By IANS
New Delhi : Terming clashes between farmers and police in West Bengal over a special economic zone (SEZ) as nothing less than a war, leading social activist Medha Patkar Tuesday advocated a "militant approach" in peoples' struggles against forcible land acquisition for industry.
Referring to the police action in Nandigram area where 14 people were killed on March 14 while protesting the move to acquire farmlands for an SEZ, Patkar said: "The situation remains serious. It is nothing less than war… it is comparable to the Iraq war or Gujarat's communal violence of 2002.
"We people cannot protest in the old ways anymore. While I cannot give a call to take arms, but the need for a militant approach is felt," she said.
Patkar was addressing a daylong 'all-India convention against atrocities on the people of Nandigram and against SEZs' here.
The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) convenor reminded the audience that when she launched the fight for the rights of those affected by the Sardar Sarovar dam project on the Narmada river in the 1980s, a majority of people had questioned her, but now the same issue has come back to haunt the nation.
"It is fundamentally a question of transfer of resources without taking the consent of the people who depend on those resources," said Patkar.
Justice (retired) Rajendra Sachar reminded the audience that when Patkar was holding protests against the displacement of the Narmada-affected people without proper resettlement and rehabilitation, leaders of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) – which leads West Bengal's ruling Left front- had turned up to support her.
"However, when she went to West Bengal (to speak for people of Nandigram), they used the kind of language one would not employ even against enemies," said the veteran rights activist.
"When they are setting up industries after shooting at people, for whom are they setting up the industries?" Sachar asked, and called on all to join the "battle for Hindustan, battle for the dispossessed".
"Marx would be turning in his grave now that a party named after him says that we need capitalists for the cause of socialism," he added.
In a message read out at the convention, filmmaker Aparna Sen noted that the struggle was still on in Nandigram, adding, "Hats off to the people."
Sumit Chakravartty, editor of Mainstream journal, questioned the government claim that SEZs will generate jobs and push exports. Criticising tax breaks and incentives for SEZ developers, he said: "Concessions for small and medium units might be considered but you are giving concessions to the Ambanis and the Tatas – to big capitalists."
Lashing out at the West Bengal government for alleged atrocities on those protesting land acquisition in Nandigram as well as in Singur for a Tata project, Chakravartty said: "Goons are running the show in West Bengal.
"I am not saying that all (in the Left Front) are like that, but goons surely are calling the shots. As a Leftist I hang my head in shame after what happened to womenfolk in Nandigram," said the noted commentator.
Prakash N. Shah of the Ahmedabad-based Movement for Secular Democracy (MSD) saw a land scam in the making in the SEZ policy. "The land is being given away, for reasons latent to us but patent to them," he said.
He stressed that the debate over SEZs was not about industry versus agriculture, but "agriculture and corporate capitalism".
At the end of the convention, the participants – comprising activists, jurists, lawyers, educationists and others from across the country – passed a resolution expressing concern over the trend of acquiring land for SEZs.