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SEZ Expansion in Andhra Pradesh:
Undermining the Rights of the Poor
12 May 2008
An International Fact Finding Mission (FFM), composed of eminent civil society members from Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and India, visited the Nellore district in Andhra Pradesh to investigate the two cases - (a) The expansion of the port in Krishnapatnam, and (b) The setting-up of an Apache Footwear production unit as part of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Tada mandal.
Over an extended period of 4 days – from 19 to 23 February 2008 – the FFM visited several villages in the area and had an intensive interaction with the people - public meetings as well as individual, face-to-face interviews. While assessing the concerns of the community as a whole, the FFM paid particular attention to special groups such as women and the youth. The people’s narratives and responses were scrupulously documented, and after due analyses, the FFM came up with a set of its observations and recommendations.
According to the FFM team, 14 villages in Krishnapatnam are facing threats of imminent eviction and thousands of villagers are exposed to the threats of livelihood losses. These villages were mainly inhabited by poor landless tribal and traditional fisher folks who had poor assets and no land title. They depended largely on Common Property Resources (CPR) and fishing in back water and sea for survival. The eviction would result into complete destruction of their livelihoods and would expose them to extreme vulnerable conditions.
The state government had proposed a relocation site for four villages far away from the back water and sea which would jeopardise their livelihoods as fisher folks. Moreover, the landless fisher families, who would be victims of marine & back water pollution would not receive any compensation and/or rehabilitation. These poor villagers were largely uninformed about the expansion of the port during the planning and initial phase of allotment of land and no consultation took place at grassroots to enable them to voice their opinions.
The new port would create very little employment opportunities for the local people as this would be highly mechanized and the activities in the port would result into large-scale pollution of surrounding environments. The dredging done by the authorities for expansion of the port had already destroyed the breeding ground of the fishes in the backwater and the fisher folks were suffering from poor catches. Expansion of port in Krishnapatnam has undermined food sovereignty of the villagers in that area.
Due to the construction of an SEZ in the locality, there will be violations on the right to food and food sovereignty of 12 tribal and Dalit villages in Tada. The Apache Company, which manufactured shoes for national & international markets, like Adidas, set-up a production unit in this SEZ. The Government provided 450 acres of land to this company in this SEZ and another 2000 acres of land would be gradually handed over to other companies for developing production units in this SEZ.
The tribal people from 12 villages had no access to nearby grazing grounds, fields and water bodies, which resulted into chronic hunger and malnutrition. These tribal families were landless and had very poor assets for pursuing a safe and sustainable livelihood. They are entitled to receive government land on a priority basis as per land reform programme but in reality the reverse process is taking place as vast tracts of lands, surrounding their villages, are given to SEZ by the government, making it impossible for these tribal families to derive their livelihoods from CPR. The tribal families also lost employment as agricultural labourers when the government turned over the agricultural lands to the SEZ. In brief these landless tribal families remained invisible in the ‘development’ planning of the state government in this area but they became helpless victims of such development process.
To read more about the results of the FFM, you can download the Speak Out:
To sign on the petition letter to Andhra Pradesh State Government, please visit:
To sign on the petition letter to the Social and Environmental Affairs Team of Adidas, please visit:
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