Preeti Sampat
| Preeti Sampat is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Anthropology in the City University of New York working on the right to land and resources, Special Economic Zones, the real estate economy, peasant and citizens’ resistance struggles, state, citizenship, the rule of law and democracy in India. She can be reached at preeti.sampat@gmail.com |
Research on Land-grabbing:
The Goan Impasse: Special Economic Zones in India
On December 31, 2007, following widespread protests from peasants and citizens groups, the Chief Minister of Goa state in India Digambar Kamat scrapped all 13 approved Special Economic Zones in the state. As the Government of India declined to honor this decision, Kamat declared that SEZ developers in Goa could go ahead ‘at their own risk,’ and revoked the state’s SEZ policy. In Verna and Kerim villages where construction had begun, villagers now keep watch and graze cattle over SEZ lands, even as the matter is sub judice in the Supreme Court of India. This ethnographic and archival study of resistance to SEZs examines the emergent political economy of the right to land and resources in Verna and Kerim villages of South and North Goa districts. It examines the historical, political and strategic specificities that led to this reversal of power and their implications for the relationship between the Goan state, capital, the rule of law and citizenship rights.
