Singur farmers vow to fight unto death

THE BATTLEFIELD: The boundary of the field is being guarded by small outposts few metres apart.

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Singur/Kolkata: Forty kilometres from Kolkata, Singur in West Bengal's Hoogli district is fast turning into a fortress. The administration prepares to close the acquisition of Tata Motors' 997-acre plot by putting a fence around it.

The farmers in the region however, have vowed to wage a war. Because the land they till has been snapped up by the government for the proposed factory, and in a few days they would be asked to stop the sowing.

Owners didn't mind parting with their land because they used to earn little or nothing out of their properties. But thousands of landless peasants, the true beneficiaries for several decades, have vowed to fight till death.

"We are anyhow going to die of hunger if we lose our land. So it's better to die fighting for it," said a landless peasant Shyamali Patra.

To close the acquisition, the government is preparing to put an eight-km long fence around the 997-acre plot.

Barbed wires have already reached and concrete blocks are being shipped in. And to cope with envisaged resistance to fencing, the administration has deployed hundreds of policemen, who are now cooling heels in makeshift camps. The boundary of the proposed factory site is being guarded by small outposts few metres apart.

The Bengal government and Tata Motors have called for a tall sacrifice from the people of Singur. They have promised in return prosperity in an industrial world and a car as revolutionary as Hitler's Beetle.

"It has caught the imagination of people worldwide, it's confined to just India. And therefore I think West Bengal should be very proud to locate this car... the first factory for this car here in the state," said Tata Motors Managing Director Ravi Kant.

The one-lakh car might put Singur on the world map, if not as the site where it is manufactured, at least as a case study for economists. But the people's car is going to cost landless peasants of Singur much more than a lakh.

The battle line is drawn, as the government has declared farmers, sowing potato seeds, trespassers and is lodging FIRs against them.