On 3/30/07, raghu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It is not that simple. The Chinese/Indian governments are hardly as
powerless as you seem to think. The global capital needs China/India just as
much as they need global capital. Theoretically there is no reason why a
sufficiently enlightened government can't pick and choose partnerships with
global capital.
<snip>
> The difficulty is that probably a number of people in India still feel
> that the neoliberal combo of the Congress, parliamentary Marxists, et
> al. is the lesser evil compared to the BJP-led right-wing coalition
> and that a lot of people in China, while wishing to defend positive
> legacies of Chinese socialism, probably don't really want to go back
> to the Maoist days nor have they come up with a powerful left
I can't speak for the Chinese left, but without any question the Indian
parliamentary Marxists are the lesser evil. There is absolutely nothing
progressive about the Indian right wing; they are, basically, the Indian
Taliban.
The problem is that the lesser evil politics essentially allows the
center-left coalition to go more and more neoliberal rather than
become enlightened and try to strike the best possible bargain with
capital, as you say it should, and moreover, absence of a strong
alternative to the left of the center-left allows the BJP-led
right-wing coalition to exploit political opportunities created by
land struggles -- especially atrocities like the Nandigram massacre --
and masquerade* as defenders of peasants. The Indian status quo --
hard neoliberalism under the center-left -- is a recipe for
restoration of the right wing, it seems to me.
* <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/459744.cms>
BJP spells out SEZ standAdd to Clippings
Mohua Chatterjee
[ 16 Nov, 2006 0233hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates
NEW DELHI: BJP's Special Economi Zone policy is expected to set the
party against acquisition of "fertile land" for the special zones but
with the caveat that this could be allowed to maintain "contiguity"
where there was no other option.
BJP after a thorough "evaluation" of issues involved in adopting the
system has decided "stringently against touching fertile agricultural
land from being acquired for SEZs, except for the purpose of
maintaining contiguity". Earlier, BJP had looked to avoid acquiring
agricultural land altogether.
While the Opposition party plans to complete its final formulations by
next week, around the time Parliament opens for the winter session and
submit it to party chief Rajnath Singh, the party panel in-charge of
evaluating the SEZ formula, met on Wednesday to put together all its
inputs acquired over the last two months. "Our main concern is to
ensure that SEZs do not turn into real estate rackets," said senior
party leader M Venkaiah Naidu, in-charge of the SEZ panel.
Some of the crucial issues that BJP has already decided upon include
at least double or triple the amount of the market price of land being
acquired to be paid to land-owners as compensation and make them stake
holders in the newly developed land under the SEZ, since the benefit
accrued by the developers will be far more.
The BJP's SEZ policy, which will be implemented in party-ruled states,
will also ensure that developers take care of the ancillary workers
around agricultural lands like blacksmiths, toddy tappers, etc, by
providing for training to the displaced people in new skills so that
they can be re-employed.
Though the party has not decided on the ideal size of an SEZ, most
seem to favour not small but moderately-sized. BJP also has to
finalise the ratio of land to earmarked for production and
non-production purposes in the SEZs.
Some issues that the party still has to take a final call on is
whether to allow SEZs near metro cities.
Most panelists feel it is better to have them around the second or
third-tier towns. In that case, BJP feels, there should be bigger
incentives on offer, like more tax holidays and cheaper infrastructure
so that SEZ developers can be lured into developing underdeveloped
regions rather than congesting the already crowded cities.
Given the available SEZ models, the Gujarat and West Bengal ones seem
the best ones to draw from, party sources said. The party, however,
still has to figure out how to ensure harmony between the SEZ and
domestic tariff area (DTA) since there is a view that in the long run,
domestic industry is bound to suffer at the cost of no-tax SEZs.
--
Yoshie
