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If onerous compliance - there are 674 compliances at the Central level
and 26,484 at the State level, according to Teamlease Services - removed one ele-
ment of the attraction for SEZs, the sheer difficulty of acquiring large tracts of
land became the other. Soon enough, SEZs were among the several industrial
projects unwittingly caught up in the toxic politics that came to characterise land
acquisition by business and industry, led by the redoubtable Mamata Banerjee
and her successful campaign to destroy Tata Motors’ car plant in Singur.
The upshot of this was a law stipulating compensation levels that made
land acquisition prohibitively expensive even as the Narendra Modi Govern-
ment’s early attempts to alter this by way of an Ordinance foundered.
And then, of course, came the reckoning on revenue foregone. Mr.
Modi’s quest for a streamlined tax system sans exemptions and loopholes result-
ed in then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley decreeing a sunset clause for SEZ tax
breaks as March 31, 2020, in 2016, which the latest Budget reiterated.
Politicians are well aware of the impediments to investment in India but
the absence of a viable social safety net makes it politically difficult to formally
campaign for easier hire-and-fire laws or lower compensation for land losers.
The China model of creating Township and Village Enterprises to support rural
labour who lost their livelihoods from the giant land acquisitions for SEZ seems
not to have occurred to any Indian leader. Nor has the possibility of mobilising
the vast land banks available to the Government via Port Trusts and public sector
units.
Falling global demand since 2008, the confusions of the GST after 2017
and the successive rise of protectionist tariffs from 2019 have been triple wham-
mies for exporters, including those from SEZs. And yet, in mid-2019, the Modi
Government pushed through a controversial amendment to the 2005 Act, which
first appeared as an Ordinance, to widen the definition of businesses permitted
to set up shop in SEZs to include “trusts and any other entities the Government
may permit from time-to-time”. Why trusts or “any Government entities” need
to be operating in an SEZ no Minister could explain adequately. But clearly, a
policy that has failed again and again mysteriously retains its attractions for the
political class.
[Source : Kanika Datta in Business Standard, New Delhi, dated 20-8-2020]

SC must introspect
In India’s complex institutional architecture, the judiciary occupies a
special place. It is the upholder of the Constitution and the final arbiter of justice.
It evokes faith due to its rigour and independence. It protects citizens from the
excesses of the State, ensures that the political system cannot use an electoral
mandate to change the basic structure of the Constitution, settles disputes be-
tween the Centre and States, between States, between the State and citizens, and
among citizens.
These have helped reinforce the reputation of the Courts, especially the
Supreme Court (SC), as truly independent. And that is why it is disappointing to
see SC hold Senior Advocate and Activist Prashant Bhushan guilty of contempt.
Mr. Bhushan had posted two separate tweets - one in which he accused SC, and
especially the past four Chief Justices of India, of aiding the “destruction” of

EXCISE LAW TIMES  1st September 2020  45