New Delhi

Demand to repeal Land Acquisition Act

NEW DELHI: Speakers at a meeting organised by non-government organisation Janhastakshep on “Nandigram and Erasama (POSCO): State Policy and Emerging Patterns of Oppression Against People” at the Gandhi Peace Foundation here this past week unanimously demanded immediate withdrawal of the police from the area and repeal of the SEZ Act and the Land Acquisition Act.

Former Delhi University political science professor Manoranjan Mohanty informed how the massive uprooting of population from their lands and livelihoods for large-scale projects and SEZs had become a country-wide phenomenon. “The people who are struggling against such policies have begun to understand the implications of these pro-imperialist industrial and SEZ policies: massive unemployment, fall in food grain production, exhaustion of the country’s mineral resources and a virtual handing over of the reins of the Indian economy to multi-national corporations. Very rightly, the affected people are resisting such projects and have launched powerful movements against such mindless, anti-people industrialisation.”

Mainstream editor Sumit Chakraborty said the political response of the Orissa Government to the anti-POSCO protest highlighted the importance of Nandigram. “This is clearly another step towards the dangerous path of fascism,” he added.

Imtiaz Ahmed of the Department of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University said the failure of the State lay in not being able to provide the basic necessities of drinking water, education and employment to a large part of the country and how it had subverted the path of justice on several occasions.

Speakers at the meeting also made an appeal to all progressive democratic forces to stop the Orissa Government by lending support to people’s struggle.

The speakers also condemned the Orissa Government for suppressing the people’s democratic right to dissent.

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