Green signal, red crossing

The Tata small car project, at Singur, in West Bengal, has reopened simmering wounds in a Left bastion chasing Capitalism

Ashis Biswas Kolkata

The Left Front government in West Bengal has copped a lot of flak on the Tata small car project, at Singur, in Hooghly district, 50 kilometres northwest of Kolkata. Accusations have flown thick and fast. The CPI (M)-led coalition government has tried hard to hold its own against an avalanche of criticism.

Consider that up to 1991, Bengal did not receive any industrial investment from the public or private sectors. Its per capita income in 1975 was the lowest in land. The number of registered unemployed, at 78,00,000  today, is the highest in India. Even the Haldia Petrochemical and the Bakreswar power plant were built after bitter opposition and great financial difficulties. Congress (I) ruled out an electronic industry hub in Bengal on the curious plea that it was a ‘border state’. Is it any wonder that Bengal is desperately hungry for industrial investment?

This is not to suggest that the Left Front’s handling of the controversy, as well as its approach to the cultivators and common people at Singur, has been commendable. Most deplorable has been the behaviour of the police, who totally failed to handle poor, worried farmers with sensitivity. And the fact is there are uncanny questions surrounding single-  and double-crop fertile land, farmers’ mass displacement and compensation, apart from the economic model that the state wants to follow in the era of globalisation.  

A brief look at the facts of the Singur project shows that the area needed is 993 acres.  The total investment is Rs 250 crore initially and another Rs 1,000 crore will be invested later. The project involves direct employment to around 1,000 people and indirect employment for at least 10,000 people. The location is close to the industrial belt, the major highways; Tata’s experts want a territory close to major highways. They also asked for large open spaces to allow the manoeuvring of car-carrying trailers.

The area is predominantly agricultural, with a sprinkling of small industrial units. It falls within the suburban penumbra of industrialised ‘greater Kolkata’. Politically, there is sizeable support for the opposition parties in 11 out of 12 blocks. Besides, there are some double-crop agricultural plots. According to Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) leader Provas Ghosh, “Agriculture sustains about 30,000 people in this area.”

Indeed, since the large take over of farm and tribal land by industrial houses, and after the police firing on tribals at Kalinganagar in Orissa and protests elsewhere, adequate compensation and mass displacement has emerged as an emotive,

conflict-ridden issue across the country.  Surely, despite its strong ‘pro-farmer’ position on the SEZ policy pursued by the Centre, even the Left Front can’t escape criticism on this score in West Bengal.

Besides, under Jyoti Basu as chief minister, from Salt Lake to Bantala, valuable land close to industrialised Kolkata and the neighbouring districts has been virtually gifted away to business houses for developing a leather complex, luxury hotels and housing projects. ‘Joint ventures’ involving the state government have been implemented, yielding minuscule profits, whereas business houses gleefully made a killing. The fact is 1,50,000 poor farmers and plot owners have been pauperised! And apart from some NGOs, neither the Congress nor the BJP or Trinamul Congress chose to take up their cause.