[Reader-list] An article on the situation in Singur

[Dibyajyoti Ghosh]

*Under Development: Singur*



Dibyajyoti Ghosh



            The 1-lakh Tata Nano is in trouble. While most people protested
against State-sponsored violence in Nandigram – the proposed site for Salim
group's 10,000 acre chemical hub (which is now supposed to come up in
Nayachar) – Singur and the Tata Motors plant was already one step ahead in
the path of industrial re-development in West Bengal. State-sponsored
violence in Singur had been far more effective as no one had died (except
for Tapasi Malik, a teenager who was raped and murdered by cadres of the
ruling party, the CPI(M) for having taken part in the protest movement
against the Nano factory). Farmers who committed suicide because they had
been deprived of their livelihood because the government had forcibly taken
away their land, did not obviously make it to the tally of deaths caused by
the factory.

Singur was never really opposed in the popular media. The largest media
house in West Bengal wrote editorials urging the state government to quell
any protests in Singur, as the Tata Nano plant, it said, would magically
revitalise the state's economy and bring about development for all. The
atrocities in Nandigram (because the people there had learnt lessons from
Singur and had dug trenches around their own land so as to prevent potential
acquirers from forcibly coming in and evicting them from their lands) were
of a greater magnitude to arrest the attention of the masses. A hundred
thousand people (according to the leading English daily in Kolkata) came out
on the streets on 14th November 2007 to protest against the violence in
Nandigram, yet Singur, it seemed, never affected so many people to make any
such token gestures.

The absence of large-scale bloodbaths (except for the ones on 25th September
and 2nd December 2006) seems to have given a no-objection certificate to the
displacement of several thousand people and deprivation of their livelihoods
as it was all for the greater good of the state of West Bengal.

Though the protests against the Singur plant was initially started by local
residents of Singur, the Singur Krishi Jomi Rokkha Committee (Singur Save
Farmland Committee) was soon appropriated by the Trinamool Congress (TMC)
and most protests by local residents were under the TMC-led SKJRC banner.
The independent voices of the local farmers of Singur were soon swallowed up
in the larger state-wide TMC fold.

            The construction of the factory went on at its own pace till the
panchayat elections of 2008 when buoyed by the victory in Singur and
Nandigram, the TMC decided to lay siege outside the factory demanding the
return of the 400 acres (of the 997 acres in total) of farmland that had
been acquired forcibly from unwilling landowners. Work within the Tata
Motors factory was impeded because of the siege immediately outside one
portion of the factory. After a discussion between the CPI(M)-led Left Front
government and the TMC-led opposition mediated by the governor of West
Bengal where the opposition's main demand (among many others) was that the
400 acres be returned and the government's assurance that about 47 acres
would be returned at least and much bargaining over the exact quantum of
land, the discussions went into one of its prolonged indecisive moments like
several others since the issue broke out in 2006.

            Ratan Tata decided to shift the Nano plant out of West Bengal
and to Gujarat. This was heralded by most as the death knell for industry
(which is naively equated with development) in West Bengal and much hue and
cry has been raised over the destructive nature of the TMC's protest
movements. With the TMC proposing to continue its protests if the land that
is no longer going to be use to supposedly build the Tata Nano factory is
not returned to the original landowners. The government, who agreed to pay a
much larger compensation (though still deemed too little by many including
most importantly, some of the farmers who were dependent on the land) after
the meetings mediated by the governor, was forced to be less harsh and
unjust on the farmers dependent on the land and this coming down from its
high arrogant position was again seen by many villagers of Singur as a small
symbolic victory for them. The government is now citing the archaic 1894
Land Acquisition Law to point out that it cannot return the land on
technical grounds (though some lawyers have pointed out that certain
technicalities allow the land to be returned). However, going by the WB
chief minister's way of doing things, such trivialities are hardly an issue
since he had said that all wrongs could be set right if the land acquisition
notice in Nandigram was torn up and thrown away.

            The Singur issue has again reached a crucial juncture as with
the exit of the Tatas, issues such as whether to return the land or not, how
to ensure that the fertility of the land (which has been covered with cement
and been rendered uncultivable) is restored and how much compensation
(whether to compensate for all the work lost since 2006 when the land was
acquired) are all burning issues which need to be sorted out quickly and
fairly so that the local farmers of Singur dependent on the land do not
suffer any longer. Larger issues of industrialisation and development need
to be talked about as it is this which will decide whether the multi-crop
and highly fertile land of Singur needs to be used for industry or whether
it ought to be restored to its previous cultivable state.

            Public pressure seems to have firmly gone up against the TMC.
Though some (such as the leading media house in West Bengal) have been
consistently against any opposition to the Singur factory, others accept the
unfairness and brutalities of the government in forcibly acquiring fertile
land, rendering several thousands jobless and setting up a car factory over
there. Yet, some who were opposed to the setting up of the car factory
thought that the best compromise in a situation where such a factory had
already been started to be made would be to let it happen and the TMC
protests and Ratan Tata's decision to shift the project to Gujarat has left
things in the middle of two chasms. Neither have the farmers been adequately
compensated as yet and the factory been made to operate giving jobs to a
chosen few from across the world. Nor has farming been allowed to exist
peacefully so that the local populace could have gone on with their lives as
before. They feel that the TMC's protests were ill-timed and the protests
should have acquired this magnitude earlier before the factory construction
started or it should not have happened now at all and the factory should
have been allowed to continue.

            The problem with this argument is that the protests had indeed
been quite fierce following the State-sponsored violence on 2nd December
2006. In spite of the TMC's gestures such as breaking furniture in the state
Assembly, several protest marches by non-partisan bodies had been organised
at that point of time. But, they did not acquire the magnitude of a
100,000-strong force such as after the CPI(M) recapture of Nandigram. And
the TMC's protest then was albeit of a very different nature, instead of a
siege, there were frequent strikes or bandhs in the city and its most
histrionic extreme was the fracas in the state Assembly. Thus, the TMC, as
the leading opposition, cannot be said to have stepped on the gas too late
though it is obviously milking the situation for political mileage.

Till the West Bengal panchayat elections of 2008, the factory came up with
very little opposition such as the occasional breaking down of the boundary
walls or torching of security watchtowers by disgruntled and exasperated
farmers. Meanwhile, a meagre compensation had been allocated for the
landowners and though the chief minister had publicly said that landless
farm labourers would get 25% of the compensation given to the landowners, no
such information was officially communicated to the landless farm labourers
by the panchayat or other local government officials. Secrecy was practiced
and encouraged, the exact agreement between the government and Tata Motors
being the most notable one in the Singur project. The factory was coming up
and while the leading English daily of Kolkata was publishing imaginary
shopping lists for the festive season where the lists included both the iPod
Nano and the Tata Nano, the question of what was to happen to those who had
not yet collected their compensation cheques and the landless farm labourers
who were not even being told that they were supposed to get any compensation
at all, was not being discussed in the mainstream media at all. In
alternative media and discussion circles, people were speaking about the
futility of giving a one-time large compensation to people who are not
accustomed to handling large amounts of money as they tend to burn it up
instead of investing it properly. Moreover, the compensation being offered
by the government was so meagre that the farmers of Singur were saying that
the money would run out in a few years whereas they could make a living
(however modest that may be, it was sufficient) off the land for ever.

The TMC siege, propelled the Singur issue to the front page of every
newspaper and prime slot on every TV channel in West Bengal. More money was
in the offing in the form of compensation that the government was forced to
agree upon after the meeting mediated by the governor. The exit of the Tatas
have however, complicated the compensation for permanent surrender of the
land.

It will be naïve to think that no industry will ever come up in West Bengal
again any time soon as industries come up wherever more subsidies are
offered. Had the people of Nandigram not defended their land in a martial
manner, there would not have been large-scale bloodbaths to outrage the
public at large and another industrial unit would have come up in Nandigram.
It is because the people of Nandigram defended their land and expressed
their opinion in a more violent manner, did there ensue the process which
led to most people' strong opposition to the project, though the chief
minister disapprovingly admonishes the people there for having lost the
chance to develop themselves and which now the people of Nayachar, he
claims, have the golden chance to do. It is this same golden chance which a
large section of the media thinks Singur had and which it has lost.

It is also quite convenient to tag people opposing the Tata Nano plant as
belonging to the TMC camp. For opinion, in the present political milieu, is
usually categorised in neat political binaries. By clubbing together all
opinion against the Tata Nano plant at all its stages (inception in 2006 or
even after it withdrew in 2008) in the TMC camp, one can conveniently label
such opinion as being associated with the TMC's political actions such as
the fracas in the state Assembly in 2006 and term it as anti-State and
unproductive or even destructive. Most local farmers in Singur are part of
the SKJRC and thus also of the TMC because that is the only channel they
have for expressing political opinion but they are not naïve enough to
prioritise the TMC's concern (political mileage for one) over their own. The
fact that they still are part of the TMC-led SKJRC gives some validity to
the agency of the TMC-led SKJRC as representative of the voices of the local
farming population dependent on the land. It is because of the existing
political setup in West Bengal now that people rarely have a loud voice
outside the binary of the CPI(M) and the TMC. Voices outside this binary do
exist but are feeble.

Many feel that the Tatas are the big losers in this battle between the
CPI(M) and the TMC. The Tatas are seen as a cleaner group compared to the
Ambanis. Maybe it says more about the Ambanis than about anyone else for the
Tatas have had a recent history of not paying any heed to the voices of the
people which it publicly claims it is trying to improve the lives of. The
Dhamra port in Orissa has been strongly opposed for several months by
Greenpeace activists who warn of the environmental hazards that it will
cause but it is still planned to be built. The Tata Steel SEZs in
Kalinganagar and Gopalpur in Orissa have also been fiercely opposed by the
local residents but they continue to be constructed despite Ratan Tata's
publicly proclaimed desire to improve lives of local communities.

It is now that larger questions of development and governance, of whether
predatory industrialisation through the SEZ model and removing subsidies
from agriculture and converting agricultural land to industrial land is
sustainable or whether such actions will lead to a food crisis in India need
to be discussed. Questions about whether the country needs more cars and
more flyovers to make space for the greater number of cars or a limit on the
maximum number of cars in every city need to be put into place; and whether
the Land Acquisition Act and its *carte blanche* to the government to
acquire land for 'public purpose' (which now the Court has ruled can also
mean earning money for the country) needs to be modified so that the
landowner can choose to surrender or not surrender the land owned.

There is no point in saying that no plan of development is ever
all-encompassing and fair to all sections of the society, and the local
residents of Singur must take a compensation amount and leave their
homesteads as part of the 'necessary cost' of development of the State.
These are issues that need to be discussed and a consensus reached among all
very fast so that the local farmers of Singur who were dependent on the land
are not left to die out. If the land is to be returned and an adequate
compensation paid for all the days of lost work and for the healing time
that the land will require to regain fertility (as a lot of the local
farmers are demanding), then it must be done soon.



Dibyajyoti Ghosh can be contacted at dibyajyotighoshATyahooDOTcoDOTin