the difference between the government, on the one hand, and the Left parties, on the other, is on the nature of investment. Unless investments lead to production and employment generation, the stated objective of the SEZ policy will stand defeated. On the other hand, the present situation poses the danger of investment flowing into financial activities which can, at best, heat up the economy without any corresponding employment generation – a classic example of ‘jobless growth’.

Nandigram in East Midnapur district of West Bengal is one of the seven SEZs sanctioned in West Bengal. The proposed SEZ will develop a mega chemical hub. The choice of this mega chemical hub in the Haldia region is the result of a long exercise undertaken by the government of India where this venue was chosen alongwith four other sites in the country. With the existing petroleum refinery of the IOC, the petrochemical plant at Haldia in the joint sector and the huge facility of Mitsubishi chemicals, this decision to have the mega chemical hub located here was a natural conclusion. Incidentally, the Haldia petrochemicals have led to 700 units in the downstream providing an employment to over 1 lakh people. The government of West Bengal has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Indian Oil Corporation to be an anchor investor for the project, while the Salim group will be the promoter for building the infrastructure. The Salim group will also build a 100 km six-lane expressway bypassing Kolkata and the new township at Rajarhat and Salt Lake, the eastern satellites. The expressway will be a major link and part of the central backbone of the road network in the state linking Darjeeling Hills in the north to the Sagar islands in the south. The expressway will also link to a bridge over Hooghly river which will connect South 24 Parganas and East Midnapur in the Haldia township.

Beyond this, there has been virtually no other progress towards the Nandigram SEZ. It has to be pointed out that unlike largely real estate-driven activities in the SEZs in other parts of the country, the West Bengal government has maintained and sponsored proposals for SEZs where 50 per cent of the total land will be used for actual industrial-processing activities with major emphasis on employment generation. 25 per cent of the land will be related to social infrastructure of this real economic activity. This position of the West Bengal government is identical to the position taken by the Left at all India level. The proposed SEZ at Nandigram will strictly adhere to this basis.

These columns have published the statement of the central committee of the CPI(M) describing the actual incidents in Nandigram. It is true that a particular document circulated by the Haldia Development Authority (HDA) had created confusion. The chief minister of West Bengal has categorically stated that no cognisance of that document need to be taken and that no progress on the project will take place until after widest possible consultations are held with elected representatives in the panchayat and the people of the area. As there has been no survey done and consultations held, the question of land acquisition does not arise before these processes take place. People’s Democracy has also editorially commented on the document by HDA. In any case, under the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act, HDA does not have the executive authority to notify acquisition.

Given these facts, therefore, the situation in Nandigram needs to be brought back to normal. Right now, roads, bridges and culverts remain disrupted with urgent need for repairing them. There is obstruction in doing that. This is putting the entire population in the four gram panchayat where incidents had taken place to great trouble.

It is only when such normalcy returns that a proper discourse on Nandigram SEZ can take place. There is no doubt that land acquisition will only take place if a credible plan for improving the quality of life and livelihood can be put forth. This is the overall approach of the CPI(M).

Having stated all these, it is difficult not to comment on the nature of political forces that have come together in Nandigram. This conglomeration with BJP on the extreme right to the various naxalite groups on the extreme left, to put it most mildly, is strange and unprincipled. It is also important to note that distinctions need to be made between legitimate protest and planned violence.

With passage of time, all the pros and cons of the mega chemical hub project will be discussed and debated. No doubt, the compelling reason for any such project in the state will be premised on the question of employment generation and improving the lot of the poor and disadvantaged sections. As stated earlier, the Left Front had anticipated the need for such a project on the eve of the last elections. Therefore, the Left Front election manifesto had clearly stated: “Industrial parks have been decided to be set up in the task of modernising the traditional labour-intensive industries, and to make them competitive. Parks will be set up for foundry, jute, rubber, garments, textile, iron & steel, chemicals polymer, light engineering, and food” and “A minimum of four big industrial taluka and special economic zones will be set up in the state”.

It is with this manifesto that the Left Front had approached the electorate in the 2006 assembly elections. And, it is on the basis of such plans for the future that the Left received its massive mandate. Many personalities from different parts of the country who have now taken positions on the principles on which the state government is functioning may not be aware of the electoral commitments of the Left Front nor the nature of the mandate of the people. So far as the specifics of the project are concerned, no doubt, concerns will be addressed.

PARTISANSHIP WITH THE POOR

The Left Front government in West Bengal has come back to office for the seventh time. This is unprecedented in the history of electoral politics of the country. The principle underlying reason has been the fact that the government has been partisan – partisan towards the poor. Lakhs of acres of land has been redistributed among the rural poor. Thousands of CPI(M) leaders and activists have laid down their lives to achieve the advance and empowerment of the poor in the state. And, it is with their support that the Left Front is trying to improve the overall economic situation in the state and develop industries. It will be foolhardy to assume that the CPI(M) can relinquish the achievements that the peopleof the state have scored.

There is no conflict between agriculture and industry. But the nature of the industry, the manner in which it takes place is not completely under the control of the state government. In the present age of globalisation, the major direction of neo-liberal policies is aimed at de-industrialisation in third world economies. In the face of this, industrial development, particularly in manufacturing and processing sectors, is, in itself, a struggle against those policies. It is true that private corporate’s way of viewing industries and that of the Left will differ. Marx and Lenin had written a lot on this in the context of Luddites and Narodniks. The working class does not demand the closing down of an industry because it exploits them, they work for changing the nature of the ownership. As communists, we know that socialism is the future, and, therefore, the improvement of the material basis of the economic activities is important. But these struggles cannot overlook the specifics of the immediate context. The struggle for industrialisation in West Bengal will continue without giving up the struggle for consolidating and further improving agriculture in the state. The bottom line is the constant need for improving the conditions of the working people – be they in the rural areas or in cities. And, the lesson of learning from the people will never be forgotten.

(Concluded)

The Question of Displacement and the Call for an United Battle

http://dsujnu.blogspot.com/2007/01/question-of-dis…

The natural and legal rights of the people are being trampled on a scale unprecedented in post-1947 India. Successive governments at the centre would call this the needed drive for a New India marching forward in the 21st century as a major power. Development and Security are the twin needs of the Brave New World in which India and the sub-continent of South Asia is a vital cog. This development can only happen with the massive inflow of Foreign Direct Investment in the form of Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs), Foreign Institutional Investments (FII). Inequality has been considered as a necessary condition for mobilising savings and capital formation. To envisage the provision of infrastructure in the form of transport, communication, power, services etc. While it will give windfall profits to the imperialist multinationals and their domestic allies—big business houses, bureaucrats, politicians, et al, the masses have become further impoverished.
A decade-and-a-half of these policies have, pushed more than one lakh peasants to suicide. Massive unemployment have further impoverished an already devastated people in both rural and urban areas and marginalized millions.
The second wave of ‘economic reforms’ is a violent assault on the right to life and livelihood of the masses. Apart from continuing the ‘development’ driven through big dams, super highways and other infrastructural projects, the new phase of accumulation of capital involves gigantic mining projects, Special Economic Zones (SEZs), urban renewal and beautification.
Displacement as ‘Development’
All these policies are being implemented in the name of ‘development’, ‘modernization’, taking India into the club of elite countries. This is no doubt ‘development’, of a particular kind. It is the model of ‘development’ that gives gigantic amounts of wealth to the super-rich (foreign and Indian) while increasingly impoverishing more and more people. It is unmitigated loot of all our natural wealth and mineral resources on a scale never witnessed before. It is development OF and FOR the market; FOR the creation of a market based on the expenditure OF the very rich together with a growing upper middle class who live off crumbs thrown off the table of the super-rich. This development of displacement have pervaded the entire spectrum of diverse production of material life of the sub-continent—from hunters and gatherers, pastorals, shifting cultivators, forest dwellers especially in protected areas like sanctuaries, traditional cultivators, advanced farmers, trading centres, service and industrial centres, towns and cities. All the four dreaded Ds are fast engulfing our societies—Displacement, Disorganisation, Destitution and Decimation.
Massive Mining Projects of MNCs: Opening the Veins of South Asia
The mining projects in just the states of Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh entail investments of about Rs.5 lakh crores. Some 20 percent of the tribal people have already been uprooted from their homes. The resource rich region of Dandakaranya and its vicinity in the states of Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and the adjoining areas in West Bengal, Vidharbha and eastern Madhya Pradesh account for more than three fourth of the total mineral wealth of India. On a smaller scale, mining projects are also coming up in all the states wherever there is some wealth to extract. The regions within these states that have been set aside as prospective areas rich in mineral wealth such as coal, iron ore, bauxite, diamonds, uranium, thorium etc. is inhabited by the poorest of the poor in India. Hundreds of MoUs have been signed by the government with various Multinational Corporations and Indian Monopolies. Much of the mineral wealth is exported while the rest is used to serve the palatial needs of India’s neo-rich. New laws are being enacted to undo the rights of the people over these resources. The better known examples are the Indian Forest Act, Indian Fisheries Act, Indian Mineral Act, and various Urban Development Acts. In the process, lakhs and lakhs will be displaced—not only will their land and forests be seized, but also their livelihood, their right to a dignified existence destroyed.
Special Economic Zones (SEZs): Enclaves of Foreign Occupation:
The rural areas in India are facing massive unemployment due to lack of opportunities. A backlash of the state policy of opening up of the markets to monopolies. The traditional crafts have collapsed as machine goods are flooding the rural markets. The labour displacing machines have reduced the labour input per acre to less than one-third compared to the post-47 situation. Even in the so-called Employment Generation Programmes of the government commission agents and contractors are on to make a fast buck by using machines. Moreover a large part of the land is held by the absentee owners which results in a heavy drain of current income of the rural economy. These absentee land owners are prone to sell away their lands for profit. The crisis in the rural scenario is further exemplified with the abysmally low entitlement for work in agriculture hovering around 30 rupees a day. The ‘educated youth’ who are rather the deskilled force in rural India are not ready to soil their hands for such a low pay. The massive alienation of people in the rural areas from their current means of livelihood with no worthwhile substitute in sight is imminent.
The Special Economic Zones have been showcased as the panacea for skyrocketing unemployment and lack of opportunities in the urban and rural regions in India. These zones throughout the country will create enclosures where no laws of the land would hold. This tantamount to a modern form of the East India Company; foreign enclaves within the territory of the country which facilitates the SEZs. Even conservative estimates of the RBI projects a loss of about Rs.1.7 lakh crores in revenue for the Indian government over the next four years due to the Special Economic Zones. But the worst hit will be the rural populace whose prime lands are being forcibly seized. Lakhs of acres have already been taken over and every day new announcements come of more and more SEZs being granted permission. In the much hyped ‘Green Revolution’ belts of Haryana and Punjab where the suicide deaths of farmers are the order of the day, farmers who are deep in debt are even ready to take whatever crumbs thrown by the government as compensation for the acquired land. In fact this has proved to be the last straw on the farmer’s back leading to large scale alienation of land and unabating strings of suicides. The man made crisis is so acute in the Green Revolution pockets that for the farmer to hold on to the farming land as a viable enterprise has become an unenviable task.
There is no economic incentive for the farmer to continue agriculture in these lands. The government has refused to look into the root causes of agriculture being rendered non-viable as the insidious policy of the state. Instead it legalised the practice of usury by credit institution including even the cooperatives through the ingenious legal jugglery of excluding them from the very definition of moneylenders. In 1947, 70 per cent of the people in India were engaged in agriculture and allied activities. Their share in the Gross National Income was 65 percent. According to the Farmer’s Commission while the number of persons in the above category has marginally declined from 70 to 65 percent, their share in the National Income has nose dived to 20 percent. The projections of Vision 2020 envisages only a 6 percent share for the 60 percent depending on agriculture.
Already unofficial estimates show that more than 300 SEZs are on the pipeline. As per official estimates about 35-40% of existing industry and finance (including IT sector) will move to these enclaves to avail of the tax-free profits that these havens allow. The government talks much trash of generating employment but the reality is that it is mostly existing business that will shift location to these SEZs to avail of the huge benefits.
Urban ‘Visions’: Fortifying Urban Spaces for Free Exploitation of Monopoly Capital
Global policy advisory groups like the Mckinsey from the US is formulating and pushing the initiatives of organising and streamlining the urban spaces under the camouflage of urban beautification. This streamlining of the urban spaces offers minimum security risk for the operational needs of foreign and local capital in these areas.
It not only entails marginalizing the already impoverished poor, it is even hitting at the middle classes, small traders and industries. Lakhs of slum-dwellers have already been pushed out in the process. Small retailers must be crushed (as in Delhi) in order to make way for giant retailers like Reliance, Wal-Mart and a host of others; small scale industries must be pushed out, not only to ‘clean up’ the cities, but also to allow big business to widen its captive-market reach.
Urban ‘Visions’, with their creation of infrastructural and beautification projects for the elite is wrecking havoc in all the main cities of the country. The main metropolitan cities are the hub of operations of the money-bags. They demand all the best facilities in the form of infrastructure and entertainment. Dance bars in Mumbai must be forcibly closed so that 5-star cabarets thrive. And the beautification must proceed apace so that the rich and powerful can enjoy their ill-gotten wealth without the ‘polluting’ effect of the poor who are further ghettoised.
Thus 21st Century India means mega dams, mammoth power plants, oil and gas pipelines, super highways, flyovers, golf courses, fancy clubs and tourist resorts, national parks, malls, theme parks…
North East Power Grid: Development as Domination or Development as Counterinsurgency
The entire region of the North East will be inundated with no less than 168 mega-dams with a cumulative capacity to generate 100000 Megawatts of power. Only 5000 megawatts would be utilised in the entire region which has been witnessing various struggles for the right to self-determination of the peoples in this region. The rest of the power generated (95000 megawatts) would go to satiate the needs of the Southeast Asian market. The region has been often cited as a fragile zone prone to earthquakes. The surfeit of big dams under the garb of development will endanger the fragile eco-zone of this region not to say that it will totally subvert the cultural, political, social specificities of the various peoples of this region who will be displaced from their very territory which is central in their struggle for their right to self-determination. Many of their indigenous institutions also would be destroyed in this process.
Along with this is the plan to link the entire region of the North East with the Southeast Asian market by road. There are also efforts to combine the markets of these regions with separate market regime principles to make them as combined economic regions. The super highway that is being built from North Bengal to the Mekong Valley under the much hyped ‘Look East Policy’ is a definite step in this direction which is nothing but ‘Development’ as counterinsurgency.
Displacement as State Building
Already, the logic and the necessity of this kind of a development has been stated. But there is a method to this madness that is being parotted by policy pundits as ‘development’.
The question that has often been debated among the western academia and the ‘nation builders’ foreign and desi is that whether resources are at the centre of ‘conflicts’ in poor countries like India, Afghanistan or countries in Africa and Latin America. In a series of studies supported by the World Bank and as the result of a broad statistical analysis of virtually all civil wars since the mid-1960s it was concluded that the causes for conflicts cannot be due to the existing rulers, economic mismanagement, political rights or levels of ethnic homogeneity or heterogeneity. These studies concluded that economic factors were crucial. It emphasised that countries that were highly dependent on the export of primary commodities and were populated by large numbers of young men, with limited or no education were also highly susceptible to civil conflict and political instability. These ‘hordes’ of poorly educated youths and readily accessible resources were particularly susceptible to civil conflict and the emergence of rebels driven primarily by powerful economic (‘greed’) need to use violence to acquire wealth. Thus as per this logic the need of the hour is to promote ‘development’ for ‘security’ and ‘stability’.
The resources in these regions have to be extracted for ‘development’. The poorly educated youths have to be transformed through ‘capacity building’ with the help of ‘modern’ institutions of ‘good governance’. Hence in the North East and other regions such as Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh tribal institutions of governance are deemed unfit to empower the tribal youth. There are already projects supported by London School of Economics and other premier institutions from the West being undertaken in India by NGOs and a section of the academia which are promoting the process of ‘institution building’ for facilitating ‘good governance’. Premier institutions in India are also including courses on Good Governance, Peace and Reconciliation through which there is an effort to decontextualise and reduce the real reasons underlying the socio-economic plight of the vast sections of the various peoples in the sub-continent.
Thus the model of ‘development’ that is being promoted under the aegis of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation creates a greater class of rentiers, retainers, pimps, prostitutes, servants, lumpens, etc—a growing class of hangers-on, all at the service of this neo-rich generated in the process. It destroys the bulk of the agrarian masses; displaces millions from permanent employment and generates in its place thousands of temporary and contract jobs for a pittance; drives the bulk of the middle classes to destitution while accommodating a small section into the elite club. Significantly, it displaces lakhs and lakhs of people from their land and all possible source of livelihood. It is a ‘development’ of the destruction of people, natural resources not to say environment with the complete support of the violent state machinery, including the judiciary and the executive.
The ‘victims’ of these development projects are projected as a liability as they are unable to fit into the mutational changes that have been forcefully brought into their productive labour. They found their way into their familiar forest home where they deemed to be intruders or on to the cities as beasts of burden, rickshaw pullers, or as commodities for the flourishing ‘flesh market’.
This ‘development’ also brings with it an increasingly fascistic state as the extremes of rich and poor are creating acute social tension with the masses having no other alternative than militant resistance. The intensifying contradiction between the rich and the poor, between regions, between various peoples, communities have made it a necessity for the state to resort to a combination of brutal repression and numerous diversionary tactics. Both fascist repression and diversionary tactics of Hindutva communal hysteria are also an outcome of the existing policies of this model of development.

What then could be the alternative?
The only alternative can be a model that really enhances the well-being of the vast masses, preserves the people’s natural wealth, and protects its environment. That builds the domestic market for commodities by enhancing the purchasing power of the masses and thereby becoming the motor for industrial growth and development of the economy; which is holistic, serving both the needs of the people and environment. A model of development that is equitable, just, and humane.
But such an alternative is not possible without, opposing tooth-and-nail, the present model of development. There can be no half-way measures as the present model is an integrated whole, with each aspect linked to the other, all serving to extract maximum profit for the imperialists and their hangers-on in the country. Whether it is the mining projects, or the schemes for the SEZs, or the infrastructural developmental projects, or that of urban ‘renewal’—all are part and parcel of the present phase of ‘economic reforms’ inspired by globalization. These are nothing but a continuation of the earlier phase of ‘economic reforms’ started vigorously in the early 1990s and continuing apace no matter which government has been in power. Any attempt to find formulas of adjustment with the existing polices are doomed to failure as they have their own dynamics dictated by the needs of profit maximization and imperialist loot. There is no other way than to oppose in total all these projects and the policies that facilitate them.
And this challenge calls for a massive movement of the people to resist these projects at the ground level and also awaken the entire country against this model of ruin and penury for the people resulting in more and more enslavement to the imperialist exploitative machine, particularly the US. The various peoples of the region need to be aroused against the imperialists and their local lackeys who are selling the wealth of the people for a few dollars.
What then is the alternative model of development?
· It is a people oriented model based on a self-reliant economy free from enslavement by imperialism. The polices of development must, first-and-foremost, develop the well-being of the masses and must be in their interest—not at their cost.
· The natural wealth of the country must only be extracted to the extent that it serves the needs of the mass of people—neither for imperialist loot nor for the extravagant infrastructural needs of these money-bags. Not only should the SEZ policy be totally reversed but the emphasis must be on developing indigenous industry, protecting labour rights, and introducing land reforms. Land must not go to the big industrialists and imperialists through the SEZ policy but be redistributed to the landless and poor.
· Infrastructural development must also be people oriented where the prime need and immediate priorities are health care, hygiene and education.
· Environmental regeneration must be an important factor in this model which has been destroyed by rapacious rape of the environment for profit and the green revolution–type polices—this by extensive reforestation, scientific water management (inclusive of lakhs of small water projects) and top-soil regeneration.
· In this new model of development all decisions must be made by the people themselves at the grass-root level and built upwards in a genuine form of people’s government. It is the people themselves who know best what type of development is in their interest and what is harmful. They are the best to decide their future. For this they must take the future into their own hands and wrest control of it from the hands of the money-bags and their agents. This alone can assure all-round growth and not its ruin and destruction as is happening today.
· There should be also be resistance to build on a short term, people’s sectors which would have the negotiating power and will to initiate short-term relief measures for the vast sections of the masses while fighting the state.
But to build this new model it first requires an uncompromising opposition to the present model and all the policies that are coming up. For this, there is need to build a huge movement against displacement and the very model of development itself. All genuine democratic and anti-imperialist forces should unite to create a tornado of dissent that forces the rulers to stop this juggernaut trampling the lives of the people of the Sub-continent.
DSU invites you to be a part of an effort to build a countrywide movement against displacement, against forceful state/private takeover of people’s resources: land, water, forests…

RURAL BENGAL’S PUZZLE: Villages consume very little although they are producing more

OMKAR GOSWAMI

The Telegraph, 10 August 2004

There is a long-standing belief in West Bengal that agrarian reforms — which began with Operation Barga in the late Seventies — have raised agricultural productivity and rural incomes. The political adjunct of this economic tenet is that so long as agrarian Bengal does well, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) will continue to sweep the rural constituencies one election after the other.

That there has been a statistically significant increase in agricultural productivity between the Seventies and the Nineties is well established. A recent example is the work of Abhijit Banerji of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology and his co-authors. They not only demonstrate that agricultural productivity in West Bengal has increased more than in agronomically similar tracts of land in neighbouring Bangladesh, but also show that the differential has much to do with agrarian reforms.

Broad macroeconomic evidence also suggests a steady increase in income from agriculture. In 1993-94, West Bengal’s GDP from agriculture at constant prices was Rs 14,816 crore. By 2000-01, it was up to Rs 18,177 crore — an impressive growth of 23 per cent in six years.

These numbers are corroborated by evidence on how the state has become a cereal and vegetable granary of India. For instance, in 2001-02, West Bengal accounted for almost 8 per cent of India’s total foodgrain production — something that would have been impossible to imagine two decades ago.

In a milieu of such impressive growth in agricultural productivity and farm incomes, one would ordinarily expect an equally remarkable increase in rural consumption. This is where one gets totally perplexed, and let me explain why.

Every year, the National Sample Survey conducts extensive field surveys on consumer expenditure of rural and urban households throughout all states and Union territories. We, at CERG Advisory, have the entire data-set from the beginning of reforms up to 2001-02. And the evidence indicates that rural consumption in West Bengal ranks among some of the worst-off states in the country.

As the graphic shows, rural West Bengal was not wealthy by any stretch of imagination in 1991: the average consumption of rural households was 5.3 per cent less than the all-India figure. If agricultural productivity and rural income grew faster in West Bengal in the Nineties than the national average, then it stands to reason that rural household consumption in the state would have been closer to, or higher than, the all-India mean.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. As the NSS survey for 2001-02 shows, rural household consumption in West Bengal was 9.6 per cent worse than the national average. That’s a significantly poorer performance than in 1991. Therefore, despite the alleged growth in agricultural productivity and output, rural households in West Bengal seem to be relatively worse off than before.

The story is similar when rural consumption is broken down to its constituent elements. The following is such an account for 2001-02.
Consumption of food items as a whole — households in rural West Bengal were 4.1 per cent below the national average.

Consumption of milk, eggs, meat, fish, vegetables and fruits (a sign of transition to greater prosperity) — 2.5 per cent below the all-India average.

Clothing — 10.1 per cent less.
Medical expenditure — 6.8 per cent less.
For non-food items in the aggregate — 20.7 per cent less than the all-India mean.

The only silver lining is expenditure on education. In 2001-02, the average rural family in West Bengal spent 4.5 per cent more on educating its children than the all-India mean. However, at less than Rs 83 per year, that does not translate to much.

The NSS evidence suggests a couple of things that the chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, might wish to consider. First, it shouldn’t be a sign of consolation that household consumption in interior West Bengal is marginally higher than rural Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu. For one, these two southern states, while worse than West Bengal, have improved their relative position over the decade. In contrast, West Bengal’s position has worsened. For another, it doesn’t speak well of a state that lays claim to agrarian dynamism where its rural households consume only 4.3 per cent more than the average rural family in Bihar, 4.6 per cent above Madhya Pradesh and 8.8 per cent more than that abysmally poor state called Orissa. Being clustered with the poor is not something to be proud of.

Therefore, it is worth checking why the growth in agricultural productivity is not translating to proportionately higher rural consumption expenditure. It can’t be explained away by claiming that West Bengal enjoys significantly lower prices of goods and services compared to other states. Clearly, there is a disjunction somewhere, and it needs to be carefully investigated.

I have a tentative hypothesis. While Bengal agriculture has certainly done well, the same cannot be said about the growth of rural, non-agricultural industries. And since almost half the rural population earn their livelihood outside agriculture, the increase in agricultural output hasn’t translated to similar overall consumption growth.

Second, and this is my perennial theme about West Bengal, the government has to do everything in its powers to bring in significant private investment in food processing. It is a shame that a state so blessed with vegetable and foodgrain cultivation should have so little investment in rural-based food processing units. To me, that is investment priority number one. For there may lie the salvation of rural Bengal.

The author is the founder of CERG Advisory, a company specializing in corporate and economic advisory services.He can be reached at omkar.goswami@cergindia.com