SEZs: Stirring up a storm along the Indian coast

By Manshi Asher

The SEZ issue is being highlighted as a farmers’ issue, with a rehabilitation policy being worked out for those who will lose their land. But with 80% of approved SEZs in coastal states, what about the thousands of fisherfolk who will lose livelihoods based on the sea, estuaries and coastal systems?

The 9 million fish-workers living along India’s 7,517 km coastline are well aware of the unpredictable nature of the sea. But they are at a loss to understand the behaviour of a government that appears bent on endangering both the coastline and the lives and livelihoods of people who live along it.

Coastal areas and the communities that live there have always been vulnerable, as coastlines are frontiers of a country and have always been considered strategic, from an economic as well as a political standpoint.

Although port-based economic development has its roots in the colonial period, it is in post-colonial times, with the emphasis on inter-country trade, that the ‘development’ of coasts became a major thrust area for governments.

Export processing zones in the 1960s

In India, the idea of using coasts not just for transport and trade of finished goods but as areas for production and value-addition emerged in the 1960s. By this time, the concept of Free Trade Zones (FTZs) was already in place across the world, especially in the countries of Latin America.

Over the decades, the Indian government established a total of eight Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in order to boost exports and manufacturing in the country. These were at Kandla and Surat (Gujarat), SEEPZ (Maharashtra), Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Falta (West Bengal), Noida (Uttar Pradesh), Cochin (Kerala) and Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh). All eight, except Noida, were in coastal areas.

This period saw increasing commercial activity along the coastlines of these states, which, according to a study conducted by the ocean engineering division of the National Institute of Oceanography, was also responsible for “shoreline erosion in the northern regions of Chennai, Ennore, Visakhapatnam and Paradip ports due to the construction of breakwaters in the respective ports”.

What really changed the face of the coastline was the onset of economic reforms in the 1990s, with free trade and liberalisation, the emergence of private — domestic and foreign — companies at the forefront of trade activity, and the loosening of government restrictions and duties on imports and exports. This was also the time when the Coastal Regulation Zone notification (1991) and EIA notification (1994) were introduced — both important pieces of legislation aimed at protecting the coastline and the rights of coastal and traditional fishing communities. Unfortunately, implementation of both these laws remained weak against the onslaught of industrial and economic activities.

Second-generation economic reforms and SEZs

The Special Economic Zone Policy 2000, followed by central legislation in 2005 that aimed at boosting exports and enticing foreign investments in export-production activities, was probably the last nail in the coffin for the local coastal economy, society and ecosystem.

Introduced as an evolution of the EPZ model, and based on the reportedly successful Chinese experiment, SEZs are delineated industrial areas deemed foreign territories that can be developed by any private or government party, in any area of their choice, spread over thousands of hectares. And so, in a matter of two years following the legislation, amidst much controversy and opposition, thousands of proposals for SEZs were submitted to the Ministry of Commerce. Of these, around 243 have been formally approved, and 103 notified.

The three states that cornered the maximum number of approvals were the coastal states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka (followed closely by Tamil Nadu). Of the 103 projects that have been notified, as of May 1, 2007, 80% are in coastal states. Of these, three are large multi-product port-based SEZs.

This scale of activity along the coast is bound to displace coastal communities. The fishing community has come out strongly against SEZs because forced land acquisitions and destruction of the shoreline have affected their livelihoods. Among the first protests since the SEZ policy came into effect in 2000 were against the Tuticorin SEZ in Tamil Nadu and the Sea King Infrastructure Limited Project in Positra, Gujarat.

Growing dissent in coastal areas

Following the SEZ Act of 2005 and the surge in projects, there has been widespread opposition to SEZs across the country. A huge movement led by coastal communities has built up in Raigad district, Maharashtra, which is probably one of the few districts in India that is literally being swamped by companies wishing to set up SEZs. Nine projects being proposed here received formal and in-principle approval by the Ministry of Commerce last year; these will extend to almost 50,000 acres. The entire Konkan belt, which is an ecologically sensitive coastal region, has plans for 33 SEZs, including multi-product, port-based captive power generation and real estate projects.

Anant Thakur, chairperson of the SEZ Virodhi Sangarsh Samiti opposing the Reliance Mahamumbai SEZ that will affect almost 40,000 people and 24 coastal villages, says: “This is a thriving local economy. Even an eight-year-old schoolchild carries a net to the creek on holidays and catches fish worth Rs 100.” Indeed, from children to 80-year-olds, most people here are productively employed and contribute to the economy that’s based primarily on agriculture and fishing. “Will the SEZ employ all these people,” asks Thakur.

At the Brandix Apparel Park (which is on the list of notified projects) in Visakhapatnam, fishing communities opposed a public hearing organised prior to clearance of the project in July 2006. The protesters had asked for the hearing to be rescheduled on grounds that the concerned authorities had kept the project details secret, and that the hearing should be held in the area where the project was coming up in order to assess people’s sentiments realistically.

These concerns were ignored and the hearing went ahead. The project was given SEZ status and notified earlier this year (seehttp://www.hinduonnet.com/the
hindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2006071220830300.htm& date=2006/07/12/&prd=th&).

Another SEZ project that received notification this year despite the company having a history of environmental violations, is Adani’s Mundra SEZ in Gujarat. The company, which has been present in the area for almost a decade, has destroyed mangrove forests along the Mundra coast, in Kutch district to construct a port. The Adani Group has already been allotted around 19,768 acres of land for the project, making it the biggest landlord in Gujarat. Most of the acquired land is grazing and creek land belonging to 15 villages along the coast.

The project is also within the coastal regulation zone and will displace a fishing economy worth over Rs 9 crore. The Jaths, the local fishing community, had been struggling to protect traditional paths to their fishing creeks that were going to be acquired for an airstrip for the Adanis. They had even filed a case, but were forced to settle for a compromise under intense pressure from the company.

More recently, in the case of India’s largest foreign direct investment project by Pohang Steel Company (POSCO) in Jagatsinghpur district in Orissa (which has also received in-principle approval for SEZ status), an environment clearance public hearing was organised for the port and steel plant jointly. Local communities that will be affected (almost 400 families; 22,000 people) have been resisting the project, which is expected to completely displace a thriving economy based on beetle vine cultivation and pisciculture. For the last two years, environmentalists have been highlighting the massive impact that the POSCO steel project and captive port will have on the coastal ecosystem and the Gahirmatha sanctuary along the east coast — breeding ground of the endangered Olive Ridley turtle.

Although the hearing could have been an opportunity to record people’s views and genuine concerns, a week before the hearing the state government deployed platoons of paramilitary forces in the area, creating an atmosphere of fear rather than enabling a peaceful and democratic hearing.

The hearing that finally took place on April 15, 2007 was boycotted by local communities on the ground that it was being held 20 km away from the affected people’s villages.

Both central and state governments speak only about “expediting” land acquisition and clearance procedures, not about hearing people’s views and opinions, or reviewing projects on the basis of their social and environmental cost. The government lived up to its word by clearing the port project in May 2007, one month after the hearing.

Diluting environment governance mechanisms

The era of SEZs also brought with it the need to provide a “conducive” legislative environment for “development”. As a result, both CRZ and EIA notifications are diluted in order to facilitate speedy clearance of projects. According to the new Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2006, units in SEZs are exempt from public consultations. This clause was only introduced in the 1994 notification in 2002, after the birth of the SEZ policy. Basically, it leaves no room for the expression of public opposition to units located within SEZs.

Similarly, the CRZ notification was amended in May 2002 so that all non-polluting industries in the field of information technology and other service industries located in SEZs could be permitted in CRZ areas. Under public pressure, the government has had to put on hold an even more diluted coastal management zone policy that was scheduled to replace the CRZ notification.

The SEZ Act and Rules itself are ambiguous and do not mention coastal regulation provisions. Due to such ambiguities and the anti-democratic nature of the Act, groups are demanding that the legislation be scrapped altogether. Other areas of concern, as noted by civil society, intellectuals and economic analysts, include huge revenue losses to the State exchequer resulting from tax sops, use of land for real estate speculation, and exploitation of workers thanks to the dilution of labour laws.

Even as the issue is being highlighted as a farmers’ issue, with a rehabilitation policy being worked out for those who will lose their land, the focus has shifted away from communities that will lose livelihoods based on the sea, estuaries and coastal systems.

The Chinese example is telling. Fourteen of the country’s coastal SEZs are also areas with the most polluted riverine systems. Export figures from Shenzhen, the first and most “dazzling” of China’s SEZs, are widely available and quoted. But there’s never any mention of what happened to the fish in the Pearl river delta, or the local fisherfolk of Shenzhen, once a small fishing village. Coastal India is heading for the same fate in the wake of the new ‘SEZ tsunami’.

(Manshi Asher is an independent researcher and campaigner)

InfoChange News & Features, July 2007