30 Minutes: A drive through Singur, the land of Nano

LEFT HAND DRIVE: The Nano car factory in Singur has united parties and groups which are against the Left.

        

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Singur: For just rupees one lakh people who drive scooters will get to own a car: that’s what Tata Motors chief Ratan Tata promises with the Nano.

Ratan Tata delivers what he promises, but his dream to build the world’s cheapest car is stuck in the farmlands of Singur, a village 40 minutes away from Kolkata.

A huge factory to manufacture the Nano has come up in Singur but some confused and agitating farmers will not let the car roll out on time. There is resistance because Singur is fertile: some even say parts of it have four-crop farmland where the soil is richer than what money can buy.

In the autumn of 2006 the government marked territory for the Nano factory and set aside 997 acres. More than 11,000 people gradually took their compensation cheques and gave up ownership of their land, but some 2,200 farmers said they wouldn't budge.

The Trinamool Congress, West Bengal’s main opposition party, too dug in its heels in Singur. This started a confrontation between the state and farmers and slowly in fits and starts it took the shape of an agitation.

In August, when the Nano car was ready to go into production, the embers flared up. An anti-state coalition came together to block the national highway near the Nano factory, camps sprung up overnight and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee took charge of the agitation.

Mamata’s politics is to finally dislodge the CPI-M and become the new messiah of the poor. She wants to be their new electoral hope after 32 years of Left rule.

“The Tatas have got the land free—no Income Tax, no Sales Tax, no VAT, land free, water free and infrastructure free. Nobody knows what was the agreement between the Tatas and the state government,” says Mamata.

The Trinamool won areas around Singur in this year's panchayat polls but Mamata has a long way to go. The big picture is that she won only two of the 17 districts in the state.

Tale of two farmers

The Nano car factory has helped people and troubled them too in Singur. Harin, a carpenter, did a bit of farming in the kharif season but has now carved out a good future for himself by selling off his land. He got Rs 9 lakh per acre for a non-irrigated plot and Rs 13.5 lakh per acre for irrigated land.

But that’s for people who owned land. Ashtu and his elder brother Ranjan are sharecroppers. They tilled the fields owned by a family in the United States and took a portion of the harvest home. The family sold off the land for the factory and the brothers lost their livelihood. They didn’t get compensation and therefore are on Mamata's side.

The agitation would have been about land and compensation alone but for the murder of a young girl. Tapashi Malik, 19, was raped and murdered by alleged CPI-M supporters for daring to protest against the factory. Tapashi’s father believes the state is responsible for her death.

It was Tapashi's death that unified the movement. Faith, belief and ideology don't matter; every party that hates the CI-PM have pledged support to Mamata Banerjee. It's a rag tag army, a fragile coalition. They know this togetherness may not last but the spirits are high.