It's a hot, humid Sunday morning in northern India, but the oppressive heat does not deter a group of about 15 farmers from trudging door-to-door, offering advice and sometimes warnings.
"Do not sell your precious land. Even if you are offered millions of dollars, do not sell. It is your only source of livelihood," Mahavir Gulia, the leader of the group, tells a villager in Mundha Khera, 100km from New Delhi.
"Sell your land and you will lose your identity," he warns another as the group winds its way through the cluster of austere mud, brick and cement homes.
PHOTO: AFP
Gulia is trying to spell out the dangers to locals whose land has been earmarked for a Chinese-style business enclave -- a joint venture between the Haryana state government and Reliance Industries, India's largest private conglomerate.
"We want to be sure our fertile land that gives us three crops a year does not end up as part of the Reliance empire," he said. "We don't want Reliance to colonize us. Land is what sustains us farmers with food, respect and dignity."
In Neemana village, 10km away, Pratap Singh, 75, understands the message -- but a little too late.
Eight months ago, he was the owner of an 8 hectare fertile field that yielded three harvests a year.
"My sons were lured by the promise of good and quick money. They persuaded me to sell most of my land to the big company," Singh said, squatting on the sandy floor of the one-room house that he and his wife share with a buffalo.
He did get some cash, but it did not last him long in the world outside his usual farming routine.
"We have a saying here that our land is our mother," Singh said sadly. "How can you get any respect when you have sold your mother?"
Singh's land is now part of the 10,120 hectare Reliance-Haryana government Special Economic Zone (SEZ) -- a project encouraged by the Indian government to spur industrialization, infrastructure development and push economic growth into double digits.
For foreign and domestic corporate giants, the SEZs are a tempting option -- promising a way around the country's notoriously slow, spirit-crushing and often bureaucracy.
But opponents say the government is merely sidelining the still-crucial farm sector -- stealing labor and prime land from a sector that employs more than 60 percent of the workforce and generates more than a fifth of India's GDP.
Journalist-turned-activist Praful Bidwai said that last year and this year "will be noted in history for the launch of the Great Land Grab."
"It's happening across India," social activist Vandana Shiva said, pointing to farmers' protests in the Communist-ruled eastern West Bengal State in March.
Fourteen farmers were killed when police entered their village to evict them from land designated for a SEZ -- causing a furore and polarizing public opinion.
Not that land grabbing is a new concept in India -- tribal peoples have long seen their forest land shrink with the march of urbanization.
But SEZs are different, Shiva said.
"These are enclaves of privilege, insulated from the laws of the land -- whether it is labor laws or environment laws."
So far, India has approved 303 SEZs and set aside 1,400km2 of land on which they are to be built.
The Indian trade ministry said that the 126 enclaves already operating have generated 32,578 jobs and that this would swell to 1.5 million by December 2009. It also hopes SEZs will generate US$25 billion worth of exports next year and in 2009.
While the figures look impressive, critics argue that Indian democracy is suffering.
"When there is large scale displacement of people involved, you need their consent. In a democracy, people have the right to decide their own future," prominent community activist Aruna Roy said.
Economist Paranajoy Guha Thakurta said India's ambition to emulate the Chinese SEZ model is basically flawed -- "because India is a democracy."
"The Chinese SEZs are like giant urban agglomerations, independent nation-states with their own rules for labor and environment," he said.
India following the same model will only create "huge islands of industrial affluence in a sea of deprivation and poverty.
"This will be unacceptable in a democracy," he said.
National Taiwan University (NTU) yesterday said it disqualified a person from an entrance examination for using AI smart glasses to cheat, along with two others for making untruthful statements in their curriculum vitae. The three applicants were given null scores, Taiwan’s highest-ranked university said, calling on prospective students to be honest in the admissions process. NTU registrar Lee Hung-sen (李宏森) said that the cheating applicant wore a hat and thick-rimmed glasses to the second written exam for medical school, claiming that they felt cold. Suspicions were aroused when the applicant stared oddly at the test for long stretches while steadily bringing the paper
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mindanao in the Philippines at 7:38am today, prompting the US Tsunami Warning System to issue an alert for neighboring countries, including Taiwan. The system issued a purple alert indicating a "tsunami threat." The potential threat zone includes Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Yap and Palau. Philippine authorities were assessing the damage from the quake, with the office of civil defense seeking to verifying initial reports that 15 people had been killed and 129 injured in the region, mostly from falling debris. Arlene Hollero, disaster chief of Maasim town in the Philippines' Sarangani Province,
‘GRAY ZONE’ PRESSURE: Beijing’s activities are intended to create the deceitful impression that China has jurisdiction over the area around Taiwan, the CGA said Taiwan’s rights over its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone must not be violated by any country, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that it will not accept any unprovoked actions. The council issued the remarks in response to the China Coast Guard conducting maritime enforcement drills near eastern Taiwan and claiming to fully exercise China’s maritime administrative law enforcement authority. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) has been closely monitoring the situation and is taking concrete steps to defend the nation’s sovereignty and secure its waters, the council said. China has no sovereign rights over the waters off eastern
Heavy rain is expected to affect parts of Taiwan this week, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday as a meteorologist said the active part of the annual plum rain season has started. A stationary plum rain front and southwesterly winds would bring unstable weather and abundant moisture to Taiwan from today for about a week, with the heaviest rainfall forecast for tomorrow and Wednesday, the CWA said. The agency said western and northeastern Taiwan, and mountainous areas in the east and southeast, could expect showers or thunderstorms on those two days, with localized heavy rain possible. Other parts of
RSS