[Reader-list] Citizens' Initiative's report on Singur (part 3)

[Citizens' Initiative]

OUR OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS

ENDEMIC PROBLEMS

Health

Most children in Dobandi have potbellies, suggesting worms and protein
deficiency. While the former is a result of lack of sanitation and hygiene
because of crammed living space and lack of toilets, the latter is probably
because of increasing paucity of the right food – and milk – for the
children. Before the landless labourers of Dobandi lost their livelihood,
most families owned a cow or two. Maintenance was easy, as the animals were
fed from farm by-products. After they lost their jobs, inability to afford
the upkeep of the cows and need for money, forced most families to sell
their animals. Now, obviously, the milk of the cows is no longer available
for the children, and they are deprived of what was an easy and accessible
source of nutrition. They have to buy their food. As long as the land was
there for the tilling, it was the land that provided them with food. Now,
they have to buy food grains.

Here are the chief areas of physical distress or discomfort we have noted
among the people of Dobandi:

1. Most villagers were probably anaemic.
2. Dysentery and other stomach-problems seem to be common.
3. Most villagers, particularly children, are very thin and severely
undernourished. Most children have a pot-belly.
4. Psychological and mental unease – amounting even to trauma – is apparent
in most men and women; the continued tenterhooks of not knowing where their
next meal shall come from, of being unable to provide for their children and
for the aged, of wondering where to find work the next day.

Among indications of administrative laxness are:

1. Several villagers complained of a dysfunctional dispensary and clinic.
Even if and when the doctor is there for consultation, no more than
prescriptions are forthcoming. Most villagers complained that the free
distribution of medicines almost never happens outside of the distribution
of painkillers, etc. Villagers admit that they are lax, this way, about
looking after themselves, because they often cannot afford the medicines
prescribed to them.
2. The doctors of Centre for Care of Torture Victims with whom we had
organised a medical camp on 18th May 2008 and again on 27th July 2008 say
that one of the biggest health problems in Dobandi is the lack of toilets
for defecation. The exposed faeces obviously lead to worms. There are three
tube-wells in Dobandi and two bathrooms (strictly bathrooms, not meant for
defecation). Besides health problems, the practice of going to the fields to
defecate also has other hazards. Tapasi Malik's rape and murder was
occasioned by it.

The panchayat was till 2008 dominated by the CPI (M). Money is allocated to
the panchayat for construction of toilets. Now that the TMC has won all 10
seats in Singur, Citizens' Initiative plans to take up the matter with the
panchayat.






Education

The Beraberi Ramakrishna Vivekananda Sevasram Balika Vidyalaya lies unused
for the greater part of the year. It is only one of the many schools in
Singur that suffer from paucity of regular teachers. But today, even where
schools are functional in Singur, there is an altogether different kind of
challenge facing the education of the young. Residents of villages most
acutely hit by the land-acquisition say that increasingly, older children
are dropping out of school simply because their families need them to work
in order to ensure food for the family. And there are others who say,
simply, that they cannot anymore afford to send their children to school
because even a minimal fee is now beyond their means to pay.

Employment

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) under the NREGA 2005
assures every adult member of any rural household willing to do unskilled
manual work one hundred days of employment in every financial year at the
statutory minimum wage. Most adult residents of Dobandi have NREGS job
cards, yet, on an average no one has received paid work for more than 7
days. Demand for 100 days of work from the authorities has been met with the
dodge that there are no work openings available. While most people have not
received any work at all, those who have tell yet another story – that in
many cases, the amount of work they were expected to do in a day was not
such that was normally humanly possible for someone used to farming only and
not used to other forms of manual labour (it would ordinarily take 2-3 days
for one person to do that quantum of work, for instance. Also, the NREGS
enforcers made the people dig a quantum of earth and carry that earth
whereas the said quantum of earth needed to be dug only if the earth was not
carried. A much lesser quantum of earth was required to be dug if the earth
was carried), and that that inability has often translated, come pay-time,
to a claim that the work has not been done to requirement, and therefore is
undeserving of pay and also that the worker is unskilled and hence cannot be
given any further work.

Only some villages in Singur had NREGS cards. These were largely due to the
efforts of the Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samiti, an NGO. The West Bengal
government has made little attempt to get NREGS cards for the villagers of
Singur. Most adults in the village of Dobandi had NREGS cards, whereas
people in Joymollah did not. The people in Joymollah had BPL cards though
(whereas people in Dobandi did not). However, curiously while some members
of a family had a BPL card, some others in the family had a below
poverty-level card. In one case, in a family where everyone had BPL cards,
the sole exception was the youngest child who had an above poverty-level
card.

People in Khasherbheri complained that while some people had submitted their
NREGS application forms, they did not know and were not told about the
counterfoil and nor were they issued the NREGS cards. On demanding the
application back (after more than the stipulated time within which the cards
are supposed to be issued) so that they could re-apply, they were told that
since the previous application was pending, a new application could not be
made.









The TMC's role

The Singur block had been a CPI (M) stronghold till the 2008 panchayat
elections in West Bengal. 7 out of the 10 seats in the Singur panchayat
belonged to the CPI(M) while 3 were held by the opposition, the TMC . A
fierce campaign ensued on part of both parties. While the CPI(M) wished to
keep its previous number of seats intact, if not more, the TMC found issues
in this year's panchayat election that were not there the last time. The
fury of the people of Singur who lost their jobs and means of livelihood due
to the creation of the Tata Motors factory site was seen as a major issue
during the panchayat elections.

Ever since the announcement of Tata Motors factory site in Singur
(incidentally the same day as the announcement of the 2006 assembly election
results where the TMC lost out miserably to its opponents), Mamata Banerjee,
leader of the TMC, has been campaigning and protesting against such a move
of the West Bengal government. Just before the elections in 2008, the
urgency of this issue was stepped up by the TMC.

Several landowners in Singur have not collected their compensation cheques
that were offered to them by the Government. In Beraberi Purbopara, out of a
total of 200 families that lost their land, only 5 have voluntarily given up
their land and claimed compensation from the government. These families were
never fully depended on their land for their earning, but had one family
member, at least, working in the city.

The rest who did not willingly give up their land, but were offered
compensation, refused to collect their cheques. This was a gesture of
protest with a further claim that they want, not compensation, but their
land back.

This sentiment has been fuelled by the TMC, who has been fighting with the
land owners to get them their land back. However, they are consistently
still being advised not to take their compensation cheques, while the TMC
still campaigns for the return of the land. It is a move by the party to
keep a victimised population, by giving them the hope that their land can
still be got back if they keep fighting for it. But in truth the land can
never be got lack, as it has been unconditionally leased out for 99 years to
the Tatas, whose workers are labouring round-the-clock to build sheds. The
land is being cemented in order to do so, so that now even if the land is
returned to the farmers, it will be forever unfit for cultivation.

The campaign of the TMC therefore is a futile attempt, because the leaders
of the party know it as well as the farmers that the land will serve no
agricultural use in the future. But this is an important gesture by the
party because it shows that the TMC is indeed concerned about the loss of
land that the people of Singur have suffered, and is fighting for the return
of the land.

The TMC, during the course of its 2008 panchayat elections campaign has also
provided some services, like the building of pucca roads just outside the
villages of Dobandi and Khaserbheri. For this, however, external labour was
engaged rather than the villagers themselves, who are now out of jobs and
could have worked. While the road itself was built in order to appease the
villagers and to show that the TMC had been working for their welfare, there
was no attempt to redress and real problems by the party such as the lack of
employment opportunities. The TMC has indeed tried to keep a victim
population which forms an ideal vote-base rather than an independent and
liberated lot of people.

After the panchayat elections of 2008, which the TMC won convincingly in
Singur, the Beraberi panchayat has shown no initiative to step up work on
the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Instead, it is quite
satisfied in letting the people of the worst-affected villages like Dobandi
work inside the Tata Motors factory. While for villages like Dobandi, any
sort of work is necessary, the panchayat has shown signs of being sort of
satisfied with the people having some sort of jobs on their hands (even if
it is irregular work like unloading trucks once every few days for which
some get paid Rs.40 or Rs.50) and the TMC has not taken any concrete steps
to ensure proper employment through channels such as the NREGS.






































The Tata Motors plant

The 997 acres that the government allowed the Tatas to choose start right
from the highway (the Dankuni-Durgapur highway part of NH 2). The Tatas are
not improving the infrastructure of the area in any way but rather they are
tapping into an already existing infrastructure. Being right next to the
highway and being so close to Kolkata, Singur provides a ready-made zone for
the Tatas.
Though the land has been marked as a plant covering 997 acres, the car plant
will not occupy the entire 997 acres. Whereas the small-car plant will only
occupy a fraction of the area, the rest is earmarked for vendors and
ancillary units. Also, residential quarters and club houses for the
employees of the plant will occupy a large part of the 997 acres. Since it
functions almost like an SEZ and every SEZ Authority will be made up of the
Development Commissioner, three officers of the Central government and two
representatives of the private developer, that is, the Tatas, there will be
no elected local government drawn from state legislatures, town councils or
local panchayats. Internal security in the plant will also be maintained by
the TATAs. The TATA Motors plant will be a corporate city-state and it is
also feared that a large part of the 997 acres will be used for real estate
– housing and shopping malls. It is not as if the entire 997 acres will be
used for industry.
The Tata plant has been advertised both by the CPI (M) government and the
Tatas as a site for providing employment to thousands of young people. The
official promise was to provide employment to 2,000 people initially and
ultimately to 10,000 people . However, it is feared that as with any SEZ,
the employees will be well-educated city-people rather than farmers. Also,
the only kinds of jobs the villagers will ultimately get will be menial jobs
– the women will get work as house-maids. Some of the women of Dobandi we
had spoken to had also said the same – that while as farmers, one lives with
a certain kind of dignity, working as a maid-servant is considered
derogatory.

The few people from Singur, who have accepted work within the Tata factory,
work as either guards or as labourers who help unload trucks and move
materials. The pay is extremely irregular. Employees get paid once in
several months (and not for all the months but for one month). One person
showed us his bank pass book and he had received his salary for January 2008
on 18th May 2008.

The Tata plant, it is conjectured, will not provide jobs to the farmers of
Singur except for jobs such as domestic servants and construction labourers.
Even the construction that has gone on so far has largely employed the
labour force from outside Singur. It is not only because the people of
Singur are morally against the Tata factory and are hence unwilling to work
within the factory but also because better skilled workers have been brought
in from outside Singur.











GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS

1. All moves to acquire land for industry should be preceded by detailed
dialogue with the owners and users (including traditional users such as
sharecroppers and landless farm labourers) of the land, and the entire
process should be based on consensus; force must be eschewed.
2. The Land Acquisition Act of 1894 should be amended so as to ensure that
the government cannot take away anyone's property without the consent of the
property owner. Also, the property owner should be compensated taking into
account the value of the land over the years and its future potential.
Meanwhile, the state government can create a separate state law on land
acquisition which takes into account these factors. As the Supreme Court has
said, the state law shall take precedence over the central law.
3. The SEZ Act should be amended so that no tax benefits are given to the
large corporate houses and neither should the SEZ area be subject to its own
laws but shall be under the jurisdiction of the local government
organisations such as panchayats and municipal corporations.
4. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) should be
implemented fully so as to ensure that every willing adult resident gets at
least 100 days of work at the minimum wage of Rs.75. All villages should be
covered under this scheme.
5. The health facilities in Singur (such as primary health centres and
hospitals) should be made to function properly on all weekdays and the
medicines which are listed as free should also be distributed to the
patients. The list of medicines which are distributed for free should be
expanded as it was before and not gradually reduced.
6. Concrete steps must be taken to ensure proper sanitation facilities for
the disposal of solid and liquid waste.
7. Ensure that land is not acquired forcibly again, and any means of
coercion such as brutalities by either the police or the cadres of the
ruling party are not used.
8. While working out compensation for the land, compensation must also be
paid to the daily labourers who worked on the land (ie, the landless farm
labourers) and migrant labourers who made their living off the land. For
instance, people in Dobandi who are landless farm labourers should be paid
25% of the compensation paid to the land owner, as was advertised by the
state government.
9. For agricultural workers (especially women who have lost the most
employment as per the Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity study) compensation
in terms of minimum wages should be given for the number of days of
employment that they have lost work in the past two years, since December
2006. This amounts to 600 days or Rs.45000 per agricultural worker. (PBKMS)
10. The amount of compensation for all should be equivalent to the current
real estate value of the land at the time of payment.  Further, the
compensation should include shares in the company for all dislocated people.

11. Instead of acquiring large tracts of land in one place and that too
fertile land, sick industries should be revived and land should only be
allotted in infertile areas.
12. For the 10-12 families who have been displaced by the project (their
houses fell within the factory site) and have been resettled in Dobandi,
should be given title-deeds of the houses that they are occupying now. These
people were promised water supplies. These have not been provided and must
be provided immediately. They must also have sanitation facilities, drainage
and other facilities that will make their present house site inhabitable
along with compensation for the problems caused by dislocation. (PBKMS)
13. People who have been employed within the factory (even as guards or
contract labourers), should be paid regular wages and on time (monthly at
least, if not weekly or daily). They should be given proper contracts with
all the security benefits of a permanent job.
14. Titles to homestead land must be given to the agricultural workers in
Dobandi and in other hamlets in Singur who do not even have land rights to
their homes at present. (PBKMS)
15. The Tatas should stick to fulfilling the promises that they made  such
as training women in various activities that will help them generate an
alternative mode of income and also set up community centres, primary health
care units, supporting primary and secondary schools.
16. Strong environmental safeguards should be put in place in order to
ensure that agriculture can flourish in Singur and surrounding areas. Also,
there must be very strict monitoring of these safeguards being followed by
the Panchayats and local farmers' committees. (PBKMS)
17. Adequate compensation should be given to those who have lost their
family members and to those who have been hurt in police violence. (PBKMS)
18. In future, industrialisation will be done only if it is a means of
developing an area and not of pauperising its people, and that costs of
industrialisation must be clearly measured, not just in terms of loss of
land of land owners, but also in terms of loss of livelihood to all the
rural poor who live there; that industry must build incrementally on the
skills and resources already available in an area; and that it must lead the
development of an area as a whole. (PBKMS)
19. A land use map for West Bengal will be brought out, demarcating zones
for agricultural land, forests and water bodies and that only certain
limited areas, after ensuring least displacement and least environmental
disturbance, will be used for industry. (PBKMS)
20. Informed debate in the Gram Sansad must precede the setting up of any
project in an area that involves large changes in land use there, and that
the Gram Sansad's decisions in this regard must be binding on the State
Government and any other sanctioning authority that is bringing in the new
project. (PBKMS)
21. Adequate compensation should be given for loss of income since December
2006 to all affected families Land must also be restored to its previous
condition and made fit for agriculture. (PBKMS)

(This section includes some of the recommendations/demands of the Paschim
Banga Khet Majoor Samity that we strongly agree with.)















CONCLUSION


When we began to write the conclusion to this report, many of us felt that
we were not equipped. We are not economists trained to make an informed
decision about whether we would prefer industry to agriculture or vice versa
(if that indeed is the proposed binary) or to predict accurately what the
effects of our choice today would be in the long run. However, we believed
that the opinions generated in us by our experience have some value.
But we do know a few things about the situation on the ground. We have found
out some things on our own in the last seven months. We have, as citizens,
gone and seen for ourselves things the mainstream media did not show us. We
have tried to understand things with common sense, logic and an open mind,
tried to keep ourselves unbiased, tried to protect our non-partisan identity
at all costs.
W¬e were in Singur at a time when it had disappeared from newspapers and
television channels. We were there on ordinary days, trying to record
people's day to day lives. What we saw there seemed to us to be absolutely
insupportable and more importantly, unsustainable. Our common sense told us
this could not go on indefinitely. Something would have to give.
It is true that we cannot yet see the benefits of the Tata factory that are
being predicted (we concede that there is the possibility that in some
distant future they may turn out to be real for some) but it is a fact that
we have seen, clearly and with our own eyes, the costs. And they are not
such that can be ignored or brushed aside.
We are sorry but the 'collateral damage' argument simply does not work for
us. Our common sense balks at the suggestion that such suffering is
necessary.
We wish to ask who possesses the actual spreadsheet for costs and benefits
of this industrialisation. Do the two sides really balance out? Even if we
accepted for a moment the 'necessary costs' argument [i.e. conceded that
industrialisation has always (in Europe, where it began and elsewhere)
happened at great initial cost (even sometimes at the barrel of the gun, as
in Nandigram), it has inevitably damaged  certain kinds of human community,
has for centuries caused environmental disasters and must therefore forever
continue to happen in the same way], who would provide us with a guarantee
that in Singur (and in other places like it) the long term losses are
outweighed by the long term gains?
If this is 'necessary' damage let there be a proper stock taking of this
necessity.
The question of Tata or no Tata in West Bengal comes usually down in
conversation to a question of agriculture vs. industry, of being pro- or
anti-progress. "Progress" in this popular register is equated entirely with
"development", as understood from the perspective of almost two decades of
an aggressively "liberalised" economy and for the benefit of a state that
has often been deemed unfit for industrial progress.
It is this oft repeated binary that we wish to stand against. We believe
that it is intrinsically damaging, to the intellect, to clear thinking; that
it effectively obscures the real questions and ultimately helps those who
wish to make immediate political (read partisan) capital out of the crisis.



Whose Development?
One of the justifications for the damages caused by Tata project (besides
the purely consumerist justification of the cheap car as an easily
accessible product for the urban middle class) is the number of jobs that
the factory will generate. No one really seems to have a clear estimate of
exactly how many and what kind of jobs these are, what section of the
population of Singur or the surrounding areas maybe effectively employed in
or around the factory. In our experience, the skilled construction labour in
the area is not from Singur for the simple reason that in most of the
affected villages people only know agriculture. Though sometimes a few of
the villagers were employed on a day to day basis for unskilled work like
carrying loads and digging soil, in most cases, they lost their jobs in a
day because of the impossible amount of work piled on them. In many cases,
they were not paid as promised. The only long term employment that the local
youth has seen in the past months is work as factory guards. Here too, most
of the guards come from other parts of the state, and even country. In many
cases (as the testimonies state), they had not been paid for months on end.
Once the construction of the factory is completed, of course, all these jobs
are liable to disappear and unskilled labour of the kind available in the
surrounding villages will be less and less in demand. Have the people who
argue for employment generation any concrete estimate of what kind of skills
will be required for the people working in the factory long term? What are
the real possibilities of people from the villages of Dobandi or Beraberi
(who know nothing but farming) finding an alternative source of livelihood
in and around the factory? If there are meagre possibilities of long term
rehabilitation, what then happens to these rural agricultural communities
now left without livelihood or subsistence?
It is all very well to speak of 'necessary costs', but does accepting
industrialisation mean accepting it at any cost, no questions asked, without
whys and hows and wherefores, accepting it just as it is handed down to us,
without demanding even a reasonable amount of accountability from those who
deign to invest in the state of West Bengal? This seems like a sad and
rather desperate bargain to strike for a state that is backward in industry,
but undeniably and impossibly fertile.
The logic then is this - to minimise a weakness you strike a bargain that
also minimises your biggest strength. You say that this is simply, well,
necessary. And in doing so, you destroy the most fertile tracts of land in
the state by cementing its topsoil, filling it up with sand, stone chips,
destroying the deep tube wells in the area, damaging the natural drainage
system and making the place unfit for cultivation for a long long time to
come.
There are several villages in the area which were, so far, self-sufficient
in terms of the food. They produced enough to feed themselves and their
families, and managed to sell what was leftover for good prices. You take
away their self-sufficiency, leave them poverty striken, promising them jobs
that just do not seem to materialise.
Compensation is offered but the question of consent simply does not seem to
arise.
There are many things that could have been done to 'develop' the area. For
example, you could have made sure that the high-school children did not drop
out for a lack of textbooks, that the primary health centre functioned
properly and provided the medicines they are supposed to distribute, that
the Panchayat took care that schemes like the NREGA were working.
But no, none of these were done to 'develop' Singur. What the place needed
more than anything else was a small car factory. And in order to build this
factory, the biggest employment generator in the area – cultivation – is
systematically damaged.
We are not economists, but yes, our common sense falters here.
If the long term goal and the justification for all this is the 'greater
good' of all i.e. the state then yes, we concede that there maybe people far
more far-sighted than us. But we would still like to know the exact
accounts, the logbooks that meticulously record these predictions for the
industrial future of the state and exactly how many people would benefit to
the detriment of how many others.
We would also like to be assured that loss (perhaps forever) of
ultra-fertile top-soil and multiple food crops a year would be balanced
exactly by the amount of employment generated in other sectors by the Tata
factory. We would also like to know whether or not this same logical process
carried through in other parts of the state (opening out more and more prime
agricultural land to possible investors without setting our own terms) would
ultimately lead to food shortage in West Bengal. If that is a possibility,
in just how many years would that happen?
These are common sense questions, layman's questions about the deeper
structures of capitalist 'trickle down' economics.
But yes we need to ask them nonetheless before we concede willingly to the
idea that the damages we saw in Singur are 'necessary.'
Because after all, come what may, one can't eat a car.
Two or three other things concern us. First, the laws of the land, which
have made it possible to carry out such 'necessary damage' with impunity not
just in West Bengal but in different parts of India. The Land Acquisition
Act of 1894, a colonial legacy, was last modified in 1985, when we suppose
the following sections were suitably reviewed and left in:

5A. Hearing of objections. - (1) Any person interested in any land which has
been notified under section 4, sub-section (1), as being needed or likely to
be needed for a public purpose or for a Company may, [within thirty days
from the date of the publication of the notification], object to the
acquisition of the land or of any land in the locality, as the case may be.

(2) Every objection under sub-section (1) shall be made to the Collector in
writing, and the Collector shall give the objector an opportunity of being
heard [in person or by any person authorized by him in this behalf] or by
pleader and shall, after hearing all such objections and after making such
further inquiry, if any, as he thinks necessary, [either make a report in
respect of the land which has been notified under section 4, sub-section
(1), or make different reports in respect of different parcels of such land,
to the appropriate Government, containing his recommendations on the
objections, together with the record of the proceedings held by him, for the
decision of that Government]. The decision of the [appropriate Government]
on the objections shall be final.


Technically then, any piece of land could be acquired under this law by the
Government for a 'public purpose' or in some cases for private companies.
Under PART VII titled ACQUISITION OF LAND FOR COMPANIES the law states,
amongst other things:

(a) that the purpose of the acquisition is to obtain land for the erection
of dwelling houses for workmen employed by the Company or for the provision
of amenities directly connected therewith,
40 B. (b) that such acquisition is needed for the construction of some work,
and that such work is likely to prove useful to the public].
44B. Land not to be acquired under this Part except for certain purpose for
private companies other than Government companies. - Notwithstanding
anything contained in this Act, no land shall be acquired under this Part,
except for the purpose mentioned in clause (a) of sub-section (1) of section
40, for a private company, which is not a Government company.

Once again, like we are not economists, we are not lawyers. And it has been
a while since the High Court has deemed the acquisition legal under the
provisions of this act. But to our layman's understanding, once again,
certain things seem amiss. Even if we were to accept the Land Acquisition
Act of 1894 as perfectly acceptable and not archaic/colonial at all, what
about this – "such acquisition is needed for the construction of some work,
and that such work is likely to prove useful to the public." How have
'public' and 'useful' been defined in this context?

Moving on, technically then, under this law, it would be possible for the
government to acquire any piece of land in the state for a new company and
its decision would be final. But urban middle class areas never appear in
our imagination when we speak of land acquisition, for various practical
reasons no doubt. The government could never raze an upper middle class
residential urban locality to the ground to build a company. That seems to
be beyond our imagination. But abandoned huts inside the factory premises
are not that much of a shock. If there is a value system that allows us to
accept people losing their homes in villages without shock, what is it? Do
homes take meaning only with location, monetary value or class? Do urban
homes mean more to their residents than these huts to those who used to live
in them? Also, as the testimonies will show, people in Singur relate to the
land they cultivate in a way that is significantly different from how we
relate to our work places in the city. It means home and sometimes more than
home to them.

It is interesting what an archaic [Land Acquisition Act (1894)] and an
entirely novel law [SEZ Act 2005] can achieve in tandem. We would like to
see a detailed review of both these Acts and extensive amendments to both.

We agree that the people of Singur (especially the landless labourers of
Dobandi, who know no other skill but farming) need alternative sources of
employment more than anything else. But these are not easy to come by,
especially now, with the attention being diverted to the return of acquired
land.

Our demands or wishes never included driving out the TATAs. We know (from
the farmers' testimonies) that much of the land acquired has been destroyed
for agriculture. It will not be cultivable - perhaps for a long time to
come. We strongly felt that the opposition, by fuelling the farmers' hopes
of getting back their land, was playing what was only a political game. We
have heard people in the government housing (near Dobandi) ruing their
plight. They lamented the fact that nobody cared for them after the
elections were over. But in most cases, they ended their diatribe with an
unrestrained praise of the TMC so that people from the city (like us) did
not go back thinking that the villagers have not thrown in their lot with
the opposition. They seem to us to be catching at the last available straws
of hope in the increasingly murky waters of power politics. The opposition,
of course, is by now desperate not to be seen as an enemy of
'industrialisation' and therefore, ready to declare 'victory' on behalf of
the people of Singur at the first chance available. It is difficult to
decide who really is speaking for whom in this scenario and with what
motives, but our suspicions are increasingly confirmed - the people of
Singur, once again, will be the ones to lose, the ones who will pay the
price for this power struggle that tokenises them but does not really listen
to their voices. The testimonies in our report only make an attempt to
record this lost speech.