The Special Economic Zones Act of 2005 created a statutory framework for duty-free enclaves with their own infrastructure, fiscal incentives and streamlined regulation to attract export industry and investment. It triggered a wave of large land assemblies on urban peripheries, often through state acquisition of farmland, and the building of integrated industrial-and-township enclaves. The land-acquisition conflicts it provoked, notably at Nandigram and Singur in West Bengal, became national flashpoints. SEZs added a new privatised, enclave geography to Indian urbanisation.
It institutionalised the enclave economic zone and its accompanying land conflicts as a major new form of peri-urban development.
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