ABSTRACT
On March 14, 2007, the West Bengal police opened fi re on a group of peasants and villagers, killing 14 people. The group was protesting against the CPI-M (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led government’s attempt to acquire the villagers’ land for a chemical hub1 in Nandigram, a cluster of villages 60 miles south of Calcutta. Since 2002 disputes such as this have emerged across the country in response to the appropriation of land for the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZ). SEZs are spaces acquired for private capital to set up industrial enclaves at low cost. The controversy escalated into a confrontation between Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee (BUPC or the committee to resist eviction from land) and CPI-M cadre in November 2007, leading to further violence, culminating in what became known as ‘operation reconquest’ of Nandigram (Bandyopadhya 2007). State repression of the protesters drew widespread criticism from people around the world, leading the chief minister Bhattacharjee to relocate the project to Nayachar.
