Citizens’ Research Collective on SEZ

Sudipto Mondal

Mangalore, November 11, 2007: “The Board of Approval for Special Economic Zones has made it mandatory that no proposal for SEZs on prime agricultural land should be cleared.” This was announced by Union Commerce Minister Kamal Nath on September 24 this year.

But eight villages, on the outskirts of Mangalore, present an antithesis to this categorical directive from the Centre — the villages have been notified for the Rs. 35,000-crore Mangalore SEZ project.

The villages are Bala, Thokkur, Kalavaru, Bajpe, Permude, Thenka Yekkaru, Delanthabettu and Kuthethur. These are places where it is tough to find a speck of brown soil; travelling through these parts the colour green extends as far as the eye can see; the undulating landscape is studded with cashew, arecanut, coconut, vanilla and betel leaf plantations, paddy fields as well as spice gardens.

Authorities of the Mangalore SEZ Limited make vehement claims that the land here is infertile and unsuitable for agriculture. Yet, Bhaskar Kulal (40), a farmer with a miniscule land holding of 20 cents (20 per cent of an acre) in Thenka Yekkaru, manages to make a profit of Rs. 5,000 out of every yield of coconut from his land.

He hopes to make up to Rs. 15,000 once his trees are fully grown. Sumati is a 55-year-old matriarch of a Dalit family of eight.

For centuries, her ancestors worked as landless labourers in the same land she now proudly owns in Thenka Yekkaru — thanks to the land reforms of the 1970s.

A small natural stream irrigates the eight acres of land owned by Sumati; paddy is cultivated on 2.5 acres while the rest is an arecanut plantation.

Her land is so fertile that she manages get a yield in excess of 120 quintals of rice every year.

A visit to the plantations of a dozen other farmers just added to the picture: each discussed their outputs and revenues in detail and confirmed a well known fact, that these are some of the most prosperous agriculturists in the State. Yet in all probability, a few thousand of them would soon be relegated to the pages of history.

Source: The Hindu