By News Agency of Kashmir
Jammu : Ehsaas Discussion Group, an initiative of scholars of Jammu University discussed the issue of Nandigram. The issue of SEZ which is directly linked with Nandigram was looked upon in a broader perspective of globalization, a discourse which is being controlled by the western countries (USA in particular).
One common point that came out of the discussion was the hollowness of all the political parties in India CPI (M), BJP and Congress. All these parties have just projected the statelessness viz a viz the powerless people, the scholars opined. They have just befooled them in the name of ideologies and have done a great damage to the citizens and to the nation’s stature. Given these facts they can be easily branded as anti-national and anti-citizen.
Another point that was stressed upon in the discussion was that why not the government is putting special efforts on creating special agricultural zones and special educational zones.
The other major observation came into the limelight was that the major national parties like Congress viz a viz Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984, BJP viz a viz Gujarat pogrom and CPIM viz a viz Nandigram have themselves exposed to the people owing to respective response to the crisis by allowing their cadres to create violence on their behalf and totally freezing the state machinery during the moment of crisis. They also highlight the regional imbalance which would be there due to the SEZ.
Few of the participants while defending the benefits of the service sector maintain that the concept of service was there in our culture and it needs mental energy and less physical work so we should promote it and not allow it to be sidelined in the pretext of agriculture and industrial sector.
Majority of the participant agreed on the point that we cannot sidelined the agricultural sector the way we are doing because it relates to the majority and majority relates to the poor and in democracy power less majority has the right to priorities the policies for their own self instead of few rich making policies for themselves.
The other view of the majority was that there is no problem in SEZ but it has to be inclusive in term of involving the locals by making them the major stake holders and also the share holders in its overall growth. They also suggested that China’s model of SEZ can not be replicated in Toto in India because SEZ in China followed by a social disaster, SEZ there started with prior infrastructural development and rehabilitation, whereas in India the SEZ policy has been implemented in a haphazard manner.
Majority of the participants thought that the problem of unemployment, marginalization of the poor, suicide by the farmers is related with less industrialization thus they suggested that the entire unorganized sector including agriculture should come into the ambit of the industrial policy.
There was complete unanimity that the trickle down theory has been a failure in India because of improper industrialization, prioritization and implementation of policies.