South Asia Citizens Web

We as citizens, members of the academia, people’s movements, action groups and representatives of various community based organisations have for the last four years been consistently raising several concerns in the matter of the SEZ legislation passed by the UPA government in 2005 followed by the widespread establishment of SEZs across the country. The provisions of the legislation itself, which promotes the creation of new political and economic territories in the country, made it clear that this is a recipe for disaster and instability. But the actual implementation and creation of these zones have also demonstrated that the stated goals of industrialisation, technological development or even export growth are a mere eye wash. After four years of the SEZ Act - it is out in the open - that these zones are promoting expropriation of public and community resources for profit interests of domestic corporations and the financial market.

Hawkers are typically treated as encroachers of public space and are forced to bear the additional burden of legal insecurity, harassment and bribes to different elements. As pressure on urban land increases, more and more laws are invoked to harass, exploit or coerce the street vendors, including some sections of the Police Act and the Indian Penal Code.

(The below piece was read out at the 75th birthday party of Hari P. Sharma, 14 November 2009)

Hari and I were born in the British colony of India, he on the other side of eastern Punjab where the Hindi-Urdu linguistic community begins and I in the Southern Siraiki speaking belt of Punjab; the land now divided into India and Pakistan. We went to school when the raj was still intact and the Second World War, started by the imperialist powers, was still raging. The Punjabi youth were being enticed to join the British Indian army with musical chants of “bharti ho ja rey recruit.” But we never knew each other until decades later when from different routes we ended up in North America in the 1960s at a time when the winds of change were blowing strong and turbulent.

A massive capitalist assault, promoted in the name of ‘development’ by both the Central and Orissa Governments, in the recent years. The marauders are large corporations, both domestic and foreign, preying upon the province’s vast natural resources, among them - iron ore, bauxite, plentiful water, fertile agricultural lands and marine wealth.
A Mass resistance rally of over 2000 people in Orissa will walk through 120 villages of seven blocks namely Erasama, Balikuda in Jagatsinghpur District and Astaranga, Kaktpur, Gop, Puri Sadar, Puri covering 150 kilometres.

In Pakistan the private TV media revolution was welcomed by ordinary people who have historically been fed a surfeit of state ideology via Pakistan Television (PTV). Only a few short years after a glittering christening, however, the private media has proven that the profit-motive can coexist quite well with the ideological agenda that we all thought had been left behind with the state’s monopoly on information.