SEZ stir in Maharashtra

MUMBAI: After Singur and Nandigram, Maharashtra is set to be the epicentre of anti-SEZ stir. Social activist Medha Patkar on Thursday announced that a plan to oragnise a convention of SEZ-affected farmers across India at Sewagram Ash-ram near Wardha in Vidarbha on February 9, 10, and 11.

At the Sewagram Ashram founded by Mahatma Gandhi, a strategy would be chalked out against ���coercive, illegal, and un-institutionalised��� manner in which SEZ policy was being pushed forward, Ms Patkar said.

The National Alliance for People���s Movement (NAPM), a platform com-prising several NGOs, would lead a stir against the SEZ Act in Delhi from March 18. ���It will be an indefinite stir against SEZ and alienation of farmers from their land, communalism, and privatisation,��� Ms Patkar said.

The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader was critical of the manner in which SEZ proposals were being entertained in Gujarat and Maharashtra. Doubting Gujarat government���s claim that people were already accruing the benefits of Sardar Sarovar dam, Ms Patkar said the corporate sector in Gujarat was the first and only beneficiary so far.

���In the target beneficiary area of the dam in Saurashtra like Jamnagar where the water has reached, thousands of acres of land is being acquired for Mukesh Ambani���s Reliance. In Maharashtra also, the way land is being acquired for Reliance SEZ is highly unfair,��� she alleged.

Ms Patkar said people likely to get affected by SEZs did not have valid rea-sons to believe UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi or prime minister Manmohan Singh when they spoke of rehabilitation. ���The only way the SEZ policy in its present form can be pushed forward is coercive, un-institutionalised, and ille-gal.

There is no need for the prime minister to talk of a new rehabilitation pol-icy. The national rehabilitation policy of 2003, though not exactly a model one, has very good intentions. There is no need for a new policy if those inten-tions are followed in right earnest,��� she said.