SEZ for Who

I sit in the city, cocooned my simpler knowledge of what happens in a village and listen all this talk about creating special economic zones. There is war going on over there…petitions to be signed, riots, and deaths. On either side are a mix of completely untrustworthy politicians, and their ideas of development or non-development for that matter. Who do you believe?

What gets you is the heavy ham handedness of the establishment, the sheer power they wield and the way they use it. The brainless hitting, of workers, students, farmers, people…I mean you stop thinking about validity of the cause and shudder at the brutality that is seen over and over again. It almost as if the system has no idea on how to really deal will people, other than beating the shit out of them…or murdering them.

Of course the entire idea of SEZ is to close in the dramatic economic gap with China, and many would argue that is the way ahead. China has become the country to emulate, the country that in my memory, ran people over with tanks in their most visited tourist spot - the Tiananmen Square…no roses or appeals could stop them that day.

Of course, putting this out a blog is even more elitist. After all, I already am sitting in an economic zone, and the farmer is by his fields, not with folded hands, but anger in their fists. Is that anger valid, or is misdirected or is a just mix of everything that the have not’s hate about the have’s.

India in its villages and small cities is and will continue to brim over with dissatisfaction, yesterday in Gurgaon, then, Pune, today in Singur and Nandigram, tomorrow in the richer Southern states ….Welcome to the great divide, a boiling cauldron watched over by opportunist politicians, power hungry police, corrupt administration….it is and will continue to spill over and everyone will burn.

I have no solution, because for that one has to introduce rational and even more collaborative thinking and none of the above are even remotely capable of that.