15 years of Singur saga: A political potboiler and an industrial wasteland

At Independence, and for a couple of decades after, West Bengal was the most industrialised state in India, and a great deal of business and industry were headquartered in Calcutta, as it was known then. People flocked for employment and commerce to a cosmopolitan and elegant former capital of the British Empire in the subcontinent. But all this changed drastically, and as if forever, with the advent of 34 years of Left Front rule after the earlier Congress government was voted out. This was soon after a vicious Naxalite agitation that was brutally suppressed by the Congress. By the time the former chain-smoking Left Front chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadev Bhattacharya, finally came into his own, he was keen and eager to turn a page and reindustrialise the state. This was some time after the passing away of the anti-capitalist industry, the long-term chief minister Jyoti Basu. Basu enjoyed a titanic stature, reputation and affection among the people of West Bengal. This was mainly due to his land reform that gave land to the landless. Then there was his abiding sympathy for the labourer and farmworker. His policies against caste discrimination and a secular approach enthused the minorities in the state in favour of the Left Front. Basu’s Brown Sahib sophistication endeared him to the middle class and the intellectuals too. British-educated Basu’s three decades at the helm saw every industry strike-bound, locked-out or closed down until they all fled West Bengal. All except for the firms associated with tea and cigarettes. These two businesses were geographically strapped to stay put. The only person who ran a factory successfully in Jyoti Basu’s time, the joke goes, was his son Chandan Basu, who has since seen fit to relocate to Canada, out of the reach of inconvenient questions. Jyoti Basu was many things to the Left Front and even a supporter of Indira Gandhi’s government at the Centre, but he effectively ruined the industrial climate in West Bengal. So much so that it remains much the same today, with most investment refusing to come to West Bengal despite exhortations from its government and its intelligent and educated population. Bhattacharya, perhaps in a Stalinist move in retrospect, had the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) sign an agreement with Tata Motors. It was to set up a green-field factory to manufacture the revolutionary Tata Nano 600 CC petrol-powered motorcar that was intended to be sold initially for just Rs 1 lakh. The prototypes showed that it could comfortably transport five people. Ratan Tata’s dream child, it was intended to revolutionise transportation for the lower middle class. The Singur plant would employ about 2,000 people directly and provide employment to over 10,000 people indirectly when it became operational. The Bhattacharya-led government acquired nearly 1,000 acres of ’three-crops-a-year’ fertile agricultural land at Singur for the project from the none-too-happy farmers, providing meagre compensation in the process. Knowing the political climate in West Bengal, it was an agitation waiting to happen. Tata Motors and WBIDC jointly chose Singur for its proximity to Kolkata, just 40 kilometres away and its good connectivity with the nearby highways. It appears that they did not take local sentiment into account when using a high-handed colonial land acquisition law. But when the Trinamool Congress started its agitation against the location of the plant, the contention was why it wasn’t sited in designated industrial areas instead of on fertile agricultural land. The Trinamool Congress alleged that the Left Front government had forcibly acquired the land despite farmer protests and the project could not proceed. Despite early troubles, Tata Motors began to invest an estimated Rs 1,800 crore into the project from January 2007. Thirty of its vendors set up plant buildings alongside with an investment of over Rs 170 crore. The Left Front government, despite its best efforts, was not able to settle matters with the Singur farmers to their satisfaction. Fed up with the turmoil, then Tata chairman Ratan Tata decided to relocate the project to Sanand in Gujarat on 3 October, 2008. That the Tata Nano was not a great success in terms of sales, despite incentives offered by the Gujarat government, is another story. According to some reports, it is likely to see a new avatar as an electric car soon. But all the while, the Trinamool Congress agitation intensified, along with attacks against plant personnel. So much so, the Left Front government of Buddhadev Bhattacharya was brought down by the Trinamool Congress over this matter. The Trinamool Congress came to power in its stead and has been running West Bengal for three consecutive terms ever since. It is no wonder that the Singur agitation has been included in the school textbooks in the state. Singur is back in the news after 15 years, with the unanimous arbitration award of Rs 765.78 crore in compensation to Tata Motors payable by WBIDC, Rs 1 crore in legal expenses in addition, plus 11 per cent interest from 1 September, 2016, until the money is paid in full. With interest, the compensation to Tata Motors totals Rs 1,350 crore if it were to be paid today. The West Bengal government, headed by Mamata Banerjee, intends to challenge the award either in the Calcutta High Court or in the Supreme Court. One argument goes that the initial acquisition of the land was declared illegal later by the apex court in 2016 as it had failed to meet the requirements of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 and was ordered to be returned to the farmers. However, this may have come as too little and too late. The Leader of the West Bengal Opposition, BJP’s Subhendu Adhikari has stated that the agricultural land has been ruined by the works put in by the proposed plant and was rendered unfit thereafter for cultivation afresh. Industry, as usual, lost out in the bargain. Ironically, the arbitration award, with its resultant bad publicity, has come at a time when the West Bengal government is gearing up for its Global Business Summit on 21-22 November. However, previous business summits have never gone well with most pledges and promises remaining unfulfilled. The ruling Trinamool Congress is also grappling with widespread corruption charges, with as many as five of its ministers under arrest or in jail, and crores of unaccounted money confiscated by central authorities like the Enforcement Directorate. The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._ Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.