Special Economic Zones and the Land Acquisition Policy in India: A Critique

With the three basic objectives, inter alia, of attracting Foreign Direct Investment, increasing exports to earn more foreign exchange and attaining faster economic growth, the Government of India initiated the establishment of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). It was thought that the existing policies for an all round balanced economic development of the country might not auger well in view of enormity of the problems.

The government always takes advantage of that, i.e., it only propagates about job-creation opportunities from SEZs and suppresses the account of the job losses for the obvious reason that the job losers far outnumber the job getters.

In this paper, a modest attempt is made to analyse the SEZ policy in view of the land acquisition policy currently in vogue and, particularly, in the context of The Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2007, and The Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2007. The Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2007, was passed by the Lok Sabha on 25 February 2009 (the last day of the session), but the bill lapsed with the dissolution of the 14th Lok Sabha.