Protests and Blockages - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 123

like rampant real estate speculation without a manufacturing base. This especially applied
to two mammoth schemes of up to 20,000-25,000 acres each that were planned by Mukesh
Ambani's Reliance Industries (RIL). One was to be a joint venture with the Haryana state
government in a prime development area adjacent to Gurgaon and another nearby area on
the Delhi-Jaipur highway, just 11 km from the capital's international airport. The plans in-
cluded a cargo airport and a 2000 MW power plant. 4 The other zone was with the Maha-
rashtra state government in the district of Raigad, adjacent to Mumbai. 5 Both schemes have
since been abandoned.
The government's official aim was primarily to encourage manufacturing investment
with good infrastructure, especially in areas where industry might not otherwise go. There
was, however, no conceivable economic reason to give Reliance generous taxation and oth-
er concessions on the popular Jaipur highway which was already awash with investment,
and it looked as if Ambani was more interested in broad-based real estate speculation and
development. This typified the group's overconfident approach to business expansion fol-
lowing the death in 2002 of Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh's politically subtle and better-con-
nected father. The SEZ experience showed that, while Mukesh had good enough contacts
and clout to sign up with the state governments, he could not steer the projects through the
political storm that was generated when his SEZs became one of the symbols of corporate
greed.
Sonia Gandhi, in one of her early populist interventions as leader of the coalition gov-
ernment, sensed a looming crisis and, in September 2006, said that 'prime agricultural land
should not normally be diverted to non-agricultural uses'. She added that 'resettlement and
rehabilitation policies must be strengthened and implemented in an effective and credible
manner which will inspire confidence in all the people who are displaced.' 6 Her state-
ment 'had all the major leaders running for cover,' wrote a former government official in
November 2006. 7 'Mr Sharad Pawar, the Minister for Agriculture, himself interested in the
SEZs in his political power base of Maharashtra, was quick to give a rejoinder that only
marginal lands were being used. The Commerce Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, said that he had
already written to all the chief ministers that there should be no acquisition of agricultural
lands.' There was considerable confusion after these statements, until the prime minister,
during a visit to the UK in October, said that 'special economic zones have come to stay',
even though there were 'certain aspects, such as the use of prime agricultural land, which
must be addressed'.
Concessions were proposed, including limiting the maximum land area allowed for each
zone to 5,000 hectares (12,500 acres), and requiring that at least half of an SEZ should be
used for manufacturing and other core activities. This led Ambani to halve the size of both
his schemes. In Mumbai, farmers confirmed their opposition in a 2008 referendum, and his
scheme there was scrapped in 2011 after Reliance had managed to acquire only 13 per cent