A Tale of Land, Tatas, Mamata and Communists
Can you do business in India? – Probably yes.
Can you do business in Bengal? Keep reading the post ….
I thought I would not cover this story as it is so controversial and getting huge media coverage. But now I think I should do my bit of .the story.
It seems Communism has come full circle in India and West Bengal in particular. It was during 60’s and 70’s that the communists took the nation by storm with their war against then existing feudal system and were instrumental in the introduction of Land Reform Law in West Bengal after they came into power for the first time in 1967. They have been ruling the state continuously since 1977.
The turning point came in 2000 when the Patriarch of the party Jyoti Basu retired from Chief Ministership and handed it over to Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, a young and energetic leader with an eye for development. It must be noted that between 1977-2000, almost all industrial and business houses left Bengal and it became a industry back-burner from a leading state. Soon after assuming office Mr. Bhattacharya decided to correct it and started to transform the government into a business friendly one. His government were now wooing foreign investors and promoting Bengal as a favored business destination to set up industries. Business man too got impressed by his genuine attitude and signed lots of Memorandum of Understandings with the government. So came big business houses like Tata! The Tata Automobiles choose to set up their pet project of Rs. 100,000 car Nano factory in Singur.
The Nano is arguably the most inexpensive car in the world conceived in 2003 by the Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata and aimed primarily to give a city car to millions of Indian middle class families who can’t afford other cars but can afford motor bikes and scooters. Presented for the first time in the 9th Auto Expo in Delhi in January 2008, the car has already created huge excitement among prospective consumers.
But the reason of this post is not about the car – rather its about the proposed manufacturing unit. In a state where land is of prime with a population density of 904 per square kilometer, the West Bengal government allocated 997 acres of land for the factory in a fertile agricultural area and about 15,000 farmers have been dislodged. Now they fear that the government will not compensate them and they would thus loose their livelihood. Enters Mamata Banerjee, the nemesis of the ruling communists and firebrand leader of Trinamul Congress, the main opposition party in the state. It seems her only goal in politics is to oust the communists from power, by hook or by crook. She immediately grabbed the opportunity at Singur (after she fought a prolonged battle with the ruling party at Nandigram where the Selim group was allocated thousands of acres of farmland for a proposed SEZ) and was now giving the same medicine like Hartals (strike), blockade to the communists who used these as their main weapons during the land reform movement in the state few decades back. The Tatas had to stop construction work due to continuous disturbance and finally announced on 2nd September that they were pulling out the project from Bengal! Read the rest of this entry »