Introduction

Democracy has a bloody history in many countries. In Kenya, several hundred people were killed in the aftermath of the December 2007 election, generating extensive media coverage around the world. However, this was not the first time Kenya experienced violence around elections. In the 1997 election, more than 100 people were killed ahead of the election and some 100,000 people left Mombasa during the election period. Another 200 people in Rift Valley faced a violent death. The 1992 election has been deemed even more violent. While Kenya has largely been calm in between elections, violence has also proven to intensify or cluster around election times in countries already experiencing violent confrontation or civil war, as has been the case in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, despite the prevalence of electoral violence, it has generated scant academic interest.

Why are some elections fraught with violence, while others are relatively calm? This article addresses electoral violence in Sri Lanka, with the aim of identifying factors which can explain the variation in electoral violence over time. A comparison is made between three parliamentary elections (2000, 2001 and 2004), which display a variation both in intensity of violence and the geographical focus of the violence. Sri Lanka is an important case to study, since it has experienced substantial electoral violence parallel to an ongoing armed conflict.

INTRODUCTION: NO ALTERNATIVE?

A 1984 quote of Indira Gandhi in her letter to Baba Amte:

Displacement, forcible eviction and dispossession are undeniable realities of life in the coal mining regions of India. Large-scale acquisition of land is the most important driver of this displacement; the Indian constitution, courts and government justify themselves in the name of ‘public good’, as evident in the following statement of the Supreme Court:

The ‘eminent domain’ concept that the Indian Constitution follows gives ‘the highest and most exact idea of property remaining in the government, or in the aggregate body of the people in their sovereign capacity’.

INTRODUCTION

The growth of the international women's rights movement and its emergence as a field of research and advocacy has led to a valuable but increasingly self-contained discourse, often cut off from developments in postcolonial conditionalities (‘Postcoloniality’), on the one hand, and conceptions of the different legal contexts in which international human rights operate, on the other. Such a trajectory of ‘development’ in human rights standards for women have no doubt had an enormous impact on women's lives worldwide, but simultaneously it is also culpable of creating the ‘woman-as-victim’ subject, ‘geographically captive’ in the ‘barbaric’ cultures of the ‘Third World’.

In this article I will briefly map the developments that led to the integration of gender into the international human rights law discourse and examine how the language of ‘violence’ and ‘respectable victim hood’ (from Vienna 1993 to Beijing 1995) has been privileged leading to the dislocation of ‘discrimination’ as envisaged by the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), as the primary index for measuring women's human rights violations. […]

A critique of the international asylum adjudication system is necessary to do a reality check with regard to what it can exactly offer when it comes to drawing the fundamentals of refugee rights guarantees from the basic principles of international human rights law.

North-east India has been experiencing severe internal displacement since it entered into the postcolonial phase over the past five decades. It also received a steady flow of refugees from neighbouring East Pakistan/Bangladesh, Tibet and Myanmar, fleeing political, social, economic, ideological and environmental persecution. In recent years, however, another problem that has been engaging the attention of social scientists and policy analysts is that of internal displacement. […] For us: ‘Internally displaced persons are persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or leave their homes or place of habitual residence, in particular, as a result of, or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalised violence, violation of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognised state border’. […] Society in Assam has historically been multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-caste, multi-class and multi-lingual in composition wherein the Asamiyas have constituted the majority national group. Sociologically speaking, Assam's society has been extraordinarily plural in its composition and highly uneven in structure.

Here, we conceptualize the north-east/Assam as a periphery within a larger periphery (India) in the global context. Its peripheral location and its resultant underdevelopment and distorted political response to underdevelopments have made the society in Assam perpetually vulnerable to various kinds of violence, conflict and displacement.

Countries all over the world create fenced-in, geographically delimited ‘enclaves’ within their sovereign territories. Such enclaves have become known as ‘zones’ in economic and business parlances. These zones are distinguished from the rest of the land in terms of their specific administrative authority, benefits enjoyed by industries located in them and availability of better business facilities. Some of the zones are often deliberately conceived as ‘foreign’ territories functioning with a different set of economic laws compared with those applicable to the rest of the country. Being ‘foreign’ also implies that zones are different customs areas. Depending upon their specific purposes, benefits offered, economic regulations and administrative frameworks, the zones are called industrial zone (or estate), free trade zone (FTZ), export processing zone (EPZ), enterprise zone, special economic zone (SEZ) or free economic zone (FEZ). This taxonomy, however, is by no means fully exhaustive.

Zones should not be construed as products of the current phase of globalization that has been driven by breathtaking advances in information and computer technologies (ICT). Though modern zones can be dubbed as post-Second World War creatures with the first such zone coming up at the Shannon International Airport at Ireland in 1956, there are examples of zones during the mediaeval era, as well as in the early twentieth century. Over time, however, the visions of different countries on these zones, particularly in the developing world, have changed significantly.

In a few years from now, India is likely to have one of the largest numbers of zones in the world. With more than 500 SEZs in various stages of growth and maturity – that is functional, notified, formally approved and cleared in-principle – not many countries in the world will come close to India as a ‘land of zones’. At the last count, Asia has 900 plus zones with the US following with 713. But these estimates by the ILO (Boyenge, 2007) will change dramatically once the new Indian SEZs get going. These shall not transform the ‘zone’ landscape only in Asia, but in the entire world.

The change will not be restricted to numbers alone. The economic literature on zones, particularly their impacts, will also enlarge after adding new chapters on the Indian experience. At present, the debate on zones tends to draw most of its inspiration from the Chinese story. Very soon, the Chinese experiences will be compared and contrasted with those from India. This will undoubtedly add more spice to one of the most discussed themes of modern times: the race between the Chinese dragon and the Indian elephant.

The Chinese experience provides an appropriate platform for reflecting on the Indian story. India's SEZ policy was heavily inspired by China. Speaking at a convention organized by the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) at Delhi on 21 March 2002, the late Mr Murasoli Maran, India's former Commerce Minister and the creator of its SEZs, commented: ‘I had been to Peoples’ Republic of China to observe the success story of SEZ.

The thought of doing a book on SEZs was nowhere in our scheme of things till about a year ago. We were merely following the twists and turns in the SEZ story like most others. By end 2006, however, SEZs ceased to remain academic controversies. As SEZ-related developments became murkier, the debate assumed larger sociopolitical dimensions. Slowly it turned emotional and propagandist. Finally, the story took a fatal turn with violent clashes over SEZs leading to loss of property and lives.

We were shocked by the ugly turn of events. We were also taken aback by the amount of hype being fed into the debate by both its supporters and opponents. In practically all forums, particularly the popular media, SEZs were portrayed as either angels or demons. Somehow, somewhere, the debate on SEZs has compromised heavily on logic and sanity. We also feel that the hysteria and emotion surrounding the debate has been used by some sections for implementing narrow divisive agendas.

As SEZs continued to create ripples and grab headlines, we got increasingly disillusioned by the quality of the debate. Indeed, the rampant rabble-rousing was not only diluting the intellectual content of the discourse, but was also doing grave injustice to the common man by imparting distorted impressions. This is what provoked us into writing this book. We felt it important to examine popular perceptions on SEZs, as thrown up by the ongoing debate, in a dispassionate, factual manner.

Zoning Development

The Indian economy is doing well and seems to have broken away from the 6.5 per cent growth trajectory of the 1990s to a 9 per cent growth trajectory, although one can continue to debate whether this is structural or cyclical. This isn't about growth alone, but also about its trickle-down effects. The National Sample Survey (NSS) data for 2004–5 shows a drop in poverty ratios, though not as much as one had originally hoped. Education indicators (gross enrollment in elementary schools) have gone up. Even health indicators show some improvement. This is the India Shining story. But there continue to be concerns about whether these improvements are broad-based enough and whether segments of society are deprived and disadvantaged and are being marginalized in the growth process. This is the concern in the divides and disparities section of the Approach Paper to the 11th Five Year Plan (2007–12). Divides and disparities can be interpreted in different senses, individual or collective, gender, caste, religion and even geography. The geographic identification is usually expressed in terms of a rural/urban dichotomy, but is a bit of an over-simplification. There are States (Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, not to forget the North- East) that aren't doing particularly well. 200 of 600 districts are backward. 125,000 of 600,000 villages have no physical or social infrastructure worth the name.

A reader of this book would have by now noticed the critical differences between the international development of the SEZs and the way they have evolved in India. We have already touched on this aspect in the first two chapters.

The second concerns the SEZs as a business model for corporate India. Related to that is the topic of how the stakes involved in the SEZ business for developers compares with that of the units which set up shop in those zones.

In this chapter, we will try to give a synoptic view to these subjects. We have mentioned earlier that these zones are by far the most ambitious of all the economic models that India has experimented with so far. They have the potential, if handled well, to alter the contours of the Indian economy fundamentally in the next 10–15 years.

The SEZs as a Business Model

What sort of a business model are the SEZs for India? An examination of the available literature shows that there are no models to emulate for this business in India. As the previous chapters have shown, the Indian plan has been pretty unique, with no precedence to rely upon.

There are, therefore, three aspects with respect to which one can try to understand the business of the SEZs. The first concerns the question of economic viability of the zone. This is a tricky issue. For various reasons, the SEZ business in India has become identified with the real estate businesses.

Project Details

Total Area : 2000 Hectares (20,234,300 sq. meters)

Processing Area : 500 Hectares (5,058,570 sq. meters)

Non-Processing Area : 1500 Hectares (15,175,711 sq. meters)

Processing Area: 700 Hectares

Textile: 25%

IT/ITES: 10%

Auto: 20%

Food Processing: 10%

Biotech: 15%

Gems & Jewelry: 5%

Others: 15%

Non-Processing Area: 1300 Hectares

Residential: 50% Sports & Rec.: 5%

Commercial: 25% Education: 3%

Hospitality: 10% Health: 2%

Other: 5%

Modes of Investment

As a Equity holder.

By Leasing of Land.

By a Collaboration Agreement.

As a Co-developer.

Secured Loans

Existing SPV can issue shares in lieu of current valuation to any person.

Land owner to be allotted proportionate share in SPV.

Equity holder can be given exit clause, by selling his share to SPV.

Revenue out of SEZ operation to be shared in terms of holding in SPV.

As an Equity Holder

Raheja can acquire land from owners by way of lease agreement for minimum period of 20 years. At any point of time lease or possession can be encashed for an agreed consideration. Consideration can be in the form of portion of built-up area. Lease can be with individuals, association of persons, company or a society or any other legal body being a conglomeration of land holders.