The government is of the view that the development of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) will lead to the development of business and economy. In the process of establishing a SEZ, land acquisition plays an important role, which is also a sensitive issue among different players, such as NGOs, local people, politicians, developers, and the industrialists. Any delay in SEZ development leads to cost overrun of projects that is painful to the developers who have to pay a huge amount towards interest on their investment to banking institutions. This paper discusses how industries are `migrating' from their existing sites to SEZs for getting tax exemptions. A good example is that of Videocon which has hired 50 farmers in 100-acre SEZ project at Aurangabad. However, Article 243G of the Constitution provides the necessary guidelines that the local government and the Planning Commission may examine each proposal and decide whether to continue or discontinue with the sharing of local resources. The paper also briefly discusses the salient features of Rehabilitation and Resettlement (R&R) Policy and concludes that India has to learn from the Chinese strategy—to implement not more than 50 SEZs initially, learn fully and carefully from one's own experiment, and then move forward slowly to achieve a bigger target.

"Resistance is normal. Whenever anyone tried to introduce something new, the first reaction would be resistance. Nowhere in the recent past has this been truer than in the case of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) policy. Since coming into force the SEZ Act has triggered a series of intense debates. The political parties, certain sections within the government and civil society took umbrage to various aspects from the size to tax benefits offered resulting in revenue losses to real estate acquisition for the development of the SEZ", said Vivek Mehra, Executive Director, PricewaterCoopers (PWC) in a debate column of The Business Standard.

Out of 32,87,263 sq km of total land in India, agriculture land covers 55.8% of it. Moreover, there are so many infrastructure projects coming up in almost all the states leaving very little space for the development of SEZs. When wastelands are not available the only option left is to convert the available agriculture land into SEZs. Whether it is justified at the cost of people's sentiments or by displacing the people from the proposed land who are in no way associated with the benefits of the SEZ development, is a different question worth dicussing at length.

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