SEZs help only global monopolies: CPI leader

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Special Economic Zones had only helped global monopolies to create their colonies in independent India, a senior CPI leader said on Tuesday.

Inaugurating a seminar on "SEZs and India's industrial development" organised by the P S Sreenivasan Memorial Labour Study and Research Centre here, senior CPI leader and AITUC general secretary Gurudas Das Gupta said SEZs had not brought in development by which the common man got any relief.

A study by the Union Labour Ministry had found that ever since the Centre actively took up globalisation and privatisation as a policy in the last nine and a half years, 77 per cent of the middle class in the country had been further pushed into miser and poverty, Gupta said.

The plight of minorities and Dalits were no different since the start of globalisation process, he said.

"The country's wealth was being taken away by global monopolies in the name of development which was being fought by the labour class in the country."

The struggle against SEZs should be understood in this context, Gupta said.