Singur

Arindam Sarkar

The verdant fields of Singur will go down in our times as the nook where the Left turned Right and the Right turned Left. Result: Tata Motors left for good and both the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress missed the opportunity to get industry in Bengal.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is now desperately trying to set up industry in Bengal. She has also requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help Bengal become industrialized, but capital is not in sight. Mamata is keen to have Tata Motors back in Bengal.

Today, the paddy and potato fields of Singur stand witness to the power struggle that rocked Bengal from 2006 over setting up of a small car – Nano – plant that eventually shifted to Gujarat. 

The Singur agitation also saw the metamorphosis of Mamata Banerjee from an urban leader to a farmers' leader and Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's desperation to resolve the Singur problem in order to keep his tryst with industry.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s industrial policy in Bengal and the forcible land acquisition was opposed by a section of the party comrades in the CPI(M)'s 22^nd State Conference and the 19^th CPI(M) Party Congress at Coimbatore. But chief minister did not stop because he was out to make the Singur Tata Motors Nano plant his showpiece industry in Brand Bengal.

When former Chief Minister Jyoti Basu stepped down in December 2000, Buddha came with the promise to deliver goods and convincingly led the Left Front to victory in the 2001 Assembly elections. It was the people's mandate for a clean and dynamic CM.

The next five years saw Buddha positioning Bengal as an industrial destination; convincing the industries that CITU (trade union body) has shed its militant colour; wooing the IT majors and stressing on the need to develop horticulture; and pushing floriculture and biotechnology as new avenues in the State.

Buddha won the 2006 Assembly elections on the plank of making Bengal the most happening industrial destination in the country.  

Thereafter, Bengal saw the coming of several steel players including Jindals, Balaji, Shyam, Adhunik, etc., new proposals to set up power plants, airports, a deep sea port, a chemical hub, a nuclear plant and many Special Economic Zones.

No wonder, Buddha glowed with pride as such industry captains like Azim Premji, Sajjan Jindal, Mukesh Ambani, Narayan Murthy, etc., all made a beeline to the CM's chamber at the Writers' Buildings. And finally it was the coming of the chairman of the Tata Sons Ratan Tata to set up the Nano plant at Singur that bowled Buddha over.

While all this happened, crucial debates began in the CPI(M) over how to accommodate the industry and where to acquire lands for industry.

While a section of party insisted that industries should go to Purulia, Bankura and Birbhum to set up plants and not disturb agriculture, Buddha and his politburo colleagues Industries minister Nirupam Sen and CPI(M) State secretary Biman Bose insisted that acquisition of 1 per cent of the State's total agricultural land (1.64 crore acres) would be enough for industry and not affect the agriculture.

These mandarins presented the polemics of former communist party chief of China Deng Xiao Peng, who opened up China to the capitalists and cleared the deck for acquiring farmlands for industries, to argue their case. However, while selling Deng, the Bengal apparatchiks closed their eyes to the violent land riots of China in 2005-2006 that occurred due to forcible acquisition of farmlands.

Thus, the very CPI(M), which came to power in Bengal in 1977 through land movements, undertook the Operation Barga and set example in the country with its panchayati system, got down to forcibly acquire lands from the farmers. Argument: time was ripe for the farmers to move from tilling their soils to working in the factories.

Result: a disaster. Nandigram witnessed bloody clashes and casualties in 2007. And State Government backtracked from acquiring 14,000 acres of land there for a chemical hub. The panchayat election blow made the CM cancel the Barasat-Raichak Highway project as it entailed further acquisition of farmlands.

Soon, the CM and the CPI(M) were caught in the Singur quagmire for acquiring the multi-crop lands to set up the Tata Motors Nano plant. This time, however, Buddha didn’t backtrack. And his incentive package to the Singur farmers was a clear signal that this was one project he wouldn't abort.

But Buddha's determination hit the Mamata wall. Despite three rounds of talks with Mamata to reach a solution in Singur, the CM failed to make her give up her demand to return 400 out of the 1,000 acres of land to the farmers who want them back.

Mamata argues that the CPI(M) had violated the Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy 2007 of the Centre by acquiring farm tracts in Singur for the motor plant. The policy says that the State Governments shall not acquire multi-crop and irrigated areas.

Though the State Government insists that the Tata Motors plant is a cluster automobile unit where the ancillary units should be attached to the mother plant on 997 acres of land, Mamata said one does not require more than 400 acres to set up a motor plant. Secondly, there is no question of applying any model on land that has been forcibly acquired from the farmers. And finally, Mamata said that the land price at Singur was going at Rs 50 lakh per acre and the reworked compensation offered to the tune of around Rs 10 lakh to Rs 15 lakh per acre is pittance, which the farmers should not accept.

There was more to Singur, however, than just Buddha's Nano dream and Mamata's crusade for the farmers' cause.

Confident that the rural vote-bank is intact, Buddha and the CPI(M) were eyeing the vote-bank of the urban areas and the fringe townships around the metro with industry, development and employment opportunities as electoral issues in the ensuing 2009 Lok Sabha and 2011 Assembly polls.

And Mamata who all along struggled to find a foothold in the rural belt, for the first time tasted blood in the countryside. Her Nandigram agitation paid off in the 2008 panchayat polls significantly. And with Singur burning, she went for a kill in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

Trinamool Congress said that people in the rural areas were questioning the CPI(M)'s role  as their saviour. Having lost faith on the CPI(M), due to the fear of losing their lands and homesteads for industries, there is a perception among the people that a victorious Marxist would begin with all vigour to displace them and grab lands to please the monopoly houses.

Mamata rode the anti-CPI(M) wave. In 2009 Lok Sabha polls and 2011 Assembly elections, as people of Bengal dumped the Good Old Left, Mamata romped home with a massive mandate. Not surprising, with the Right donning a socialist garb, people chose to leave the Left.