Six months ago, five artists—Tushar Joag, Justin Ponmany,

Prajakta Potnis, Sharmila Samant and Uday Shanbhag—formed a fact-finding committee and extensively toured the SEZs in Raigad district and the Uttan-Gorai belt, also called the Dharavi Island, to find the facts behind the fiction.

They will present their findings in the form of documentaries and interactive sessions, under the title of SEZ Who?, at the Experimenter Gallery in Kolkata from June 21 to July 25. The highlight of the project will be a live feed from Gorai where visitors can ask questions and directly interact with activists and policymakers in the field of SEZ development in Gorai.

Samant says that she took up the issue of SEZs because it is something she has been concerned with since 2006.

“I wanted to explore the changing patterns of the use of land and the dire impossibility of survival for small farmers,” she says. Fittingly, the group has selected a scarecrow as its logo for the project as it is a scarecrow that scares away the birds from the crops and protects the farmers’ interest.

Samant says that their visits to the sites of the SEZs only confirmed some of their suspicions. “We discovered the complete apathy of the state towards its citizens, the greed of politicians and industrialists and the false projection of statistics to baffle the urban middle class to garner their support.” The silver lining, however, she says is “taking solace in peoples’ movements, and the strength of unified resistance”.

Samant is quick to point out the limitations of their work. “We as artists/observers can’t help those affected by a few visits. What we wish to do is firstly, to understand the structures of consumption, globalisation and the compulsions of capitalism, see if that can be transmitted to an audience that normally would not have time for such things and then engage or initiate a discussion.”

The group emphasises that their work has only uncovered the tip of the iceberg.

But to launch a discussion and to create awareness, the tip might be a very good place to start.