SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES: LAND ACQUISITION AND EMPLOYMENT GENERATION

Abstract

India opened up its economy in 1991 and intensified its move towards export-led growth. In 2000, the
government replaced the old EPZ regime by a new scheme of “Special Economic Zones” (SEZs) with
several lucrative incentives / benefits that were not available in the earlier scheme. In 2005, it enacted the
SEZs Act and the SEZs Rules were notified in February, 2006. The policy is expected to give a big push
to exports, employment and investment in SEZs. Many of them occupy hundreds of acres of land each
and often the land is acquired by the government from unwilling farmers. The present paper studies the
impacts of SEZ on land acquisition, displacement of farmers, employment generation etc.
The SEZ Act in 2005 marks the acquisitions of land by the state for “public purpose” and the transfer of
the ownership of this land to private developers to set up their enterprise in the SEZs. The farm land has
been acquired without adequate compensation to the farmers by the government. On the basis of the Land
Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 1998, wishes of landowners could be ignored. Those people, who are not
landowners but depend on agriculture for their livelihood are not compensated by the government or the
SEZs. The size of employment per unit in Indian SEZs is the smaller as compared to Bangladesh and
another feature is that the proportion of women workers in Indian SEZs is lower than that in Bangladesh
SEZs, and lower than in the SEZs of many other countries.