Why SEZ?
A quiz haunts us. We now know what our newfound enfant terrible – SEZ is all about. We know what it will lead us to, we know who will it pay and who will it rob. But do we really know why it is manufactured- the manufacture of the manufactory? All of the activists, social scientists, academicians and journalists are running after one question- Why did the World Capitalism craft this idea of SEZ? What was that ONE or a SET of objectives behind? What is the ulterior project- if there is any and many believe that there is certainly one without really knowing it? What is the measure that even if the façade fails the objective will be achieved and will be achieved to what extent and at what milestone? Each one of these questions lead us to a journey of investigation.
Theories have been floated and did not satisfy as adequate. Like all other social projects SEZ is an evolving one. It does not preclude the possibility that the primary objective could have been different to what it is now and what it will be tomorrow- nevertheless every change brings our attention back to more basic and more abstract ONE root – the more faces we see and the more varieties we observe in the phenomenon level the more prominent out comes the hidden agenda. At the theoretical and strategic level it shows us to the motto or attitude and on the practical plane or on the general line of application it might show specific patterns in different perspective. In this note we would like to search for the general objective and the specific line of application in case of India – a use case for a third world.
Michael Parenti has offered us his theory, till today this is most succinctly explained comprehensive theory we have got. His observations are at the strategic objective level. His point goes co-linear to Dipankar Basu and Pratyush Chandra’s theory of a modern kind of primitive accumulation for the newer stance that Capital is going to take. Preparing the world with a huge army of absolutely competitive cheapest labour market that will be needed in the forthcoming campaign of global Capital.
Marx theorized in his Communist Manifesto that Capital has got the unique quality of jumping from one focus to the other, thus continuously restructuring itself- this will reduce the history of labour and will render it cheap and fresh for the new set of industries. The shift in set of industries therefore resets the skill scale of a labour and all previous experience of the labour is rendered value less from the exchange value in the labour market. He however could not observe the gradual de-skilling of the labour within the same industry down the year as the organic composition of labour power increases. In fact today we observe that with the increase of the organic composition of socially useful effective labour and with the increase of the technical composition of labour the importance and therefore value of the live labour within a period and within the same industry goes down. This is now added to Marx’s propositions in the Manifesto. But Marx correctly theorized that the gradual cheapening of labour is concomitant with the process of “development” on behalf of Capital. The moments known to him and observed to him was simply when INDUSTRY shifted gears of its “growth engine”.
On a detail plane though, Parenti observed in reality what Marx prophesized- Every step of “development” means when Capital will be formed and would GROW the labour will loose its real value in terms of the usage and importance and in the market exchange as well. “Development:” therefore means growing Under-development and rather gradual De-Development of the producers from all considerations – his personal value in the labour market and the purchasing power in the commodity market. When Capital transforms every conceivable human relationship to itself, it simultaneously fetches or provides a lesser quantitative measure down the time scale. Capital therefore drains does not develop the society or for that matter itself, or its future- That is exactly how Capital is perennially and genetically moribund.
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On an implementation plane, we in the third world observe that the modus operandi to go about this Capital formation [or could we say “Capital’s weakening of its own potential value” - a tiny deduction yields that every unit of Capital formation decreases its future potential to earn more – a diminishing return on itself- a python lives on eating itself] is to evict people from their self sustaining stability of agriculture to the anarchy of “free” market of gradually cheap labour. “Wealth creates poverty” is what Parenti abstracts.
“There is a “mystery” we must explain: How is it that as corporate investments and foreign aid and international loans to poor countries have increased dramatically throughout the world over the last half century, so has poverty? The number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world’s population”
Over the last half century, U.S. industries and banks (and other western corporations) have invested heavily in those poorer regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America known as the “Third World.” The transnationals are attracted by the rich natural resources, the high return that comes from low-paid labor, and the nearly complete absence of taxes, environmental regulations, worker benefits, and occupational safety costs.
The trans-nationals push out local businesses in the Third World and pre-empt their markets. American agribusiness cartels, heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, dump surplus products in other countries at below cost and undersell local farmers. As Christopher Cook describes it in his Diet for a Dead Planet, they expropriate the best land in these countries for cash-crop exports, usually monoculture crops requiring large amounts of pesticides, leaving less and less acreage for the hundreds of varieties of organically grown foods that feed the local populations.
By displacing local populations from their lands and robbing them of their self-sufficiency, corporations create overcrowded labor markets of desperate people who are forced into shanty towns to toil for poverty wages (when they can get work), often in violation of the countries’ own minimum wage laws. “
Ah! Here we go! We see our dear enfant terrible bobbing up its ugly head- the SEZ! The above is the motto behind. Do we note the features? – eviction, cash crop, crop dumping, rendering multi-crop naturally rich farmlands first to mono-crop areas and then to near deserts through artificial “chemicides” and seeds [ terminators and others] etc.
Marx did not experience this but surmised them right, Parenti exemplified this through his specific experiences in Aftica, Haiti and other third world countries. The features he presents are the following
“Development” increases poverty
“Development” increases the rate of growing poverty faster than the rate of population growth.
“Development” resets workers’ skills and living conditions to the ground level
“Development” is concomitant with eviction of the producers.
“Development” kills varieties.
“Development” snubs down any potential benefit from natural wealth
“Investment” means creating poverty in an alien nation-state.
Subsidy in the first world is transferred as a killer dose to any rival economic production centre.
The “public investment” in a first world is to ship jobs out of its own territory and create a huge inter and intra competing cheap destitute army and therefore
Every such investment is to create an all round pauperisation by cutting down the necessary and appropriate production
And yet every such investment is an extension of the Capital market and so the final punch
Market expansion engenders Poverty.
This sharp and straight deduction was transgresses Marx’s observations and yet re-establishes the tenets of Marxism. Market inhibits growth of human capability and market is never any benefactor- it is the drain on Wealth.
Ground Reality here:
Kill Agriculture:
Reduce wage:
In India if there is one thing common in all SEZ, among the 375 proposed SEZ and growing, then that is the aspect of grabbing of fertile agricultural fresh land and rendering it barren. Purpose does not matter, Weakening of the parallel and alternate production base is all that matters. No one is really interested in production here. No one is interested in really finding out a market of the industrial production that will come out from a SEZ. The stakeholders are interested only in ruining the capability. That is why the definition of Capital formation has changed signification. It no longer equates itself to capacity building of machine tools or building up of means of production. Capital formation means increasing the volume of Capital on itself anyhow, and the most suggestive track is through speculations in real estate. The marginal productivity of Capital in a Capital only market is diminishing and that is what it should have happened, so a new sector is needed for finance capital or speculative market to make money- that is the real estate market. No one knows who will buy and when will those “who” buy? Speculative capital cannot wait for a production cycle to complete, it has not waited in history and it does not understand the language of process. With every piece of Real estate build up the investors metropolitan investors reap more ready money through consultancy, design, style export and cultural export and actually loose the potential of redesigning and re-developing for other development or continuous development. In third world Land did never undergo the law of diminishing return down the years, every year they get replenished and every year they fetch either the same volume or increased volume if you average it out over a long period. The Realty sector takes the exact opposite retrogressive track. Nothing is renewed and thus once a piece of fresh agricultural land is used up for industry and then if and when the industry packs up no other firm or industry or production unit is interested to take it up as a base ground- the cost of dismantling is inhibitive and more than the cost of fresh build- up. The cost of renewal goes up and therefore goes up the cost of production. With every such investment in Real estate through grabbing of agricultural land the potential benefit of the land for development purpose reduces with decelerating rate. – This is the law of development of land value in SEZ culture in enclosed sub-space- it is the build up of deserts. The Corporate investment from metropolitan sources in the west invests in producing deserts out of fertile land. IF there is one industry that flourishes or benefits surreptitiously it is the industry of producing deserts – the industry of killing!
Global Capital is for expanding the deserts and eventually in expanding the bedrock of its own grave. Market restructures the self-meaning from particularity to abstract! Today, it may be the market of a particular product or solution, tomorrow the allegiance would shift and yet it will remain MARKET. This journey from a particular reality to abstract concept is what the Capital buys in and thus forms itself- it is the famous Marxian paradox of selling its future to buy the present. The hegemony of a dead past and dead present over the potential living future! The project of SEZ is to make a self-viable living mechanism go seek and depend upon the mercy of an alien and eventually die
(Neo)colonialism cannot cope with a sustaining economy. Capital cannot grow without neo-colonialism. Capital gets into a decelerating loop of diminishing return within itself and within its “own” fiefdom- as Marx theorized Capital needs an “other” always to develop and “form” itself. Capital therefore needs a sector outside its market realm and it has to be viable and strong. Once gulped Capital has to rush to a fresh pasture. SEZ therefore is one project to simply grab the “other” land – that other need be as strong as anything- economically “other”, socially “other” and politically “other” and therefore SEZ is simply a project to grab fertile multi-crop multi-producing land, that far and no farther! Other objectives are simply by-products. Industrialization and/or industrial product or industrial marketisation is nothing but facades. The project is to INVEST TO EXPAND POVERTY & KILL PRODUCTION,
Who makes money?
We saw that making money means loosing real wealth and potency. We saw expanding market is ruining economies, but did we comprehend that making money means even ruining the economy in which it plays? Here again Parenti observes:
“The savings that big business reaps from cheap labor abroad are not passed on in lower prices to their customers elsewhere. Corporations do not outsource to far-off regions so that U.S. consumers can save money. They outsource in order to increase their margin of profit. In 1990, shoes made by Indonesian children working twelve-hour days for 13 cents an hour, cost only $2.60 but still sold for $100 or more in the United States.
In their perpetual confusion, some liberal critics conclude that foreign aid and IMF and World Bank structural adjustments “do not work”; the end result is less self-sufficiency and more poverty for the recipient nations, they point out. Why then do the rich member states continue to fund the IMF and World Bank? Are their leaders just less intelligent than the critics who keep pointing out to them that their policies are having the opposite effect?
No, it is the critics who are stupid not the western leaders and investors who own so much of the world and enjoy such immense wealth and success. They pursue their aid and foreign loan programs because such programs do work. The question is, work for whom? Cui bono?
The purpose behind their investments, loans, and aid programs is not to uplift the masses in other countries. That is certainly not the business they are in. The purpose is to serve the interests of global capital accumulation, to take over the lands and local economies of Third World peoples, monopolize their markets, depress their wages, indenture their labor with enormous debts, privatize their public service sector, and prevent these nations from emerging as trade competitors by not allowing them a normal development”
This part is very interesting. Gone are those days where we used to think first world lives happily on the exploits from the third world or more precisely the working population of the first world is living off their counterparts in the native third world! No, they are not – right here the post-modern post colonial theoreticians fall unknowingly in the same bracket with the liberals, under the garb of radical fire-brand rhetoric they actually divide the world proletariat and can never explain why Guilaini laid down his life in Italy with the slogan “Capital off from third world!”. Parenti shows how the benefits reaped from the third world is not passed over to the first world any more and rather is sent back to other third world un charted areas to expand the market meaning thereby to expropriate the natural wealth and resources available and yet not marketised. USA has not become a richer economy due to the exploits from third world. In today’s neo-colonial exploitation no economy benefits, the crisis may seem to be averted for a short while. Previously the conquistadores, marauders, adventurers, seafarers and pirates handed over their loot to the crown, which then distributed it in their own metropolitan country- that country used it to “develop”. Now it is no more. Individuals go rich, they spend, squander, invest in junks and unnecessary stuff calling it investing in life-style and build up constructs- they invest in art artefacts and in insurances and in entertainment – all that produces no permanent artifacts. Wealth is accumulated to be frittered off calling it prestige and life-style- all mental constructs- they actually invest in GROWTH- not knowing what it is actually but perceiving a sense of distinction from others. Colonial plunder created the necessary capital formation for industrialisation, neo-colonial plunder creates mental constructs to give newer fads and distinctions- it will not create any industrialisation or development – had it been otherwise we would have seen Europe and US developing newer forms of industries – the only form that gets development is the mammoth sector of building up Quatar, Bahrain, Saudi Coastal cities and hotels, resorts, entertainment sectors to serve those few who would afford to ENJOY and then forget and RE-ENJOY. All in effervescence! Anything that remains would be there in the memory, in the dreams!
A virtuality over reality! An imagination over actuality is what the Capital is investing in. It is time to reclaim the reality – the physical, the tangible and the lasting peace and material that will serve us increasingly for the time to come, and assist our living, our sharing.
Monday, April 30, 2007
SEZ - part 2
Specially Enclosed Zones for forming Capital through production or servicing within a nation-state and without the encumbrances of law of the native land is what gets called as Special Economic Zone. What speciality of Economy this zone is going to provide is hazy not only from the content point of view but even from every angle of view one looks at it.
Can a nation state, by definition, have multiple “economies” within its territorial boundary? Can an “Economy” be quantified through any stretchable definition of qualification as one co-existing with “others”? Is the usage of “Economy” is over determined by factors other than “Economy” or if not then where is the line drawn to distinguish the exchange mechanism or production process or even production relation with the regulating rules relating to human rights, social benefits and even simple polity of the nation-state?
The concept of enclosed space has changed its point of incidence. Marx saw an enclosed space as a catchment basin from where cheap labour will be evicted and culled in to work in industries. Labourers from not specialized but specially charted out areas will be brought in to the most “advanced” type of production relation or that is what will be touted. In reality it will never be the most advanced type of production relation but will have the most advanced type of surplus extraction from the labourers. In Marx’s days, the entire nation-state territorial space was the hearth of the Capital, spaces were enclosed and insulated to juice out the labour power, evict them, make them readily available for the Capital sector- today in SEZ the enclosed space is the special sector of Capital, whatever we have outside is the area from which labour power will be uprooted, evicted and made available for the “enclosed spaces”. This very specific nature of the transposition requires a huge space or innumerable middle range spaces to be declared as the SEZ where the “advanced” Capital will establish the most advanced form of labour extraction, rent extraction and super-profit extraction. This would be the most “advanced” form of not production relation but of extraction relation. That too let us harbour no illusion that advanced might mean sophisticated.. Sophistication would have brought in more organic composition of Capital that in turn would have meant advanced organic composition both in Fixed Capital and in variable capital.. In addition to adding more machines in the production process more technical composition of Capital would have to be brought in the personal skills of the labourers and daily tools used by the labourers. Let us be very clear that no such thing is going to be the essential part within the case study of the production process within SEZ. Even we must also not overlook that the SEZ may not have any production coming out at all. It could be a simple centre for hospitality, and centre for entertainment. We might call that as production, but no one will deny that no Capacity will be built up. No means of production may be produced. Special Economic Zone would therefore attain some credential in its description because it is a different kind of animal of economy that is going to be garnered here, one that does not require that profit and super-profit comes out of the Capital invested in some or the other production process.
Primitive accumulation of Marx’s description has essentially come back and is active. Capitalism has created within itself sub-sectors and shows partiality on one over the other. At this day today, agriculture is not outside the Capital project, nor is small scale industries or even what gets called as the Sunset or traditional industries. Capital is moving towards a regime of a different and a more restricted kind of Capital formation in one or two preferred sub-sectors at the cost of her other sub-sectors. Moribund nature of Capital is still a convincing proposition because the project of Capital has therefore become more skewed, focussed and living off itself. Agriculture had just started to form Capital with the newer machines and factor inputs. Agricultural produces then were just getting forwardly linked to other processed products and even giving rise to large scale mass consumer products. Agro-industry had a possibility of taking a dangerous turn through GM food industry [cash crop] but could equally have taken a rather desirable route of developing retail-food consumer industry. Retail industry in India has been very conservatively poised to be flourishing up to Rs 28 billion in the next two to three years based on the present production capability. The huge potential of the augmented production and processed production would have transgressed even into the so called traditional near-static realm of the security food production. Cereal too had shown all signs of becoming a viable and very important cash crop. Economy based on the agricultural showed the promise of becoming the most spread out and most popular industry and yes, even heavy industry there too. The agricultural equipment building up capital industry, the storage industry, the preservative industry, the processing mills industry, the distribution and Just-In-Time supply chain all these had the possibility of being the best optimized network in the human history. Capital, and especially Capital in the third world had chosen to ignore that route and go for what it perceives as a faster track of building up SEZ on some low graded low skill assembling industry and hospitality industry. It has chosen to ruin down even all present capabilities of agricultural and agro-industries and for the sake of realty industry- this is the famous python eating off its own tail. That is the very specific nature of the accelerating rate of moribundity of Capital.
“Primitive Accumulation process” had accumulated Capital through accumulating the sources of Capital that is labour, in turn labourers had to be provided, that created more jobs and more distributed income and therefore more small savings. The present day SEZ-patterned neo-modern primitive capital or what we may term as predatory capital is evicting producing farmers to snatch their land, render them jobless and provision less and skill less gradually. The only thing that is extracted of them in this SEZ is the cheap labour without any strings attached. The whole logic of enclosing the other way around has come up simply due to this narrow objective of extracting the cheapest possible labour without bothering about the provisions given to them for keeping them alive and work-worthy for the next day. The traditional definition of wage comes into question here. What therefore the labourers in SEZ would get is a diminutive form of wage that is destined to go down progressively. This downward shift in wage or remuneration may be in real terms or in nominal terms meaning it may be in absolute terms or in terms of inflation adjusted basis, the lowering down of the wage down the tenure is a fact nonetheless. The Enclosing is done also to avoid the competitive wage war between different companies within one industry – that is why it is predatory. . The enclosure ensures physical insulation from intra-industry competition, intra-market vagaries and cross-industry side effects. Enclosure establishes a corporate fiefdom on the production process and is eked out to be isolated from the general society or the production environment of the surroundings and the nation-state in consideration. This is the crux of the benefit that globalised Capital gets from any SEZ- regardless of the ontological position of the industry, its standard, organic composition, technical composition, labour law, democratic polity, comparative advantage or disadvantage or general labour market any enclosed zone can be prepared with the exact desired level of input-mix and then packet it as one single product exactly right for maximum profit extraction. The entire process of production is now a product and a package. SEZ is the one package comprising the product that is sold in the market [service, solution or material product], service that goes along with it. The market however is usually not the open market; it is a specific market in a distant territory or a link in the forward chain of an end product. The market therefore does not have the immunity to withstand on its own as an independent product and is solely dependent on a parent firm in some distant metropolitan country. The product is the optimized output-mix with the lowest variable capital or labour involved. SEZ abhors among other things any kind of normal market competition and therefore SEZ goes against our general liberal concept of neo-conservative classical market concepts. Here comes the specific import and necessity of SEZ distinct from any producing firm. The enclosure then extends to every aspect of life for the labourer and gets in or out of the enclosure as per the profit consideration of the owner of the SEZ. Labourers may pour in the SEZ every day and pour out at the end of the work or they may be interned.
Colonisers colonised the native land through gradual occupation of cities and then moved on to the feeding base for those city markets and eventually the whole territory. SEZ is a mechanism very similar to that kind of project with the only difference that every SEZ is different from the other and for all other life carrying activities it has to depend on the unenclosed area – the “other”. Capital is a social relation is what Marx opined and went further to say that it transforms every human relationship into itself. SEZ does the same thing with a more wholesome form.
This phenomenon brings us to the perusal of the business model of SEZ. The entire all-engulfing market lies “outside” the SEZ – It lies out there – out in the “other”. Even if for hypothetical consideration we consider there are infinite number of individually insignificant SEZs [ individual SEZ is not capable of changing the nature of the overall SEZ scenario within a nation state] {Please note Karan Singh’s statement- He wants the whole of India to become a conglomeration of SEZs} then there would be a virtual SEZ market where each individual SEZ would be a product by itself. In that condition each individual SEZ would not need any protection or special insulation from the others, it could have competed with the other SEZs. Well! That is the paradox, here. So SEZ cannot be innumerable in numbers, it has to be limited and thus it has to survive by primitive accumulation of the labour power from the “other” sector – or the normal nation-state economy sector. This is the reason why the great Capitalist China moving with a firm double digit GDP has now restricted the number of SEZ into only 6 big ones and are now slowly tightening the leash through promulgating more and more restrictive laws. Latin America has abandoned any concept of SEZ and it is only India and especially the so-known Indian parliamentary left is full agog with SEZ concept. The dependence of SEZ on the “other” for its sustenance is not only the limiting factor in its sustenance and growth but it is also the nemesis. The growth rate in a SEZ project is bound theoretically to go down and eventually [ not asymptotically] reach the zero level and head towards being negative. SEZs are bound to turn red in various time tenures, but by that time it will take down along with the entire neighbourhood, the ecology, the producing potential, and aggravate chaos and anarchy exponentially. SEZ is a fast loosing proposition in any medium to long term. A product lasts only its life cycle. Even if it is insulated from the competition and general market obsolescence, the life span of a product can only be extended but doom it will! A SEZ, as it depends on one product or one service or one type of solution or a few collections of it, has to face the same track history of that of a product. SEZ in a long term is nothing but a bankruptcy generating, devastating device creating social, political, cultural and demographic land mines. After a couple of bouts or life cycles of a set of SEZ, the whole land, labour will loose its recycle ability and desert will it render. And right here in this consideration the future value of the Capital is loosing. Every marginal productivity unit measure of unit Capital will fetch progressively lower and lower value. The short term apparent gain will be for the nation-state a gradual drain in the pent up wealth that human civilization has kept on providing all these years- it is therefore a project plan with a diminishing return. SEZ baffles the country’s statistic and metric by short-term spurts but just like administering steroids it kills slowly the country in any middle to long term tenure. – it is Capital de-formation on a longer tenure- a bad proposition!
The entire concept of bundling up of the ancillary industries with the production unit of the principal product is a loosing proposition. Had this business case been successful then from the profit point of view the forward integration would have been more profitable and then again the conglomerate behemoth model of the mid twentieth century would come back. The separation of core production unit from the ancillaries brings success only when the ancillaries cater to various competitive firms within the same industry. SEZ organization inhibits that, even if allows such outward journey of intermediate products the transportation advantage will not be achieved and the concept of optimum supply chain will not be achieved. The concept of down stream production chain can never live long by supplying to one or a few pre-ordained customers. Any change in the order pattern would jeopardize the organization and sustenance of the ancillary firm and would turn it red. With the bringing down of the feeders the main firm will go red- this is an over determined process of doom and bankruptcy.
SEZ is an enclosed space subsidized by the government and exempted from paying the excise duties and various other normal taxes. If the number of such SEZ units grows then the nation-state will be loosing the potential income, whereas the financial institutions and private or public venture capital concerns will invest money in those. With every additional SEZ in the country the marginal productivity of one invested dollar looses its comparative sheen after the number of SEZs had reached a critical number. A country cannot sustain that as the public funds will soon be depleted of its operating generated own fund from domestic operations. They will have to borrow in money from financial institutions beyond the nation-state boundary. This fund comes along with interest tags. The interest money that will be paid is nothing but the portion of the super-profit generated from regular Capital operations. With the increase of tenure and amount the super-profit will turn into a rent and will be siphoned off the nation-state boundary dipping the nation-state into perennial economic and thus political in-sovereignty.
SEZ needs a continuous inflow of Capital unless all its products are to be bought back.
In the case of being bought back the firm looses the freedom of the market price and is bound to move towards a decelerating growth rate and faced with the inflationary nation-state economy this plateaued out growth rate would be in real terms go down over a longer period.
In the case of no such obligation of being bought back the firm has to depend on the outside market and the cost of acquiring new business would be going up as more and more SEZ firms throughout the world would pour in products- in this case too the rate of return is diminishing and the entire advantage of protection and subsidy dies off. Please note this is not the general neo-con logic of free market because in a SEZ the only UPS of the final product is the cheap labour that does not grow in quality or value. Going down the value chain never fetches any medium to long-term guarantee to the producing firm. In a normal nation-state competing market protectionism at the inception hours helps stabilize the company through giving it enough fail-over during which it hones on to the value proposition and becomes capable of fighting with the external open market- that is the interest pursued by the nation-states in building up its own army of competing industries. In a SEZ case the native-nation-state subsidizes revenue and does not build up any value proposition. It remains dwarf and always dies outside the incubator.
In any nation-state economy then walking over to the international market place, revenue earned strengthens the native currency against the international basket of standard currency of the SDR. This is simply because the repatriation is inward within the native state. In SEZ it is mostly repatriated abroad or the revenue earned is used to import foreign goods. Hard currencies bob up the countries reserve for a very short while and depletes that again as fast as in came. The foreign direct investments come in a normal market as well as in a SEZ with strings attached. As long as the domestic market is not very strong and demanding for finished industrial products FDIs are always traps. Companies will only come to the native country when they find very higher marginal returns to their dollars that again entails their getting lured by the strength and volume of the native-market. The entire credit money of the WEST would require a producing economy outside the credit capital or debt capital generating sector that can SERVE the credit offered- this is the monetary aspect of the primitive accumulation- The (M3-M1) of the WEST will be served by the M1 of the EAST.
The FIIs extract interest that gets compounded. The serving potential of a native country’s operative profit goes down with every additional native dollar earned through one more unit of labour spent in the native economy. With all these the metropolitan market or the market in the west uses the native space as a space sub-serving its main product that is either produced or designed within the WEST and the biggest chunk of the sales revenue minus the operating cost goes over to the Western owner either through patents, or through owning IP or through design consultancy fees. The smaller portion that comes to the native country goes to pay for the labour and the acquisition cost. With every such unit sales-revenue the differential of the Western and the Eastern allocation yawns up more and more creating an ever skewed distribution. The absolute value of the production-sales-repatriation cycle looks exciting from the native stand point in the beginning years and then figures out that it is loosing the relative value proposition competing with the WESTERN peer or the WESTERN co-producer. The value game becomes, if not war but definitely a contention of attrition.
What is then the benefit of getting into SEZ then? If it is so gloomy then why all comprador corporates of the native nation-state are rushing towards this obvious doom?
Yes, there is some gain, however effervescent, however fleeting there are some thrills there, but they are there as long as the overall picture is not paid attention to, as long as the collective is not taken into consideration, as long as the individual rivalries enthral the individual players without any heed to the collective doom. The euphoria of chaos, the ecstasy of anarchy, the elixir of crossing interests and the moto of contention of killing others to survive, living for a short while, for a fast buck and for cravenness for speed is what SEZ would offer- it is the same attitude that goads homo sapiens to consumerism, to over-accumulation and needless possessiveness. People kick ass as if there is no tomorrow, and Capital leads human and every relationship generating from humans into a simulacrum of no-tomorrow! Capital is the only tomorrow!
The faster a third world producing and thriving economy would SEZise itself the longer would the WEST survive and the better would it. We saw the vaporising of the Asian tigers with only surplus reserves into basket cases and tourism destinations slipping down to providing solace to worn heels of the WEST. We experienced how famous industrial centres of countries like India [ Durgapur-Asansol-Ranigunge belt, Gaziabad belt, Old Mumbai belt, Steel plant colonies] turning from high skilled settlements into almost deserts within the last 4 decades or so, we experienced how new and promised lands loose its crown to newer up-comers. We also saw how producing economies and sectors are giving way to service sector and entertainment gizmos and eating away the best of the brains and wisdom into brain and skill drain.
The SEZ offers its owners a nice prelude to the Capital flight they would carry along and stash in the financial institutions abroad, to have a nicer life for may be one life time [ without any consideration to their progeny] comparable to their western compatriots before the native-country ever dreams to have a convertible currency regime. The owners do not want to take any chances, if the native country sinks they are afloat transmigrated and transmuted into citizens of the world and in particular of the western world. If the country shores up for a while then they will come back to reclaim their ancestral rights as sons and daughters to the soil, they will then enjoy a cheaper economy and again the moment the signal turns amber they would take the next flight out. SEZ is that space ensuring a safer proposition of Capital flight off the native land to the promised metropolitan. Who paid for all these??? Don’t even dare to ask.. of course those half clad, half fed, lesser children of native land, those who never could wake up to comprehend their rightful claim. Here speed is the Mantra—the faster you can fly befooling the producers the smarter you are! SEZ is that smart contraption that takes the owner places and takes the producer-labour for a song!!!
Can a nation state, by definition, have multiple “economies” within its territorial boundary? Can an “Economy” be quantified through any stretchable definition of qualification as one co-existing with “others”? Is the usage of “Economy” is over determined by factors other than “Economy” or if not then where is the line drawn to distinguish the exchange mechanism or production process or even production relation with the regulating rules relating to human rights, social benefits and even simple polity of the nation-state?
The concept of enclosed space has changed its point of incidence. Marx saw an enclosed space as a catchment basin from where cheap labour will be evicted and culled in to work in industries. Labourers from not specialized but specially charted out areas will be brought in to the most “advanced” type of production relation or that is what will be touted. In reality it will never be the most advanced type of production relation but will have the most advanced type of surplus extraction from the labourers. In Marx’s days, the entire nation-state territorial space was the hearth of the Capital, spaces were enclosed and insulated to juice out the labour power, evict them, make them readily available for the Capital sector- today in SEZ the enclosed space is the special sector of Capital, whatever we have outside is the area from which labour power will be uprooted, evicted and made available for the “enclosed spaces”. This very specific nature of the transposition requires a huge space or innumerable middle range spaces to be declared as the SEZ where the “advanced” Capital will establish the most advanced form of labour extraction, rent extraction and super-profit extraction. This would be the most “advanced” form of not production relation but of extraction relation. That too let us harbour no illusion that advanced might mean sophisticated.. Sophistication would have brought in more organic composition of Capital that in turn would have meant advanced organic composition both in Fixed Capital and in variable capital.. In addition to adding more machines in the production process more technical composition of Capital would have to be brought in the personal skills of the labourers and daily tools used by the labourers. Let us be very clear that no such thing is going to be the essential part within the case study of the production process within SEZ. Even we must also not overlook that the SEZ may not have any production coming out at all. It could be a simple centre for hospitality, and centre for entertainment. We might call that as production, but no one will deny that no Capacity will be built up. No means of production may be produced. Special Economic Zone would therefore attain some credential in its description because it is a different kind of animal of economy that is going to be garnered here, one that does not require that profit and super-profit comes out of the Capital invested in some or the other production process.
Primitive accumulation of Marx’s description has essentially come back and is active. Capitalism has created within itself sub-sectors and shows partiality on one over the other. At this day today, agriculture is not outside the Capital project, nor is small scale industries or even what gets called as the Sunset or traditional industries. Capital is moving towards a regime of a different and a more restricted kind of Capital formation in one or two preferred sub-sectors at the cost of her other sub-sectors. Moribund nature of Capital is still a convincing proposition because the project of Capital has therefore become more skewed, focussed and living off itself. Agriculture had just started to form Capital with the newer machines and factor inputs. Agricultural produces then were just getting forwardly linked to other processed products and even giving rise to large scale mass consumer products. Agro-industry had a possibility of taking a dangerous turn through GM food industry [cash crop] but could equally have taken a rather desirable route of developing retail-food consumer industry. Retail industry in India has been very conservatively poised to be flourishing up to Rs 28 billion in the next two to three years based on the present production capability. The huge potential of the augmented production and processed production would have transgressed even into the so called traditional near-static realm of the security food production. Cereal too had shown all signs of becoming a viable and very important cash crop. Economy based on the agricultural showed the promise of becoming the most spread out and most popular industry and yes, even heavy industry there too. The agricultural equipment building up capital industry, the storage industry, the preservative industry, the processing mills industry, the distribution and Just-In-Time supply chain all these had the possibility of being the best optimized network in the human history. Capital, and especially Capital in the third world had chosen to ignore that route and go for what it perceives as a faster track of building up SEZ on some low graded low skill assembling industry and hospitality industry. It has chosen to ruin down even all present capabilities of agricultural and agro-industries and for the sake of realty industry- this is the famous python eating off its own tail. That is the very specific nature of the accelerating rate of moribundity of Capital.
“Primitive Accumulation process” had accumulated Capital through accumulating the sources of Capital that is labour, in turn labourers had to be provided, that created more jobs and more distributed income and therefore more small savings. The present day SEZ-patterned neo-modern primitive capital or what we may term as predatory capital is evicting producing farmers to snatch their land, render them jobless and provision less and skill less gradually. The only thing that is extracted of them in this SEZ is the cheap labour without any strings attached. The whole logic of enclosing the other way around has come up simply due to this narrow objective of extracting the cheapest possible labour without bothering about the provisions given to them for keeping them alive and work-worthy for the next day. The traditional definition of wage comes into question here. What therefore the labourers in SEZ would get is a diminutive form of wage that is destined to go down progressively. This downward shift in wage or remuneration may be in real terms or in nominal terms meaning it may be in absolute terms or in terms of inflation adjusted basis, the lowering down of the wage down the tenure is a fact nonetheless. The Enclosing is done also to avoid the competitive wage war between different companies within one industry – that is why it is predatory. . The enclosure ensures physical insulation from intra-industry competition, intra-market vagaries and cross-industry side effects. Enclosure establishes a corporate fiefdom on the production process and is eked out to be isolated from the general society or the production environment of the surroundings and the nation-state in consideration. This is the crux of the benefit that globalised Capital gets from any SEZ- regardless of the ontological position of the industry, its standard, organic composition, technical composition, labour law, democratic polity, comparative advantage or disadvantage or general labour market any enclosed zone can be prepared with the exact desired level of input-mix and then packet it as one single product exactly right for maximum profit extraction. The entire process of production is now a product and a package. SEZ is the one package comprising the product that is sold in the market [service, solution or material product], service that goes along with it. The market however is usually not the open market; it is a specific market in a distant territory or a link in the forward chain of an end product. The market therefore does not have the immunity to withstand on its own as an independent product and is solely dependent on a parent firm in some distant metropolitan country. The product is the optimized output-mix with the lowest variable capital or labour involved. SEZ abhors among other things any kind of normal market competition and therefore SEZ goes against our general liberal concept of neo-conservative classical market concepts. Here comes the specific import and necessity of SEZ distinct from any producing firm. The enclosure then extends to every aspect of life for the labourer and gets in or out of the enclosure as per the profit consideration of the owner of the SEZ. Labourers may pour in the SEZ every day and pour out at the end of the work or they may be interned.
Colonisers colonised the native land through gradual occupation of cities and then moved on to the feeding base for those city markets and eventually the whole territory. SEZ is a mechanism very similar to that kind of project with the only difference that every SEZ is different from the other and for all other life carrying activities it has to depend on the unenclosed area – the “other”. Capital is a social relation is what Marx opined and went further to say that it transforms every human relationship into itself. SEZ does the same thing with a more wholesome form.
This phenomenon brings us to the perusal of the business model of SEZ. The entire all-engulfing market lies “outside” the SEZ – It lies out there – out in the “other”. Even if for hypothetical consideration we consider there are infinite number of individually insignificant SEZs [ individual SEZ is not capable of changing the nature of the overall SEZ scenario within a nation state] {Please note Karan Singh’s statement- He wants the whole of India to become a conglomeration of SEZs} then there would be a virtual SEZ market where each individual SEZ would be a product by itself. In that condition each individual SEZ would not need any protection or special insulation from the others, it could have competed with the other SEZs. Well! That is the paradox, here. So SEZ cannot be innumerable in numbers, it has to be limited and thus it has to survive by primitive accumulation of the labour power from the “other” sector – or the normal nation-state economy sector. This is the reason why the great Capitalist China moving with a firm double digit GDP has now restricted the number of SEZ into only 6 big ones and are now slowly tightening the leash through promulgating more and more restrictive laws. Latin America has abandoned any concept of SEZ and it is only India and especially the so-known Indian parliamentary left is full agog with SEZ concept. The dependence of SEZ on the “other” for its sustenance is not only the limiting factor in its sustenance and growth but it is also the nemesis. The growth rate in a SEZ project is bound theoretically to go down and eventually [ not asymptotically] reach the zero level and head towards being negative. SEZs are bound to turn red in various time tenures, but by that time it will take down along with the entire neighbourhood, the ecology, the producing potential, and aggravate chaos and anarchy exponentially. SEZ is a fast loosing proposition in any medium to long term. A product lasts only its life cycle. Even if it is insulated from the competition and general market obsolescence, the life span of a product can only be extended but doom it will! A SEZ, as it depends on one product or one service or one type of solution or a few collections of it, has to face the same track history of that of a product. SEZ in a long term is nothing but a bankruptcy generating, devastating device creating social, political, cultural and demographic land mines. After a couple of bouts or life cycles of a set of SEZ, the whole land, labour will loose its recycle ability and desert will it render. And right here in this consideration the future value of the Capital is loosing. Every marginal productivity unit measure of unit Capital will fetch progressively lower and lower value. The short term apparent gain will be for the nation-state a gradual drain in the pent up wealth that human civilization has kept on providing all these years- it is therefore a project plan with a diminishing return. SEZ baffles the country’s statistic and metric by short-term spurts but just like administering steroids it kills slowly the country in any middle to long term tenure. – it is Capital de-formation on a longer tenure- a bad proposition!
The entire concept of bundling up of the ancillary industries with the production unit of the principal product is a loosing proposition. Had this business case been successful then from the profit point of view the forward integration would have been more profitable and then again the conglomerate behemoth model of the mid twentieth century would come back. The separation of core production unit from the ancillaries brings success only when the ancillaries cater to various competitive firms within the same industry. SEZ organization inhibits that, even if allows such outward journey of intermediate products the transportation advantage will not be achieved and the concept of optimum supply chain will not be achieved. The concept of down stream production chain can never live long by supplying to one or a few pre-ordained customers. Any change in the order pattern would jeopardize the organization and sustenance of the ancillary firm and would turn it red. With the bringing down of the feeders the main firm will go red- this is an over determined process of doom and bankruptcy.
SEZ is an enclosed space subsidized by the government and exempted from paying the excise duties and various other normal taxes. If the number of such SEZ units grows then the nation-state will be loosing the potential income, whereas the financial institutions and private or public venture capital concerns will invest money in those. With every additional SEZ in the country the marginal productivity of one invested dollar looses its comparative sheen after the number of SEZs had reached a critical number. A country cannot sustain that as the public funds will soon be depleted of its operating generated own fund from domestic operations. They will have to borrow in money from financial institutions beyond the nation-state boundary. This fund comes along with interest tags. The interest money that will be paid is nothing but the portion of the super-profit generated from regular Capital operations. With the increase of tenure and amount the super-profit will turn into a rent and will be siphoned off the nation-state boundary dipping the nation-state into perennial economic and thus political in-sovereignty.
SEZ needs a continuous inflow of Capital unless all its products are to be bought back.
In the case of being bought back the firm looses the freedom of the market price and is bound to move towards a decelerating growth rate and faced with the inflationary nation-state economy this plateaued out growth rate would be in real terms go down over a longer period.
In the case of no such obligation of being bought back the firm has to depend on the outside market and the cost of acquiring new business would be going up as more and more SEZ firms throughout the world would pour in products- in this case too the rate of return is diminishing and the entire advantage of protection and subsidy dies off. Please note this is not the general neo-con logic of free market because in a SEZ the only UPS of the final product is the cheap labour that does not grow in quality or value. Going down the value chain never fetches any medium to long-term guarantee to the producing firm. In a normal nation-state competing market protectionism at the inception hours helps stabilize the company through giving it enough fail-over during which it hones on to the value proposition and becomes capable of fighting with the external open market- that is the interest pursued by the nation-states in building up its own army of competing industries. In a SEZ case the native-nation-state subsidizes revenue and does not build up any value proposition. It remains dwarf and always dies outside the incubator.
In any nation-state economy then walking over to the international market place, revenue earned strengthens the native currency against the international basket of standard currency of the SDR. This is simply because the repatriation is inward within the native state. In SEZ it is mostly repatriated abroad or the revenue earned is used to import foreign goods. Hard currencies bob up the countries reserve for a very short while and depletes that again as fast as in came. The foreign direct investments come in a normal market as well as in a SEZ with strings attached. As long as the domestic market is not very strong and demanding for finished industrial products FDIs are always traps. Companies will only come to the native country when they find very higher marginal returns to their dollars that again entails their getting lured by the strength and volume of the native-market. The entire credit money of the WEST would require a producing economy outside the credit capital or debt capital generating sector that can SERVE the credit offered- this is the monetary aspect of the primitive accumulation- The (M3-M1) of the WEST will be served by the M1 of the EAST.
The FIIs extract interest that gets compounded. The serving potential of a native country’s operative profit goes down with every additional native dollar earned through one more unit of labour spent in the native economy. With all these the metropolitan market or the market in the west uses the native space as a space sub-serving its main product that is either produced or designed within the WEST and the biggest chunk of the sales revenue minus the operating cost goes over to the Western owner either through patents, or through owning IP or through design consultancy fees. The smaller portion that comes to the native country goes to pay for the labour and the acquisition cost. With every such unit sales-revenue the differential of the Western and the Eastern allocation yawns up more and more creating an ever skewed distribution. The absolute value of the production-sales-repatriation cycle looks exciting from the native stand point in the beginning years and then figures out that it is loosing the relative value proposition competing with the WESTERN peer or the WESTERN co-producer. The value game becomes, if not war but definitely a contention of attrition.
What is then the benefit of getting into SEZ then? If it is so gloomy then why all comprador corporates of the native nation-state are rushing towards this obvious doom?
Yes, there is some gain, however effervescent, however fleeting there are some thrills there, but they are there as long as the overall picture is not paid attention to, as long as the collective is not taken into consideration, as long as the individual rivalries enthral the individual players without any heed to the collective doom. The euphoria of chaos, the ecstasy of anarchy, the elixir of crossing interests and the moto of contention of killing others to survive, living for a short while, for a fast buck and for cravenness for speed is what SEZ would offer- it is the same attitude that goads homo sapiens to consumerism, to over-accumulation and needless possessiveness. People kick ass as if there is no tomorrow, and Capital leads human and every relationship generating from humans into a simulacrum of no-tomorrow! Capital is the only tomorrow!
The faster a third world producing and thriving economy would SEZise itself the longer would the WEST survive and the better would it. We saw the vaporising of the Asian tigers with only surplus reserves into basket cases and tourism destinations slipping down to providing solace to worn heels of the WEST. We experienced how famous industrial centres of countries like India [ Durgapur-Asansol-Ranigunge belt, Gaziabad belt, Old Mumbai belt, Steel plant colonies] turning from high skilled settlements into almost deserts within the last 4 decades or so, we experienced how new and promised lands loose its crown to newer up-comers. We also saw how producing economies and sectors are giving way to service sector and entertainment gizmos and eating away the best of the brains and wisdom into brain and skill drain.
The SEZ offers its owners a nice prelude to the Capital flight they would carry along and stash in the financial institutions abroad, to have a nicer life for may be one life time [ without any consideration to their progeny] comparable to their western compatriots before the native-country ever dreams to have a convertible currency regime. The owners do not want to take any chances, if the native country sinks they are afloat transmigrated and transmuted into citizens of the world and in particular of the western world. If the country shores up for a while then they will come back to reclaim their ancestral rights as sons and daughters to the soil, they will then enjoy a cheaper economy and again the moment the signal turns amber they would take the next flight out. SEZ is that space ensuring a safer proposition of Capital flight off the native land to the promised metropolitan. Who paid for all these??? Don’t even dare to ask.. of course those half clad, half fed, lesser children of native land, those who never could wake up to comprehend their rightful claim. Here speed is the Mantra—the faster you can fly befooling the producers the smarter you are! SEZ is that smart contraption that takes the owner places and takes the producer-labour for a song!!!
SEZ- Part !
SEZ: Sense [of belonging] Eroded Zilla:
Colony-islands within a nation-state
Prologue:
SEZ. Special Economic Zone. There is a lot of speciality within this Zone –an area that is especially distinct and yes dis-entangled from the tentacles of the REST. The attitude is Seclusion. Secluded Expropriation Zoo – where human beings will be ushered in day in day out to get expropriated of all the juice and elixir and then let out at the end to get replenished from the Other that is the REST. That human body- the packet, will be filled- up to be juiced out again the next day. Quotidian extracting of human labour and processed into Capital generation [do not read formation- it is far more technical and restrictive] SEZ- a perfected machine of Global colonization to churn out ready Capital only through Super-profit.
It is Marx and yet much Beyond Marx. The generation of Super-profit here does not precede any kind of Profit through normal market mechanism. It is simply an Enclosure where all kinds of non-market and non-exchange mechanisms will have full reign to bring out the wealth that will never bother, care or mind any market anywhere real or virtual and yet would generate profit- this kind of Super-profit is beyond Marx. Marx conceived of Super-profit as Rent. Marx did also conceive of absolute ground rent, even by stretching the connotation of “ground” to any labour producing space, we still cannot relate to Marx with the logic of our SEZ- here we have a space where the “owner” holds the nominal title of land, labour and yes many a times or, why not, most of the times Capital and still the rentee enjoys the occupation and very funnily extracts rent from the renter. Aha! This is colony-logic. You give, you pay, you own in paper and I own in real terms and I enjoy. The Master [read colony master] extracts labour power, transforms it into Capital, repatriates it, throws away the used parts to be replenished by the renter and then makes the renter pay for the whole transformation process. You own, you replenish, you provide, I take out the Capital, you get only one thing – a metric for your books called GDP. What will the renter do with it? None of rentee’s botheration. This is a Secluded Extraction Zone for him- the rentee. Rentee is the Master here- the owner is the slave. In old age colonies the Master invested the armed forces to subjugate and yes was responsible or (ir)responsible for the governance, administration and to a lot extent the up-keep [ or “up-unkeep”] of the space, here they don’t. They are (ir)responsible for nothing, and yet rewarded the profit- just because they chose to come here and increase the book value. Super-profit, Rent or Super-Rent, Marx or beyond Marx SEZ now is the Zeitgeist of what we all are elated to roll the read carpet for – DEVELOPMENT. A third world now is measured by a number and a volume- SEZ!.
How many SEZs will it take to call a nation-Developed?
The answer my friend is getting archived in the documents! The answer is touted in lectures!
Numbers: Arithmetic of SEZz
The government has now paved the way for immediate notification of formal approval for as many as 54 SEZs. Another 29 SEZs just await clearance from the Law Ministry, while 88 applications are now passing through the stage of verification. Then there are 162 SEZs that have already secured in-principle approval and only formalities remain to be completed. And then there are 350 new applications waiting for approval. Add up all these categories and the total is already close to seven hundred! If the average size of an SEZs is assumed to be 2000 hectares or 5000 acres,[Please note the highest stipulated limit for a single SEZ is 5000 acres and there is no bar if a space is subdivided and sub-divided into many named SEZs placed side by side] seven hundred SEZs would occupy around 1.4 million hectares or 14,000 square kilometres! And this is all prime land – agricultural or otherwise – in the vicinity of India’s major urban centres.
A Great Scheme indeed! Please note the (un)text between the lines:
A SEZ need be as much contiguous as possible
For the sake of ease and usability of course
It needs to be near the metros, highways and beside the best navigable roads
It needs to be prime agricultural spots as
Previously used up [ or fouled-up-and-now-abandoned] barren spaces are too cumbersome to handle due to litigations and otherwise.
Well, here again the condition and definition includes an assumption and of course a provision- the best of the infrastructure the OTHER or the hapless provider [ read the native country] can provide. Add up the SEZ area and you will find a sixth of West Bengal, more than a third of the Kerala state- a small(!) price indeed to pay for India to scurry up the development ladder.
· Collateral damage (?) –
Another little price to be paid goes along.
· Loss of production (?) –
Oh yes, another minor one – to insignificant to note (sic!)
· Loss of environment and climate (?) –
Grow up! And let us lot spill good breath over serious money matters
· Loss of history, culture, neighbourhood (?) –
Oh! Development is serious and emotion does not have any scope here, let us keep those off for films and novels, that we would enjoy and sell again.
· Loss of livelihood of people (?) –
These poor lazy bums would have died anyway and anyhow, why pamper them and appease them- slaves and peasants are cankerous sores. Let us “civilize” them or “preletarianize” them and make them “responsible” wage earners.
The baggage: what comes along?
SEZs come along with a baggage, or rather packets to make the baggage, of different types, some of exclusions and others inclusions. The attitude of seclusion makes more of exclusions than of inclusions. The inclusions comprise
Occasional housing for the leaders and officials who would run the show
In some cases some provisions for these officials to take care of their familial chores like schools and crèches for the kids
Power house to serve the enclosed zone
Luxury facilities to be enjoyed by them
And of course a system to preserve and thrive the corporate culture.
All these of course are only available to a selective few- exclusion here too! The principal Mantra is Exclusion! You exclusion more to thrive here! You reject more than you accept and that is how you belong to the “chosen few”.
Now let us peruse through the exclusions:
o Law of the land:
SEZ will be a space outside the realm of any kind of law of the land. The authority of the SEZ[ read the rentee- the occupier] would decide which selected few laws of the land they will comply with and the host others they would not.
o Labour law:
Besides ordinary civil or criminal procedures, labour laws that affect any labour within the country will be summarily suspended. The authority of SEZ will have their own whims, they are even not obliged to lay down their own set of fixed rules or laws, they are free to do anything at any point of time with the labour.
o Labour provisions:
Remunerations and labour provisions and conditions of work do not apply within SEZ. The authorities are free to fix or unfix or even keep variable the minimum wage for the labour and any maximum time they deem fit for the labour to work.
o Labour arbitration:
The employees or the labourers will not necessarily be going through any kind of negotiation in legal formats as within the SEZ law of the land or law of any other country does not apply.
The employees may or may not have any negotiating right or mechanism to talk or deal with the authorities. The authorities will have full freedom in deciding the mores and modes of dealing with the labourers.
And therefore there is no question of a third party arbitration that will in any way be binding upon the authorities.
o Single authority:
While discussing these provisions we must not harbour any illusion that every single SEZ will necessarily have one single regulating or monitoring or managing authority. A SEZ can have multiple enterprises within and each enterprise is absolutely free to decide its mode of operation and modes of acts by themselves without the presence of any third party or intermediary.
The SEZs will as an empirical rule be provided with the maximum RESERVATION and SUBSIDY. The upcoming and “progressive entrepreneurs” will recruit working hands and labourers without any specific guideline to follow and are free to choose anyone they feel like from within the host country and the host society and yet are often very vocal about what they know term as “merit” and doing away with “reservation” but would enjoy all kinds of subsidies and reservations for themselves, let us go through those subsidies that they would enjoy to be provided by the native country:
Tax Holiday:
The SEZ authorities will be given a long tax holiday, state taxes, state excise and even in some cases even central excise is exempted.
Free electricity:
The state will provide free electricity or electricity in less than nominal rate for the production system.
Free water supply:
The state shall provide free water and will allow the authorities to tap as much as free ground water as they feel and wish without any restriction to type or volume.
Free road infrastructure”
The state or lay down proper road to the facility from the most important metro and other important facility points.
Free of other regulatory payments:
The state will not impose any taxes that are generally levied on to the enterprises outside the SEZ area
In addition to these the state or the province will ensure every kind of navigability and support structure so that the work within the SEZ can run with ease and at a growing pace.
The state will be bound to take care of any security concern of the people, mostly the officials of the SEZ, the general “smooth” running of the SEZ and the no disturbance or tough going within or outside the SEZ.
The banks. Financial institutions and service sector institutions nearby the SEZ will be providing service at the speed, time and other service requirements of the SEZ authorities - all these to ensure smooth extraction of profit and repatriation abroad or outside.
Who stands to gain?
The Stakeholders of the SEZ operation will be the owners of the means of production. They will produce and sell at their chosen market at their chosen price in their chosen time. These will then have the full freedom to stash the profits wherever and whenever they can. They will definitely be a chosen few to gain. Another big and privileged and yet subsidized and appeased class of billionaires or at least multi-millionaires will be created. Already India is a country with more than 100 top Asian billionaires where almost a billion or so are below the poverty line. We talk in billions now- both I terms of wealth amassed and in terms of numbers who slip down the wealth ladder – a little every minute.
There is another group of people who will never be within those enclosed spaces and yet will ever be benefited by those spaces. They are the realtors and the realty industry hommies. If there is one single boom in a industry it is the construction industry- the suppliers, the builders, the promoters, the middlemen, the musclemen, the mafias and of course the party apparatchiks who make people comply with the SEZ construction.
Marx talked about primitive accumulation of Enclosed spaces in eighteenth century England where Capitalism got its cheap fodders from for the sake of industrialization. Today the entire other-than-SEZ is such a space. The form is different rather just the opposite. The enclosed space is extracting out everything from the vast un-enclosed space for the present day neo-modern accumulation. The essence is the same the point of incidence has been swapped.
We will have enclosed spaces where production process would use the automation developed for a different nation and a different perspective copied and pasted out of context in this native time and space. The Mantra again is high productivity. But here the definition of productivity is very restrictive. Apparently it shows that output per unit of human labour is important but then it goes on to implement the maximum output with minimum factor input in terms of labour cost, this is buttressed and cheesed up by the minimum amount of variable capital input. These SEZs will deploy a very high and disproportionate organic composition of capital or fixed capital and there it will reap the benefit by fast depreciation of the values of the assets in the books and paying no Capital taxes. The factor investment per unit of variable capital, either in terms of increasing the skill of the labourer and/or the betterment of the working condition and of course connected with the no or minimal pay rise, will be put down to the bare minimum. The profit thus obtained is not the one realized from market restructuring or reorganization but simply by de-skilling of the labour power.
Who falls flat to loose?
All others! Yes that is exactly the description!
· The employees
o In terms of real wage and real negative growth
o In terms of de-skilling
o In terms of share of the production process and to the final product
o In terms of job guarantee and tenure
o In terms of loss of planning power for their future because they would not know what is coming next
o In terms of saving and investment plan anarchy increasing because of this uncertainty.
o In terms of social and cultural life
o In terms of leisure time for every worker
· The state:
o In terms of less and less earning as the years pass by
o In terms of providing real wealth and natural wealth
o In terms of decelerating rate of employment growth as these companies will either create job-less growth or job-loss growth
o In terms of a dwindling base of the consumer economy, as less and less people will have access to proper purchasing power.
o In terms of loss of agricultural produce
o In terms of loss of water resource and replenish-able natural storage resource
o In terms of increasing expenditure to employ more and more security personnel who do not add to any value.
o In terms of mal-distribution of the public utilities and distribution system.
o In terms of growing enmity and acrimony in the society between the miniscule beneficiaries and huge mass of deprived ones.
o In terms of less and less amount of amassing of small savings to provide for further investments.
· The common people:
o In terms of dwindling of available natural resources
o In terms of the real wealth getting siphoned to provide for the SEZ.
o In terms of increasing inflationary pressure in the quotidian prices of commodities.
o In terms of shooting up of prices of service products like medical, educational etc.
o In terms of their collective culture and life-style getting shattered through the demonstrative effect.
· The nation-state or the country:
o In terms of loosing sovereignty
o In terms of broken democracy or body politic
o In terms of social and political unity and cultural identity as these SEZs will be culturally, socially and psychologically islands of the metropolitan west inside the native land.
Infrastructure: To whom you belong?
Infrastructure is for all the people. For the whole nation! It is like the common pool from where different people take their need and use it differently. It is provided publicly, with public cost and maintained by the public authorities on behalf of the public. The income if any from any infrastructure facility is to be ploughed back for the public cause.
Even in terms of capital’s need public investment reduces unit level private investment. With highly developed infrastructure the private enterprises would rush anyway to invest. The huge cost of acquiring new business, that of communication, that of maintenance, that of travel, that of distribution, that of maintaining the supply chain and that of the ease and mobility of the work force are taken care by advanced infrastructure. This cost is huge and if the onus is taken away any investor would rush to reap the profits with only concentrating on the capital and variable cost.
The reason why SEZ needs prime motorable places near to metros is to avail of all the facilities a society can offer and thereby to mitigate the risk of production by fixing he uncertainties. Had the government invested in infrastructure development and subsidized their build up we would have seen a flood of private investors with their new concepts and they would not mind paying the work force a little extra something with a guaranteed job tenure with a steady increment to ward off the inflationary pressure. Our government is doing exactly the opposite. It is the tail that wags the dog here ! The government should have geared up the infrastructure and then let in the investors in the terms laid down by the government and now we see that the government is interested in preparing infrastructure to serve the capitalists by serving under the terms laid down by the capitalists. This is the destiny of mediocrity, of not comprehending the rules of society and even the market and that of economy and the algebra of Capital formation. When you fail to understand the science you drop out and become a mafia. The rule is true in individual real life and in the society or governance as well.
Development: thy name is Displacement: thy soul is eaten.
Every such development brings along Displacement. Displacement from the livelihood, from the history, from the surroundings, from the culture, from the human civilization! It creates a massive roving band of refugees- the people become a permanent refugee. A nation or society does not remain that of the domiciles but turn into one of refugees. They do not belong, they do not owe, they do not own, they drift! Drifting becomes the part and parcel of life in globalization. Oldies lament with “family values”, people loose their social values. Values are never created, as they do not stay to be registered or take root- they drift. Values drift because society drifts; society drifts because people drift collectively. One is not known, as one is never identified. One is not characterised; one is simply a number. A number is dispensable and therefore is not distinguished: a number is simply disposable. When a living and creating thing becomes a number, one becomes substitutable – a Robot. A number is the biggest anathema to creation and to life. A drifter is anti-artiste, he does not produce, if at all there is some thing there is anti-creation, anti-artefact, anti-product that actually annihilates previously produced artefacts. The basic piled up knowledge pool that accumulated to create are eaten up, diminished, and marginalized by anti-artefacts and anti-produces. One such anti-artefact is the weapons of mass destruction, that of mass-delusion, that of mass-deception, that of mass-depression and thereby mass-defection, mass-non-compliance leading to mass-anarchy. Drifters form the bedrock of mass-anarchy, not of any education, nor of any value, nor of any promise, nor of any plan.
Development mobilizes towards incessant mobility. People get mobile, they do not settle, not belong, not love, not share, not sacrifice for any cause or dream, they simply fight to survive, snatch to grow and kill to live for the next moment. It does not DEVELOP; Displacement inhibits Development! Civilization thrived on settlements, on taking roots and on creating histories and societies. Displacement nullifies, annihilates, and decimates all those. A roving band of charmers do charm the kids out of their abodes and invariably leads them to deep sea or hell fire… Our highly “mobile” value system does not promise or assure; it immobilizes any journey, any progress. The nomadic communities did not upgrade or change they remained nomadic, they actually remained in their un-remained state of no progress, no change, no development no paradigm shift. The fallacy of this drifting is the dialectic logic of immobility- the immobility of no change of nothing new- the same old.. same old.. drift and drift and drift your way along achieving nothing to show, to say, to boast, to be proud of, to be remembered. SEZ is the track of doom, of immobility, of dark unchanged hell! One gives birth to lifeless, value less disposable structures and bodies with no memory. Displacement is memocide in its finest and thus SEZ is civilization-cide. If there is any meaning of INQUILAB ZINDABAD, then after the physical demise and immortality of Neruda – it means now Change is the only changing thing, only certainty at the same time and only meaningful phenomenon. SEZ tries to halt this change through its façade of over-change – behind the façade is its nemesis – opposite called death--- if INQUILAB ZINDABAD has to stay SEZ goes!…that is the mantra re-established in the centenary of the most famous war cry by Bhagat Singh!!!
Colony-islands within a nation-state
Prologue:
SEZ. Special Economic Zone. There is a lot of speciality within this Zone –an area that is especially distinct and yes dis-entangled from the tentacles of the REST. The attitude is Seclusion. Secluded Expropriation Zoo – where human beings will be ushered in day in day out to get expropriated of all the juice and elixir and then let out at the end to get replenished from the Other that is the REST. That human body- the packet, will be filled- up to be juiced out again the next day. Quotidian extracting of human labour and processed into Capital generation [do not read formation- it is far more technical and restrictive] SEZ- a perfected machine of Global colonization to churn out ready Capital only through Super-profit.
It is Marx and yet much Beyond Marx. The generation of Super-profit here does not precede any kind of Profit through normal market mechanism. It is simply an Enclosure where all kinds of non-market and non-exchange mechanisms will have full reign to bring out the wealth that will never bother, care or mind any market anywhere real or virtual and yet would generate profit- this kind of Super-profit is beyond Marx. Marx conceived of Super-profit as Rent. Marx did also conceive of absolute ground rent, even by stretching the connotation of “ground” to any labour producing space, we still cannot relate to Marx with the logic of our SEZ- here we have a space where the “owner” holds the nominal title of land, labour and yes many a times or, why not, most of the times Capital and still the rentee enjoys the occupation and very funnily extracts rent from the renter. Aha! This is colony-logic. You give, you pay, you own in paper and I own in real terms and I enjoy. The Master [read colony master] extracts labour power, transforms it into Capital, repatriates it, throws away the used parts to be replenished by the renter and then makes the renter pay for the whole transformation process. You own, you replenish, you provide, I take out the Capital, you get only one thing – a metric for your books called GDP. What will the renter do with it? None of rentee’s botheration. This is a Secluded Extraction Zone for him- the rentee. Rentee is the Master here- the owner is the slave. In old age colonies the Master invested the armed forces to subjugate and yes was responsible or (ir)responsible for the governance, administration and to a lot extent the up-keep [ or “up-unkeep”] of the space, here they don’t. They are (ir)responsible for nothing, and yet rewarded the profit- just because they chose to come here and increase the book value. Super-profit, Rent or Super-Rent, Marx or beyond Marx SEZ now is the Zeitgeist of what we all are elated to roll the read carpet for – DEVELOPMENT. A third world now is measured by a number and a volume- SEZ!.
How many SEZs will it take to call a nation-Developed?
The answer my friend is getting archived in the documents! The answer is touted in lectures!
Numbers: Arithmetic of SEZz
The government has now paved the way for immediate notification of formal approval for as many as 54 SEZs. Another 29 SEZs just await clearance from the Law Ministry, while 88 applications are now passing through the stage of verification. Then there are 162 SEZs that have already secured in-principle approval and only formalities remain to be completed. And then there are 350 new applications waiting for approval. Add up all these categories and the total is already close to seven hundred! If the average size of an SEZs is assumed to be 2000 hectares or 5000 acres,[Please note the highest stipulated limit for a single SEZ is 5000 acres and there is no bar if a space is subdivided and sub-divided into many named SEZs placed side by side] seven hundred SEZs would occupy around 1.4 million hectares or 14,000 square kilometres! And this is all prime land – agricultural or otherwise – in the vicinity of India’s major urban centres.
A Great Scheme indeed! Please note the (un)text between the lines:
A SEZ need be as much contiguous as possible
For the sake of ease and usability of course
It needs to be near the metros, highways and beside the best navigable roads
It needs to be prime agricultural spots as
Previously used up [ or fouled-up-and-now-abandoned] barren spaces are too cumbersome to handle due to litigations and otherwise.
Well, here again the condition and definition includes an assumption and of course a provision- the best of the infrastructure the OTHER or the hapless provider [ read the native country] can provide. Add up the SEZ area and you will find a sixth of West Bengal, more than a third of the Kerala state- a small(!) price indeed to pay for India to scurry up the development ladder.
· Collateral damage (?) –
Another little price to be paid goes along.
· Loss of production (?) –
Oh yes, another minor one – to insignificant to note (sic!)
· Loss of environment and climate (?) –
Grow up! And let us lot spill good breath over serious money matters
· Loss of history, culture, neighbourhood (?) –
Oh! Development is serious and emotion does not have any scope here, let us keep those off for films and novels, that we would enjoy and sell again.
· Loss of livelihood of people (?) –
These poor lazy bums would have died anyway and anyhow, why pamper them and appease them- slaves and peasants are cankerous sores. Let us “civilize” them or “preletarianize” them and make them “responsible” wage earners.
The baggage: what comes along?
SEZs come along with a baggage, or rather packets to make the baggage, of different types, some of exclusions and others inclusions. The attitude of seclusion makes more of exclusions than of inclusions. The inclusions comprise
Occasional housing for the leaders and officials who would run the show
In some cases some provisions for these officials to take care of their familial chores like schools and crèches for the kids
Power house to serve the enclosed zone
Luxury facilities to be enjoyed by them
And of course a system to preserve and thrive the corporate culture.
All these of course are only available to a selective few- exclusion here too! The principal Mantra is Exclusion! You exclusion more to thrive here! You reject more than you accept and that is how you belong to the “chosen few”.
Now let us peruse through the exclusions:
o Law of the land:
SEZ will be a space outside the realm of any kind of law of the land. The authority of the SEZ[ read the rentee- the occupier] would decide which selected few laws of the land they will comply with and the host others they would not.
o Labour law:
Besides ordinary civil or criminal procedures, labour laws that affect any labour within the country will be summarily suspended. The authority of SEZ will have their own whims, they are even not obliged to lay down their own set of fixed rules or laws, they are free to do anything at any point of time with the labour.
o Labour provisions:
Remunerations and labour provisions and conditions of work do not apply within SEZ. The authorities are free to fix or unfix or even keep variable the minimum wage for the labour and any maximum time they deem fit for the labour to work.
o Labour arbitration:
The employees or the labourers will not necessarily be going through any kind of negotiation in legal formats as within the SEZ law of the land or law of any other country does not apply.
The employees may or may not have any negotiating right or mechanism to talk or deal with the authorities. The authorities will have full freedom in deciding the mores and modes of dealing with the labourers.
And therefore there is no question of a third party arbitration that will in any way be binding upon the authorities.
o Single authority:
While discussing these provisions we must not harbour any illusion that every single SEZ will necessarily have one single regulating or monitoring or managing authority. A SEZ can have multiple enterprises within and each enterprise is absolutely free to decide its mode of operation and modes of acts by themselves without the presence of any third party or intermediary.
The SEZs will as an empirical rule be provided with the maximum RESERVATION and SUBSIDY. The upcoming and “progressive entrepreneurs” will recruit working hands and labourers without any specific guideline to follow and are free to choose anyone they feel like from within the host country and the host society and yet are often very vocal about what they know term as “merit” and doing away with “reservation” but would enjoy all kinds of subsidies and reservations for themselves, let us go through those subsidies that they would enjoy to be provided by the native country:
Tax Holiday:
The SEZ authorities will be given a long tax holiday, state taxes, state excise and even in some cases even central excise is exempted.
Free electricity:
The state will provide free electricity or electricity in less than nominal rate for the production system.
Free water supply:
The state shall provide free water and will allow the authorities to tap as much as free ground water as they feel and wish without any restriction to type or volume.
Free road infrastructure”
The state or lay down proper road to the facility from the most important metro and other important facility points.
Free of other regulatory payments:
The state will not impose any taxes that are generally levied on to the enterprises outside the SEZ area
In addition to these the state or the province will ensure every kind of navigability and support structure so that the work within the SEZ can run with ease and at a growing pace.
The state will be bound to take care of any security concern of the people, mostly the officials of the SEZ, the general “smooth” running of the SEZ and the no disturbance or tough going within or outside the SEZ.
The banks. Financial institutions and service sector institutions nearby the SEZ will be providing service at the speed, time and other service requirements of the SEZ authorities - all these to ensure smooth extraction of profit and repatriation abroad or outside.
Who stands to gain?
The Stakeholders of the SEZ operation will be the owners of the means of production. They will produce and sell at their chosen market at their chosen price in their chosen time. These will then have the full freedom to stash the profits wherever and whenever they can. They will definitely be a chosen few to gain. Another big and privileged and yet subsidized and appeased class of billionaires or at least multi-millionaires will be created. Already India is a country with more than 100 top Asian billionaires where almost a billion or so are below the poverty line. We talk in billions now- both I terms of wealth amassed and in terms of numbers who slip down the wealth ladder – a little every minute.
There is another group of people who will never be within those enclosed spaces and yet will ever be benefited by those spaces. They are the realtors and the realty industry hommies. If there is one single boom in a industry it is the construction industry- the suppliers, the builders, the promoters, the middlemen, the musclemen, the mafias and of course the party apparatchiks who make people comply with the SEZ construction.
Marx talked about primitive accumulation of Enclosed spaces in eighteenth century England where Capitalism got its cheap fodders from for the sake of industrialization. Today the entire other-than-SEZ is such a space. The form is different rather just the opposite. The enclosed space is extracting out everything from the vast un-enclosed space for the present day neo-modern accumulation. The essence is the same the point of incidence has been swapped.
We will have enclosed spaces where production process would use the automation developed for a different nation and a different perspective copied and pasted out of context in this native time and space. The Mantra again is high productivity. But here the definition of productivity is very restrictive. Apparently it shows that output per unit of human labour is important but then it goes on to implement the maximum output with minimum factor input in terms of labour cost, this is buttressed and cheesed up by the minimum amount of variable capital input. These SEZs will deploy a very high and disproportionate organic composition of capital or fixed capital and there it will reap the benefit by fast depreciation of the values of the assets in the books and paying no Capital taxes. The factor investment per unit of variable capital, either in terms of increasing the skill of the labourer and/or the betterment of the working condition and of course connected with the no or minimal pay rise, will be put down to the bare minimum. The profit thus obtained is not the one realized from market restructuring or reorganization but simply by de-skilling of the labour power.
Who falls flat to loose?
All others! Yes that is exactly the description!
· The employees
o In terms of real wage and real negative growth
o In terms of de-skilling
o In terms of share of the production process and to the final product
o In terms of job guarantee and tenure
o In terms of loss of planning power for their future because they would not know what is coming next
o In terms of saving and investment plan anarchy increasing because of this uncertainty.
o In terms of social and cultural life
o In terms of leisure time for every worker
· The state:
o In terms of less and less earning as the years pass by
o In terms of providing real wealth and natural wealth
o In terms of decelerating rate of employment growth as these companies will either create job-less growth or job-loss growth
o In terms of a dwindling base of the consumer economy, as less and less people will have access to proper purchasing power.
o In terms of loss of agricultural produce
o In terms of loss of water resource and replenish-able natural storage resource
o In terms of increasing expenditure to employ more and more security personnel who do not add to any value.
o In terms of mal-distribution of the public utilities and distribution system.
o In terms of growing enmity and acrimony in the society between the miniscule beneficiaries and huge mass of deprived ones.
o In terms of less and less amount of amassing of small savings to provide for further investments.
· The common people:
o In terms of dwindling of available natural resources
o In terms of the real wealth getting siphoned to provide for the SEZ.
o In terms of increasing inflationary pressure in the quotidian prices of commodities.
o In terms of shooting up of prices of service products like medical, educational etc.
o In terms of their collective culture and life-style getting shattered through the demonstrative effect.
· The nation-state or the country:
o In terms of loosing sovereignty
o In terms of broken democracy or body politic
o In terms of social and political unity and cultural identity as these SEZs will be culturally, socially and psychologically islands of the metropolitan west inside the native land.
Infrastructure: To whom you belong?
Infrastructure is for all the people. For the whole nation! It is like the common pool from where different people take their need and use it differently. It is provided publicly, with public cost and maintained by the public authorities on behalf of the public. The income if any from any infrastructure facility is to be ploughed back for the public cause.
Even in terms of capital’s need public investment reduces unit level private investment. With highly developed infrastructure the private enterprises would rush anyway to invest. The huge cost of acquiring new business, that of communication, that of maintenance, that of travel, that of distribution, that of maintaining the supply chain and that of the ease and mobility of the work force are taken care by advanced infrastructure. This cost is huge and if the onus is taken away any investor would rush to reap the profits with only concentrating on the capital and variable cost.
The reason why SEZ needs prime motorable places near to metros is to avail of all the facilities a society can offer and thereby to mitigate the risk of production by fixing he uncertainties. Had the government invested in infrastructure development and subsidized their build up we would have seen a flood of private investors with their new concepts and they would not mind paying the work force a little extra something with a guaranteed job tenure with a steady increment to ward off the inflationary pressure. Our government is doing exactly the opposite. It is the tail that wags the dog here ! The government should have geared up the infrastructure and then let in the investors in the terms laid down by the government and now we see that the government is interested in preparing infrastructure to serve the capitalists by serving under the terms laid down by the capitalists. This is the destiny of mediocrity, of not comprehending the rules of society and even the market and that of economy and the algebra of Capital formation. When you fail to understand the science you drop out and become a mafia. The rule is true in individual real life and in the society or governance as well.
Development: thy name is Displacement: thy soul is eaten.
Every such development brings along Displacement. Displacement from the livelihood, from the history, from the surroundings, from the culture, from the human civilization! It creates a massive roving band of refugees- the people become a permanent refugee. A nation or society does not remain that of the domiciles but turn into one of refugees. They do not belong, they do not owe, they do not own, they drift! Drifting becomes the part and parcel of life in globalization. Oldies lament with “family values”, people loose their social values. Values are never created, as they do not stay to be registered or take root- they drift. Values drift because society drifts; society drifts because people drift collectively. One is not known, as one is never identified. One is not characterised; one is simply a number. A number is dispensable and therefore is not distinguished: a number is simply disposable. When a living and creating thing becomes a number, one becomes substitutable – a Robot. A number is the biggest anathema to creation and to life. A drifter is anti-artiste, he does not produce, if at all there is some thing there is anti-creation, anti-artefact, anti-product that actually annihilates previously produced artefacts. The basic piled up knowledge pool that accumulated to create are eaten up, diminished, and marginalized by anti-artefacts and anti-produces. One such anti-artefact is the weapons of mass destruction, that of mass-delusion, that of mass-deception, that of mass-depression and thereby mass-defection, mass-non-compliance leading to mass-anarchy. Drifters form the bedrock of mass-anarchy, not of any education, nor of any value, nor of any promise, nor of any plan.
Development mobilizes towards incessant mobility. People get mobile, they do not settle, not belong, not love, not share, not sacrifice for any cause or dream, they simply fight to survive, snatch to grow and kill to live for the next moment. It does not DEVELOP; Displacement inhibits Development! Civilization thrived on settlements, on taking roots and on creating histories and societies. Displacement nullifies, annihilates, and decimates all those. A roving band of charmers do charm the kids out of their abodes and invariably leads them to deep sea or hell fire… Our highly “mobile” value system does not promise or assure; it immobilizes any journey, any progress. The nomadic communities did not upgrade or change they remained nomadic, they actually remained in their un-remained state of no progress, no change, no development no paradigm shift. The fallacy of this drifting is the dialectic logic of immobility- the immobility of no change of nothing new- the same old.. same old.. drift and drift and drift your way along achieving nothing to show, to say, to boast, to be proud of, to be remembered. SEZ is the track of doom, of immobility, of dark unchanged hell! One gives birth to lifeless, value less disposable structures and bodies with no memory. Displacement is memocide in its finest and thus SEZ is civilization-cide. If there is any meaning of INQUILAB ZINDABAD, then after the physical demise and immortality of Neruda – it means now Change is the only changing thing, only certainty at the same time and only meaningful phenomenon. SEZ tries to halt this change through its façade of over-change – behind the façade is its nemesis – opposite called death--- if INQUILAB ZINDABAD has to stay SEZ goes!…that is the mantra re-established in the centenary of the most famous war cry by Bhagat Singh!!!
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