SEZ is a strategy to make farmers into watchmen and peons in companies!

Please read the interview with SEZ chief G. K. Pillai at rediff http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/feb/21sez.htm.

The utter impunity with which our babus can declare what is right for the farmers of this country is repulsive to say the least. This character declares that it is more profitable for the farmer to sell his land than to continue doing farming. Financial return from land is the only motive of agriculture, not growing food.

Another view that comes across is sustenance farmers are better off if they don't continue that way. What about sustenance bureaucracy? What should one do with the self-perpetuating denizens of dead colonial minds? If commerce secretaries were as good as marketing agents of the corporate world, then they may as well not sustain them.

A farmer lives with some self respect in his land, he has some control over one piece of land that he utilizes. But, no, when the babus are controlled by the globalized corporate houses, why should the farmer have this freedom...'off he goes', declares our babu, 'be a peon, that befits you', of course, if you are smart enough to be tamed, you can be a 'skilled labourer', that is you become 'one of us'. After all the commerce secretary by the level of intelligence displayed is a very low level skilled labourer.

"..We are only taking a small piece of farming land, but, these are sustenance farmers, they only know farming, why do we need so many farmers anyway, good that enough numbers are committing suicides, but that is not large enough numbers for us to wipe out the 60% farm dependent population, it doesn't sound fine in multinational podiums, it sounds much better if we declare that 80% of this country is skilled to 'back process' the western world, do things like 5-step guide as to how to wipe their backs correctly over phone, reading out instructions from handed down computers, such dignified labourer existence, they all can wear suits, ties and look alike and western and developed and 'like us', why toil in the hot sun, when they can all work as BPOs and earn much more money, let them sell their lands, become something else, commit suicide, disappear, I don't want to see them, get rid of them", this is what his tone implies, this is a uncensored view of a babu mind. And what does he quote to justify his action?

"...the state governments have been doing it for decades, the colonials did it before that and others before that, our people have always been thrown out of their lands and given some compensation, why the hell can't they accept it and keep quite and leave, why all this ruckus..."

A few years back a Chief Minister of a state in this country by name Chandrababu Naidu made a similar declaration, wanting to displace 70% of his state farmers in 5 years and make them BPOs...5 years later, he doesn't exist politically today. Pillai is a top level bureaucrat, a limpet by definition, difficult, but, he too will disappear. The Indian farmer has survived centuries of babus and netas.

But, the attitudes of babudom is important to note. An earlier Secretary of Tamilnadu once told us that one of the methods of getting around the prohibition problem in Gujarat (this the state follows till date as a respect to Gandhiji) was to declare Porebandhar where Gandhiji was born as an Union Territory and have prohibition there alone and have the rest of the state merrier. Shows the babu mind. The babu mind in India is rather unique and deserves a better undertanding, glad that our friend Nagarjuna has created an apt title and blog to profile them.