Free market fundamentalists abhor this word – Subsidy! because this word has always encapsulated a sense which was pro-poor, no wonder the free market fundamentalists abhorred this. For them market will decide the prices, who ever can buy will buy them, but no subsidy! no.. that’s not for a market economy! Here arises a simple question, should the so called “richest man” on earth be given a subsidy for buying land and that too by displacing the poorest of the poor?

That is what SEZ or Special Economic Zones are all about. Government grabs land for the richest man on earth displacing the poor and the wretched, then he screws up the land by doing what ever he wants. The displaced poor will vanish without a trace to be a part of history but the rich man’s financial trajectory will be well documented by the media.

Vandana Shiva; managed to make some sense , as she often does, while she made this remark – “The largest SEZs have been allocated to Mukesh Ambani, the world’s richest man. This is a criminal subsidy that the State is providing to the rich by stealing from the poor,”

So as a nation are we gonna have this dubious distinction? No, we should not. I would say people (Poor Farmers and Tribals) from these places : Nandigram, Singur, Dadri, Kalinganagar, Raigad, POSCO (Orissa) and Barnala are doing a great job. Still there is a lot to be done to avoid this systematic land grabbing by the government; a process through which they are stifling the chances of the poor and wretched in the name of industrialisation. Government is orchestrating a Houdini act by which the prime agricultural and mineral rich lands of India will be handed over to the richest. They are helping a forced assimilation of riches in to the kitty of the uber rich, which in itself is a contradiction to our so called ethics; on which our country thrives.