Special Economic Zone has now taken up all sorts of different connotations. What it (de)noted once upon a time when the concept was born is now history of the forlorn passé. What it has come upon is quite confounding lost among a myriad of conflicting ideas. What it actually has been signifying today is what we might plunge in to fathom. For different folks it signifies different. For CPM and the left it is that “thing” which really not only baffled themselves but has been as fleeting as it could be. To Mr Karat- the G.S of CPM – it is very clear and very unambiguous- it is land acquisition. All Mr Karat could map in his recent deliberations about SEZ is the question of land acquisition, it ethics, modalities and rationale. No one else either in CPM or rather anyone in the “think-tank” of various denominations and flavour, except of course the noted exception of Sam Pitroda,[whose value to the ruling echelon is just an ornamental position and noteworthy suggestion taking with a definite reassurance that none of whatever he would suggest would ever be implemented] has ever come across any other essential point in SEZ. No one talks about developing SEZ in existing multi-storied buildings in cities, no one talks about overhauling the barren and unutilized land of forsaken industries, no one talks of acquiring debris-land that can be re-structured. SEZ now means acquiring fertile agricultural land from the peasantry- either and most profitably and easily by force or in dearth of any other recourse left- at some compensatory price that would be arbitrarily fixed without regard to the existing market price.
What is market price is again nothing but a forcible imposition. Whenever a land is earmarked for any “industrial development” the perceptible value of that land shoots up hundred times or even more- the so called “market price” that the authorities talk about never mention that, they only talk about the lowest of the price of the land when and if they are considered fallow and unusable. Opportunity cost is the price for any normal commodity when the market comprises individuals but when the market deals with government or multi-nationals or industrial houses supported and sponsored by ruling political parties then opportunity cost is simply not in the consideration. The difference of the opportunity cost or the average of opportunity cost five years later from the desired point in time of running the project, with the existing lowest average is the absolute ground rent that is first imposed on the peasants then acquired by the government and then gifted to the multi-national firm as a head-start bonus. This is the real “subsidy” doled out to the industry- with however no condition imposed on the buyer on usage. Ruia group and Goenka group has made real money in this process and then transforming the acquired land to build up real estates. The RENT that can easily be called as “Super-Rent” [ if Super-profit is extracted by manipulating the market for commodity produces then Super-Rent is the extraction by manipulating the nature of the land and then switching the purpose all done with extra-economic or extra-market political pressure]. Super-Rent extracting land mass and the related business needed a clause of “national interest” – as vague as it was in its inception and now developed into corrupt rationality to mean the all-encompassing suzerainty of the intermediary [which is most likely some public authority] and the buyer.
A peasant would accede to relinquishing his rights to the land when he would find that the regular stream of income in the alternative track would be more than keeping his land intact not only today but in tomorrow’s market value.
Additionally, while changing the nature of the land acquired a piece of land gets into a broader social relationship from what it is now. While as an agricultural piece of land it is socially necessarily connected through its being a producing space- that produces socially necessary commodities and of course another space that takes care of the daily need of the family outside the market system. Thus an agricultural piece of land is primarily a familial relationship and then a social relationship to the extent that the produce hits the market. But when the same piece of land gets transformed into a part of a bigger plot that is used in industry or production of non-agricultural commodities, it enters into a far broader social relationship not only through its capability and raison-d’etre of producing industrial commodities but also being a space and tool in creating industrial jobs and other service related jobs that almost always accompany an industrial space. Every element of this relationship has a price value or an exchange value in the market. The aggregate of this value when averaged over the general market in an economy creates a price tag – which is the opportunity cost of relinquishing the title of the land by the farmer. In advanced industrial countries pieces of land that are “acquired” for national interest do not change the title. The mines or industrial plots are leased from the landowner peasants and they get a substantive portion as RENT. In this particular case RENT is distributed to the peasant original owner and the present owner of the firm. The specific industrial activity that has increased the value of the land is then shared between the two owners. This is even tolerable and rather justifiable. What happens in our semi-colonial India based on a semi-feudal culture is that the land is taken away for a song from the original owner and the entire RENT goes to the firm owner. This is SUPER-RENT because the normal principles of RENT going to the owners are not in vogue. The Land is transformed, market is manipulated and transformed with a motive that was never shared earlier. The land is simply bluffed out. An agent that is the firm owner is seldom the user but another agent in the real estate market. The intermediary is never present when the end-users use them. The entire market actors are befooled by one stakeholder which had been there for a while, extracted out the potential value and taken a hike. This is what Salims of Indonesia, Ruias of Bengal, TATAs and now even all middle ranking industrialists are doing. Prized possessions of more than 10 acres were gifted to these people at the laughable price of 1 INR in the Salt Lake Rajarhaat area and now they are sliced and diced and given out as Real Estate commodities- even the public authorities are not getting anything beyond their normal occupational taxes. This is what SEZ has come to. So already transformed and forsaken pieces of land are and had never been in the consideration. SEZ is about “very clearly” [ the same epitaph used by M. KARAT] acquiring fertile agricultural land and then making it barren enough to be used [ or cannibalized] into brick and mortar bases for the ultimate objective of REAL ESTATE.
Agricultural land cannot have any market value. If by any stretchable imagination some value can be ascribed that is the future value all discounted to the present time- and that would be so high than no piece of land can ever be transformed. Transformation of land and simply that is therefore a commodity in a corrupt and rogue market called REAL ESTATE. The real estate market is rogue and corrupt from the inception because no one can ascribe a definite growth path of trajectory of the REAL ESTATE pricing over a future period of time. The huge volatility of this market imposes other kinds of RENT [again a form of SUPER RENT through this speculation] on the owner at any point of time. The only smart stakeholder is the one who owns the land and sells it off in the most expeditions and exigent time-slot, one who would never have any use value or valorisation associated with it. LAND – the only resource that could not have been stretched or squeezed is now successfully virtualized in the speculative commodity market. As soon as an agricultural land is transformed it dashes to the inevitable destiny of diluting itself in this virtual speculative Capital market of REAL ESTATE. Land can therefore be only effectively transformed ONCE and FOR ALL times. All later transformations are simply milestones in the inevitable downward chute.
Land transformations are always therefore steps toward more and more imperialist dominations being imposed on to the people. This time the “people” are not simply the direct actors connected to a specific piece of land. It is an entire society that was connected through intricate social relationship and whose nature we could not fathom when the piece of land was not transformed. After the transformation we figured out what we lost. The small 1000 acre of Singur Land [ one of the three most fertile and valuable pieces of land in the whole world] produced a very special kind of potato and other species of legumes and pommes-de-terres, we now realize the loss of that land when the prices of those in the entire West Bengal rose up by leaps and bounds. This is the social relationship affected which can only be realized when the land got lost. A commodity gets its “market value” when and only when it is lost, value attained in absentia is the latest form of value acquiring. This is as dangerous as it could be.
Revisionism is myopic in its pristine and unconscious form. It starts not always through a very defined and clear cut ulterior motive of cannibalization but it leads inevitably to that end. The smartness is to nip the possibility at the outset. Revisionism in methodological terms works through part-viewing and does not analyse from the overall international and national perspective. It then looses the control, it is like a navigator thinking he is the master and the machine takes off in his own way. Monsieur KARAT thinks he can patch here, patch there and can get away he however finds himself outside control.
No comments:
Post a Comment