Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Collective Action ends Maha Mumbai SEZ plan

The Economic Times in an article titled " MSEZ withdraws land acquisition petition" reports that the company behind the SEZ, Reliance Industries Limited, has withdrawn its land acquisition petition which came up before the Supreme Court of India.
This marks a victory for all the farmers who had voted against the SEZ in a referendum held last year by the Raigad District Collector. Some of the organisations representing the farmers were MahaMumbai Shetkari Sangharsh Samiti ,Savhara Jan Andolan, National Alliance of People's Movements, etc.
This was the first time that a public opinion poll has been held over any land acquisition in the country. Ninety one per cent of the farmers who voted in the poll were against the SEZ and therefore against selling their land.
This win has been hailed in the media as "Farmers win against the most powerful Industrialist in India viz.Mukesh Ambani."
The rationality of this decision to vote against the SEZ is perplexing. A study conducted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) regarding the socio economic impact of the SEZ notes that
  1. Due to general poverty, and lack of employment, there has been out migration of
    people in search of employment from these villages to nearby towns and main
    city of Mumbai.
  2. Most of the people in these villages live in poverty not only due to lack of
    employment but also poor size of land per capita/per household. Due to shortage
    of fodder, livestock or animal rearing can also not be practiced on a large scale.
    So this option is also not available to people in these villages
  3. The main occupation of the people in these villages, is agriculture.
    However, there are a large number of families in these villages which are
    involved in fishing and sand raising from the sea. Due to salinity and lack of
    development of irrigation, agriculture is not an economic and profitable
    occupation in the area. Fish catch due to increased pollution and over fishing has
    also been declining which has further impoverished the villagers
The report also talks about the anxieties of the people regarding the project and giving up their land. Hence the report suggests adequate compensation to Project Affected People (PAP).
This report was conducted in 2005 for Sea King Infrastructure Ltd. in which Mr.Ambani has major stake.
Accordingly, as per the agreement finalised by the company with the government, farmers would be paid INR 5 lakh per acre for unproductive land and Rs 10 lakh for paddy land. Further, it has prepared a training and employment programme and sustenance allowance to one person in a project-affected family who has sold land to MSEZ. It will be mainly for improving opportunities of employability and quality of life.
So some questions which arose in mind were
1. Were the economic benefits promised too little or were there factors over and above these benefits which triggered the anti-SEZ movement.
2.Why was this land acquisition issue settled peacefully compared to the violence seen in Singur and Nandigram.
3. Should referendums like the one held in Raigad be made compulsory in all land acquisition projects
4.Role of educated leaders in staging peaceful collective action movements.

2 comments:

Arpit Shah said...

Its a great victory for the farmers... This victory will also give a boost to the revolts going on in other parts of country wherein the original land dwellers are fighting for their rights. I suppose this is the first case where a group of locals have made a corporate to bend to their demands. In most of the cases, these rich private bodies morph the facts in such a ugly way that it becomes a reality!An example that I encountered during my field work was- The coastal zone of Kutch has a large inter-tidal zone. The inter-tidal zone spans almost 5-6kms. Also, there used to be a lot of mangrooves in this area. A private body intending to set up its port in that area used to build a wall during low tides, so that water did not enter that area. Than they would claim the entire land from goverment citing it as a wasteland!! For the mangrooves, they used to block the fresh water creeks in the area. The mangrooves would cease to exist in such situations. The private body would clear the land and demand it from goverment again citing wastelands.By using such techniques, this private organization now holds 60 sq. kms. of Kutch coastline!

Hope that this victory in Maharashtra gives a boost to their cause.

(P.S. I have myself seen the documentary and visual evidences of above mentioned situation)

Unknown said...

it is one of the worst happenings. the sez would have given india a large scale sez close to port to compete in exports, a breather to mumbai for jobs and congestions. we allowed a few farmers to put us behind in the name of democracy