ABSTRACT

Passports and visas permit entry, but may also limit entry or the assertion of rights. Passports and visas symbolically and simultaneously represent the ability and inability for citizens to enter particular territories. Passports and visas open borders, but without them individual abilities to assert rights to space and movement may be compromised and even undermined. In the context of the promotion of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the Indian state of Goa, fenceline community members – including the Goan villager quoted above – symbolically evoked passports, visas, and rights as they expressed their opposition to the setting up of SEZs in their state – and even in their own backyard. These sentiments were articulated by many other affected Goan citizens and, as I show in this chapter, a major social movement opposing SEZs, the SEZ Virodhi Manch (SVM), soon emerged to articulate such governance and land uncertainties that were widely perceived to accompany this particular form of industrialisation. The movement was ultimately successful in forcing the state government to halt the SEZ policy in Goa. As envisioned and planned in Goa, the SEZ model would allow the state to create spatial exceptions to normal governance and, in turn, reconfigure power, place, sovereignty, and territory. Geographically and spatially, such industrial zones are perceived – and in some cases actualised – as quite distinct from the places they border. Introduced in India through national legislation in 2005, SEZs are emblematic of the growing pains associated with economic growth, loss of agricultural land, and urbanisation facing the liberalising nation (Bedi and Tillin 2015). Perhaps because of its successful campaign, the SEZ resistance in Goa has generated a scholarly literature that has analysed the striking irregularities in approving SEZ applications and allotting land to developers (Da Silva 2014); on land inequalities (Sampat 2015); on the framing of the SEZ resistance around local contexts (Bedi 2013); and on the judicialisation of the SEZ struggle following state inaction (Bedi 2015). However, the governance and land

implications for fenceline communities as articulated individually and collectively via the social movement remain unexplored dimensions. The aim of the chapter is therefore to explore how the proposal of SEZs alters how fenceline communities – and the general public – envision the state in relation to land governance and sovereignty. The chapter draws on one year of ethnographic fieldwork in Goa and five follow-up visits of shorter duration to provide the empirical basis for this exploration. Based on 140 in-depth interviews with fenceline communities with SEZs proposed in or adjacent to their villages, activists, social movement participants, journalists, corporate representatives, government officials, and citizens, the chapter shows how directly affected villagers and other Goans perceived the SEZs as exceptional entities that would negatively alter local land governance. The spatial and sovereign exceptions, or ‘variegated sovereignties’ in Ong’s (2006) terminology, made to accommodate industrial SEZs were seen as exclusionary and incompatible with local visions of sovereignty and land governance, and prompted fears that SEZs were in fact a mechanism to subvert the powers of the decentralised local government and, in effect, promote state retreat. These sentiments were most forcefully articulated through the idea that fenceline communities would require a passport or visa to enter these fortified zones, often located in their own back yard and commonly demarcated by high, electrified fences, and guards. To contextualise the analysis that follows I review ideas of citizen agency and visions of the Indian state. Here, SEZs serve as a vehicle to understand how everyday expectations and engagements between citizens and the state are shifting in liberalising India. I also examine how economic enclaves are theorised more generally in relation to sovereignty. I then move on to analyse conceptualisations of the state and sovereignty in Goa in the context of rapid industrial development through SEZ promotion. I argue that the micro-politics of Goan SEZs elucidate enduring expectations in relation to an imperfect but present state.