ACTIVIST TELL GOA GOVERNMENT TO REPEAL SEZ ACT,2005

Once again activists have reiterated their demand to repeal the Special Economic Zones Act, 2005 in a bid to halt the unprecedented land and resource grab in the country, at a meeting to present the people’s audit on SEZs on Sunday. Incidentally, Goa is the fifth state where the people’s audit is being conducted. Speaking on the occasion, activist Medha Patkar said, “It is time to review and decide the way forward. SEZs are the worst version of a development paradigm that the government is pushing forward. There will be a country within a country, state within a state, all under the control of the development commissioner. They will get many things as a priority and privilege, which includes not just land, but also electricity and water. This will most affect those living in the hinterland.” She alleged that the Central government is now trying to make amendments in the Land Acquisition Act, which would enable the government to acquire land for private purposes. At present, land can be acquired by government only for public purposes. The people’s audit is a process wherein the affected people, who defined and succeeded in a movement, come forward as the core of the audit process. Speaking on the impact of SEZs, Fr Maverick Fernandes of the Council for Social Justice and Peace said, “Planning is so crucial to Goa. We have approximately 80,000 hectares of non-agricultural land for urbanization and industrialization in Goa. According to experts, in the next 10 to 20 years Goa will lose around 30,000 hectares due to the rise in sea level. Hence, selling or leasing large tracts of land in the form of SEZs without planning for the future, with the state constraints in mind is suicidal.” He said that SEZs would have further depleted the already depleting water level in Goa in order to provide huge amounts of water at the cost of the needs of the citizens. The monsoons are the main source of recharging groundwater but the government has not taken any measures to stop the 80% run off. The supply of electricity is insufficient and hence irregular, he added. Fr Maverick said, “It was suggested that the SEZs would meet the problem of unemployment in the state. Ground analysis provides an altogether different picture because the SEZ, being autonomous, under the control of industrialists, thousands of unemployed youth would hardly be found qualified and competent for such employment. So, SEZs in Goa wouldn’t have solved unemployment.” Even the Verna residents agree with this. “The government claims that in SEZs 80% employment will be given to the locals. But in the already existing industrial estate in Verna, where almost one lakh people are employed, not even 2,000 are locals”, they alleged during the meeting. Fr Maverick added that SEZs would have given rise to slums in the state, as “the projected housing facilities within the SEZs would have catered to the top and middle level employees and those engaged in peripheral activities would have had to manage themselves in slums around the zones.” Director of the Centre for Panchayati Raj, Soter D’Souza, said, “Unfortunately, while the focus of communities gets drawn towards opposing SEZs, mining, industrial estates etc, the violations of the constitutional rights of the Panchayati Raj institutions often gets dragged in only so far as a means to justify the struggle and nothing more. But, larger issues faced by the gram sabhas seem to be no one’s concern. The larger role that panchayati raj institutions are actually required to partake in the planning and implementation of development projects post the 73rd constitutional amendment, gets very tactfully sidetracked and ignored.” “The SEZ issue is just one among the many symptoms arising from laws inconsistent with the 73rd constitutional amendment. All laws existing prior to the 73rd amendment were to be made consistent with the amendment within a period of one year. But, laws like the Goa Land Revenue Code, 1968; the Goa Industrial Development Act, 965, the Mines Act, 1952 or Mines and Mineral Act, 1957, Goa Town and Country Planning Act, 1975 and the Land Acquisition Act 1987 continue to be applied in the very same pre-1992 fashion. Even the recent acts like Health Act are contrary to the 73rd amendment”, he added.