The event will be held on 7 April at the IMI auditorium.
The event will be divided into four sessions. The first session on ‘SEZ Policy: Acts, Rules and Status’ will have Prof. Jaivir Singh, Mr. Sumit Mitra, Mr. Debashish Chakraborty and Prof. Bibek Debroy as speakers.
The second session on ‘Differential Treatment of Tax and Labour laws in SEZs’ will be discussed by Prof. C S Venkataratnam, Mr. Amitendu Malik, Prof. Rajat Kathuria, Ms. Aradhna Agarwal and Ms. Krishna Sharma.
The third session on ‘Agriculture and Land Issues’ will be discussed by Mr. Barun Mitra, Mr. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Prof. Amit Shovon Ray and Mr. Biswajit Bhattacharjee, while the final session on ‘SEZ Model Conclusions’ will have Prof. T C Anant and Prof. Arindam Banik on the panel.
Introducing the topic of SEZs, Wikipedia says, “Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is a geographical region that has economic laws that are more liberal than a country's typical economic laws. Usually the goal is an increase in foreign investment. One of the earliest and the most famous Special Economic Zones were founded by the government of the People’s Republic of China under Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s.”
What started as a measure to boost economic growth, SEZs have become a controversial subject in India. With the recent violence at Nandigram in West Bengal, the government too has shown some rethinking on the matter. Economists and political experts at IMI’s workshop will certainly add new perspectives on this contentious issue.
