Corporate Land Grab: Issues of Development and Democracy

SEZ Booklet May 2006 CoverIn May 2004, there was a widespread sense of euphoria and victory as people across the country gave a stinging rebuff to the BJP-NDA’s arrogant ‘India Shining’ claims. It was clear that people were not prepared to pay the price of steeply rising prices, hunger and starvation, rampant unemployment and farmers’ suicides in order to keep corporate India ‘Shining’. Riding the wave of this popular resentment against neo-liberal economic policies and the communal fascist regime of the BJP-NDA was the Congress-led UPA and the official Left. The Left achieved their highest ever tally in Indian Parliament. The UPA scripted a ‘Human Face’ agenda – and the CPI-CPI(M) made many claims to be the watchdogs who would guarantee that this agenda was met. At the same time, the corporate media raised alarmist cries of ‘neo-liberal reforms in danger from the Left’.

In the three years since, the ‘Human Face’ mask that tried to pull wool over people’s eyes has unravelled fast. Batons and bullets rained on the Honda workers in Gurgaon, the people of Manipur, the tribals of Kalinganagar, the farmers of Dadri – and eventually on the peasants of Singur and Nandigram. The courts mocked at most of those who came in hope of some justice – be it the slum dwellers in virtually every metropolis or the people of the Narmada Valley. The chilling death toll of suicides in Vidarbha and the ever-expanding empire of hunger and starvation under-lined the bleak fact that no band-aid could help a nation haemorrhaging from the offensive of imperialist economic policies. Land grab (especially by corporates) has proved to be the issue that above all has galvanised people into sustained protest – and all over the country, massive protests by peasants facing displacement have made eviction from land the burning issue of our time.
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