The Tata Nano Singur Controversy History Essay

Singur is a town in Hooghly District, West Bengal, India. This place was practically unheard of and gained international media attention after Tata Motors proposed the idea of setting a factory to manufacture the worlds cheapest car- The Tata Nano. It was supposed to be priced at Rs 1, 00,000 and the car was scheduled to be rolled out by 2008. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had just come to power at that time, (May 18, 2006). The State Government had allowed Tata to take over 997 acres of farmland in Singur to build its factory. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, wanted Tata to go ahead with the Tata Nano project in his state citing reasons of industrialisation and State development. West Bengal was viewed as an anti- industrialised state and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee wanted to reform that image. However, this act was received with much opposition from the activists, the displaced land owners and the opposition parties in Bengal. (Singur Tata Nano Controversy, 2012) The government had acquired 1200 acres of land which included 997 acres from 13000 'unwilling' farmers. These 997 acres of land was leased to the Tata Motors to set up the Nano plant. The government had offered a price which was better than that in Nandigram and also provided compensation which had included the sharecroppers also. There were six sites offered by the state government to Tata Motors. The company had selected Singur as the chosen site. Singur is the most fertile belt in that region. Almost whole of the entire local population there was dependant on agriculture with approximately 15000 earning their livelihood from it. The number of jobs to be provided then was in 1000s which was clearly insufficient and this had threatened the local inmates there. Also, the dependants on these land holdings, like the artisans or landless labourers could not be compensated nor were they promised jobs in the upcoming factory. Looking at all this, the opposition party, Trinamool Congress Party headed by Mamata Banerjee also jumped into the scene then and started an opposition against this. She went on a hunger strike and started a mass movement. She even made sure some of the locals did not take the compensation to show that people haven't got their compensation. The poor village masses and even the urban middle class were dragged into this. Maoists, SUCI (Socialist Unity Centre of India) and some Ultra lefts who were traditionally with the Left also had switched sides seeing the public support Trinamool got. Also leaders of other political parties joined the movement for their political motives.

Use of Marxist ideologies and also artists and activists created a buzz in favour of the movement. Various groups such as Civil rights and human rights groups, legal bodies and social activists like Medha Patkar and Anuradha Talwar had extended their widespread support towards this movement. Other dignitaries who voiced their opinion for this movement were: Arundhati Roy (Booker prize-winning author) and Mahasweta Devi (Magsaysay and Jnanpith Award-winning author). There were other intellectuals too; writers such as the poet Ruchit Shah; artists like Suvaprasanna, who had pitched in. Eminent personalities from theatre and film industry like Saonli Mitra, Aparna Sen etc. were also not left far behind. The Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen had expressed his ideas and views about industrialisation and he being in favour of setting up factories, however, he was not seen to support the opposed acquisition of land by force (Sahoo, 2012). Due to severe unrest in the region of Singur, police force was used which had ended up in violence and riots leaving the people of Singur stirred up against this forcible acquisition. All this unrest had practically sealed the fate of the Tata Nano factory in Singur and any form of project work to be carried out seemed impossible. It was during this time that various other states such as Haryana and Maharashtra approached Tata to set up the Nano Factory at their states. Finally, Tata Motors had to take the decision of relocating the Nano plant from Singur to Sanand in Gujarat and the Tata Nano project in West Bengal was terminated forever.

Media Portrayal in the whole case:

The Indian Media has portrayed this whole episode as Gujarats gain and Bengals loss. This has been seconded by quite a many members of the elite class as well as the common middle class. The whole turn of events of the Tata Nano factory first being set up and then relocated to Sanand is seen as huge image tarnish for the Government of West Bengal and the then chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Also, the readiness with which Tata Motors relocated the factory to Sanand can be viewed as a feather in the cap of Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the political party of BJP. West Bengal which has been ruled since 1977 by the leftist parties alliance now bears an impression of a state that is not pro capitalist industrialization and this notion has been strengthened by the Singur issue. For Gujarat this was a win-win situation as not only they established the Nano factory, but this event made Gujarat emerge as an auto hub and gave way for several other car manufacturers to set up factories there. The media had constantly projected Ratan Tata as the victim and villainized Mamata Banerjee and all those allied parties who were against the Nano factory being set up in Singur. But the media failed to project the real reasons behind why the farmers are so bounded to their lands, why they are so

emotionally and sentimentally attached, why they fight for their land and why they are even ready to give up their lives for it. In the whole coverage of the Singur case, only the case facts pertaining to views of commerce and the government were over-represented. The CPI (M) party had ruled West Bengal for quite a long time. They were seen as the party which was pro its people and supported the farmer but immediately as this Nano Singur issue came up, CPI(M) was instantly viewed as one who had become the anti farmer and just want to symbolize the state authority. Mamata Banerjee portrayed herself as the messiah of the poor and one who was there to take up their issues. Looking at this scenario, Network 18 had quoted saying, Marxists caught in time-warp as Mamata juggernaut rolls by (Srivastava, 2011). Reuters had mentioned that: Even the most backward districts of Purulia and Midnapore indicate that this fortress of poverty now looks vulnerable to the unstoppable Mamata juggernaut. Reuters (Srivastava, 2011) . Clearly this shows that media portrayed that Mamata Banerjee was trying to capitalise on the situation that the poor farmers and the middle class were quite sentimentally attached with their land and she wanted to make this a political agenda suiting her benefits.

Even Ratan Tata was portrayed as the victim and the one who had to suffer a lot. The Hindustan times had mentioned in one of their articles that Ratan Tata had become quite emotional when he had to bid farewell to his shareholders in the Tata Nano project. He had mentioned that he was thankful to the shareholders as they were there during the times of his need. Also he wasnt infuriated or angry about the whole Singur case but that he was quite sad about the fact that nothing could be done in Bengal with respect to setting up a Tata plant. He hoped that in future may be a plant is established there. (IANS, 2012)
Ratan Tata in an interview with NDTV had also mentioned that he doesnt see this issue as just a political agenda and that he knew that some competitors were fuelling this issue for their personal motives. Once again, in the whole controversy, only the main people concerned were the Tata Company, the State Government and the opposition. There was hardly any coverage on the farmers, what they thought, they wanted and why was the land so important to

them. If at all anything was covered about them, was the unrest caused in the land of Singur, the riots, the police lathi charge and the intervention and if at all any such incidents where women were physically abused or harassed. One of the authors who write for the International Herald Tribune, Anand Giridhardas had written that the fact that whether the farmers were compensated enough or their protests were built up for political manoeuvres is not as important as the building of a Rs 1,00,000 car and definitely that was much easier than parting the peasants of their land. (Jayaraman, 2009). An excerpt in the Indian express had this reprinted as an article in September 2008.The article was named Singur in Foreign Media. Starting from the day the Tata Nano project was announced, the coverage in the Indian English newspapers had no mention of the voice and opinion of the farmers. The Hindu had published three stories which did not contain even a single quote from any protesting farmer during that period (from June 27 to June 30, 2005). The Hindu had covered the whole issue negatively and had contained quite uncritical statements by the ruling party and hence sympathising with Tata. The Times of India had contained two write ups which had quoted only Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Biman Bose, Jyoti Basu and some other party representatives. They too portrayed Ratan Tata as a victim, and that the state had committed a huge blunder. The Telegraph had ignored some 1,000 villagers, by its own discretion, shouting, We'll give blood not land, as a small incident. The Telegraph however did quote, and had continued doing so for quite some time, the farmers. But again, these were few of the many who had welcomed the project and were willing to give up their land willingly hoping that they would be compensated and would receive jobs and upward mobility. On contrary, the articles that were carried in The Statesman (about three out of four) had not only just interviewed the farmers but also treated them sensitively, and had highlighted the issue of sharecroppers and landless labourers. (Jayaraman, 2009) Hence, we see that a lot of the buzz created around this whole issue had been quite elemental in forming opinions for the common mass, but clearly an inside aspect of this whole issue was overlooked. The media has the power to influence opinion of the public and in realisation of this power; it should take care to not just sensationalise news but give an inside out and a neutral perspective presenting all facts and leave the opinion forming part to the public.
Singur A Case Study

By Saibal Bishnu

19 September, 2008 Countercurrents.org

The Singur issue refuses to die down. The issue has become like a fresh air to

the ones who are against the ruling communists in Bengal, and a pain in the neck for the ones who prefers to call themselves pro progress, both in the left and the right sides of the fence. Whatever be the outcome of the Tata Small Car Factory at Singur, this issue would remain a major case study for the left in India. The so called grand alliance against the Singur plant does not have a homogeneous nature, which itself is the biggest success of the opposition. The opposition to this Singur plant is so broad-based that it could accommodate a large variety of stains of politics, opinions, beliefs, and ideas under it. The opposition could successfully accumulate the support of large mass of people from different walks of life, as the opposition itself was multi dimensional. Let us try to examine the major strains of the opposition. Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Banerjee has no doubt played the leaders role. Trinamool all these years have been the strongest voice in Bengal against the so called de-industrialization process here. One of their MPs once opined they are ready to admit that the West Bengal government is serious about industrialization only if the Tatas build a factory here. Their opposition does not stem from any ideological moorings; they would like to carry out exactly the same process of industrialization if in governance. But they do not want to be left in the lurch, and let the CPI(M) led Left Front government take all the credits of industrialization of the state. One of the views hints the Trinamool's opposition to Singur project is at the behest of the corporate interest of the rivals of Tata Nano, it gained grounds specially since no one challenged the accusation once Ratan Tata made, "Let me just say it is not just political, because I happen to know that some of our competitors are also fuelling some of this fire they would be very happy if the project got delayed," in an interview to the NDTV. The traditional support base of Trinamool, a break-away fraction of the Congress, has been the erstwhile zamindars, jotedars and other parasite classes in the rural Bengal, traders and urban middle class in the cities and towns. They reinvented their whole strategy after a defeat in the 2006 assembly elections. The new strategy can be best symbolized by their new found catch phrase, ma-mati-manush (mother-earth-human), vowing to protect the lives and livelihoods of the rural peasants, which instantly caught the imagination of many. In the urban areas, the campaigns took a bit different

route. To give an example, the Trinamool has been organizing squads, street corners, posters, and wall graffiti protesting against the policy of providing licenses to set up foreign liquor shops in the localities. The middle class Bengal also started identifying with the cause instantly. The campaign was cleverly manufactured against the backdrop of the same ma-mati-manush by playing on the sentiments, that the Left Front government is providing a lot of sops to the already rich Tatas to setup their factory at Singur, and to balance the budget the government is providing few thousands of licenses and plans to earn revenues, thus endangering the future of generation next. Interestingly the symbolisms they have started using of late are reminiscent of the erstwhile communist movements in Bengal, which people can easily relate to. Starting with Tebhaga to Operation Barga the right to land to the tillers has been the crux, which was immaculately re-invented by the Trinamool by organizing peasants unwilling to part with their lands for industrialization. The campaign strategists have been using the slogans, revolutionary poems by Sukanta Bhattacharya and other poets, revolutionary songs of Salil Chowdhury which were once used during the Tebhaga movement, the symbols which the people can easily identify as the symbol of protest. Some of the speakers even address the gathering in front as 'comrades' and the whole campaign is aimed at putting across the point that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has changed after enjoying 'power' for 30 years, have become anti-farmer, and the leaders of the party now symbolize state authority whereas it is Mamata Banerjee who is the real messiah of the rural poor and the middle class Bengal. This emotional play is bearing some fruits no doubt, which is evident by the fact that many prominent cult personalities in Bengal from music, literature, theatre and cinema have been moved, and openly voiced dissent against the course of industrialization by the Left Front government. This whole movement of Trinamool gained a lot of credence and popularity because of the open dissent by the cult personalities. But most importantly, it is the ultra lefts and their participation in the movement with Trinamool which changed the face of the movements. The 26-day hunger strike by Mamata Banerjee in 2006 to occupation movement in Nandigram in 2007 to the blockade in Singur in 2008, the face of the movements have turned from a Gandhian one to a pure agitation movement which the communists can easily identify with. There is a distinct possibility of agitations of more anarchic nature in future. The ultra lefts have their own ideology to align with Trinamool. According to the Maoists, SUCI, and some other strains of the ultra lefts, Trinamool represents the national bourgeoisie and urban petty bourgeois, who are

vacillating ally during revolution; whereas the Tatas are comprador bourgeoisie and the CPI(M) is playing as an agent of the comprador bourgeoisie. So, according to their analysis of the Indian capitalism and stage of revolution, allying with the Trinamool Congress against the CPI(M) is their organizational task, by following a policy of unity-struggle-unity. It is very interesting to note here that, all these strains of ultra lefts are compelled to organize movements with the help of some bourgeois political party and play a second fiddle to Trinamool, as they do not have mass support of their own, but they still continue to ignore participation in the democratic setup of India. Probably they have lessons to learn from the Maoists of Nepal, but that is entirely a different story beyond the scope of this case study. Some strains of the ultra lefts found a common cause with Trinamool as they feel it is the CPI(M) which is implementing neo-liberal agenda in the state, and it is important to ally with Trinamool to fight against this process. In addition to the ultra lefts of different strains and colors, the environmentalists found in the small car Nano a major violation to environment on two counts. Nano being a low cost car can sell in huge number clogging the roads and polluting the environment, and moreover acres of land are getting transformed from agricultural to industrial land. Neo-Luddites like Medha Patkar finds industries themselves to be against progress, but didn't find it difficult to ally with Mamata, who still calls herself a champion of industry in public, and probably mutters in her mind, if only the industry is built on thin air! Lastly after the sudden volte face on N-Deal Amar Singh found in Mamata Banerjee an ally and an 'ex-classmate,' to pin down the Left Front government and thus the CPI(M). Though it is public domain news that this same Amar Singh extended a red carpet to the Tatas to build the Nano factory in Uttar Pradesh in 2006, while he was heading the Uttar Pradesh state's Industrial Development Council. Strange are the bed fellows, but more striking is the way the broadest possible coalition could be stitched together against a common enemy, the cleverly crafted imagery of an authoritarian CPI(M) rule. Some Congress leaders also jumped on this bandwagon, finding it an opportune moment to remain relevant and gain some television coverage. Seven-time Congress MLA from Sealdah, Somen Mitra found his political career in jeopardy when he realized that his safe seat will cease to exist and would merge with Manicktala constituency. For him the next best opportunity is to contest from the North Kolkata Loksabha seat as the Trinamool candidate and former MP Ajit Panja is ailing and away to USA for treatment. Interestingly this same Somen Mitra has been found to have bought agricultural land in Singur itself to build a resort, which was under construction while he was sitting at the Dharna to protect agricultural land. The ex

Trinamool Mayor of Calcutta Corporation and INTUC leader Subrata Mukherjee in a desperate attempt to find relevance in Bengal politics, after the drubbing he received in the last election, has joined this protest. Although he is a labor union leader by profession and his political career ceases to have any significance without industry and labor. This movement would not have gained a critical mass, unless the fundamentalists played a crucial role in it. Jamait-e-Ulema-I-Hind leader Siddikulla Chowdhury, once a Congressman, campaigned among the Muslims in the rural Bengal, especially in the areas where some development projects were planned and land acquisition was imminent. The campaign gained huge momentum when it fueled a primal fear among the Muslim community that the minority population is the target of the CPI(M) led Left Front government, and the land acquisition means giving up on whatever they held dearest, the small tract of land they cultivate, the small cottages they call home, the village mosques they pray in, and the nearby cemetery they bury their near and dear ones. The propaganda was orchestrated underground with video CDs distributed throughout the rural Bengal. Clerics from foreign countries started visiting the village mosques just before the recent Panchayat polls. The target was again the common enemy, the cleverly crafted image of an authoritarian CPI(M) rule. This political strategy was a success story, as equating the CPI(M) with the state government, and thus with state power and authority was easy and Singur provided a golden opportunity. The West Bengal state government was desperate to attract investments to setup manufacturing industries. The victory with a huge margin in terms of number of seats in the 2006 assembly polls was taken by CPI(M) as a landslide mandate to industrialize the state at a very fast pace. At this time the Tatas were planning to setup their Nano factory at Pantnagar, as they were getting 100% outright excise duty exemption for a period of 10 years, with 100% income tax exemption for the first 5 years and then 30% for the next five. This kind of incentives possibly help to bring down the real cost of the small car by a few thousands rupees. This also helps the investors to recover the investment much faster. In order to attract the Tata Nano Factory the Left Front government tried to match these incentives and signed an agreement with them. Other than the financial incentives, the Tatas were given a choice to choose the site for their project. They chose Singur, which has been a fertile land, but at the same time probably the best location logistically to setup this project of small car. Also the low operating cost in Bengal was a major factor for the Tatas to decide in favor of Singur as this is a very cost sensitive project. The expectation of the

government was again two fold, generating employment and earning tax revenues after few years to the tune of estimated 500 crores per year, which can then be spent on the social sector facing crunch in budgetary allocation. This project was also seen as a harbinger for fast industrialization and building up investor confidence. The resistance movement at Singur germinated almost from the very beginning of the land acquisition notification, and this became a melting pot for all those strains of political colors. The government offered a good price for the land acquired and the compensation for the first time in India included Bargadars, but the resistance movement could organize a good number of people who did not collect the compensation money, and thus can be termed 'unwilling.' More transparency from the government could have avoided this situation too some extent but there were several confusions and questions in the air on the fertility of the land acquired, the cost benefit analysis of the project, question of rehabilitation etc. The use of police force during the land acquisition added fire to the fuel and strengthened this protest movement, the broad-based coalition was achieved and led to the incidents in Nandigram. The success of the movement at Nandigram were two folds, the government had to roll back its plans for the chemical hub and the defeats of CPI(M) candidates in the Panchayat polls there. This success story further encouraged the movement to go in for a stronger agitation which led to the siege at the Singur project site. The government recently declared an unprecedented rehabilitation package (http://www.wbidc.com/images/pdf/ad1.pdf) which can be attributed to this movement to a great extent. The state government was in a peculiar situation, with the fiscal crunch it is facing under neo-liberal agenda of our country, it was very difficult for the government to protect the gains it has achieved through land reforms and Panchayat decentralization. The social sectors like health and education were getting neglected as avenues to raise resources were becoming increasingly limited. According to a document of CPI(M), rapid industrialization was the only way forward, it stated, "there is constant fragmentation and division of land holdings and a high proportion of rural population dependent on agriculture along with a high proportion of landlessness, it is essential that this population dependent on agriculture finds avenues for employment which will be mainly provided by industrial development." Accordingly, the idea of industrialization was to generate alternate employment opportunities to the surplus labor in agriculture so that dependency on land decreases, considering the crisis agriculture is facing because of economic liberalization. The idea was also to earn tax revenues so that priority social sector spending can be achieved.

The CPI(M) and its mass organizations were supposed to play a very important role here. The government and its agenda of industrialization had the potential to displace farmers from land and destroy livelihoods for many, especially at the Singur project site. They were caught in the middle of the contradiction between the aspirations of the middle class to gain employment through industrialization and the farmers who were getting dispossessed from their land precisely because of this. The educated middle class is more enthusiastic about the industrialization since the modern industry provides good scope of employment for them, whereas the poor peasants being dispossessed are not that excited, as there is not a direct relation between their own employment and this kind of industrialization. It was absolutely necessary that the Left take up the issues of the peasants, understand their sentiments, and organize movements on behalf of the land losers. It was thought impossible for the ruling party to organize movements against its own government. As a result the peasants found in Mamata Banerjee their leader to protest against the acquisition. Here the distinction and a dialectical relation between the party and its government was ignored and in reality the party with its mass organizations was used to drive down the administrative agenda of land acquisition in the drive for industrialization. This alienated a large mass of people, including a part of the intelligentsia. The support base of the party eroded even among its long time ally, the peasantry. The combination of the two features, withdrawal of the CPI(M) from the forefront of struggle on behalf of the peasants, and well timed propaganda by this broad based alliance created a huge turmoil in the political scene in Bengal, not seen in the last few decades. The situation has led to such a paranoia that the infrastructural projects like building a thermal power station at Katwa is facing protests. People are protesting against any kind of land issues and even erecting high tension electric posts in the rural Bengal has almost stopped, and progress of rural electrification has become a question. An anarchic Bengal is not impossibility in future if this continues and the trouble with Gorkhaland increases. There are both ideological and social reasons for the CPI(M) not to play the desired role as expected by the people. Ideologically for them the accent is on delivering an alternate policy and governance with relief to people of Bengal, which includes employment generation, and thus industrialization. At the same time fiscal squeeze through neo-liberalism has restricted the scope for state governments, where delivering alternate policies has become increasingly difficult. The only possible way out is inviting private and even foreign capital with huge sops, a case study being Singur, and then earn from

the tax revenues to spend on social sector. They didn't try to go back to people educating them on the limitations, the difficulties, costs and pains of industrialization. Even after the government Tata agreement, the peasant front organization didn't take up the issues of the peasants to the government. The long-time allies were left in the lurch and the grand alliance happily grabbed the opportunity. Thus Singur will remain a case study for the left in India, on how to go about deciding and implementing policies under a restricted condition, also the dialectical relation between the party and its government would have to be sorted out in cases of these contradictions. As long as the CPI(M) continues to promote the political line of providing relief by participating in state governments as a tactics to build the left democratic front towards revolution, continuation of the government will remain a primary aim, and with the constraints increasing, implementing alternate policies will be an increasing challenge. The idea of using the Left Front government as an icon of the left's politics and policies of alternative to attract masses to build the proposed left democratic front is still not being questioned even under increasing fiscal squeeze under neo-liberalism, so situations like these might happen again. For the opposition of the left this was a case study on how to stitch a grand alliance and wean away a part of the core support base of the left. Both have learned, next time these lessons will again be implemented with much more finesse here or elsewhere, possibly there will be more situations like this as the contradictions are indeed sharpening.