:: Nitish Sengupta

CPM, not Mamata, is villain of Singur

Nitish Sengupta

On November 11, the sessions court of Chandan Nagar, West Bengal, convicted Suhrid Datta, zonal secretary CPI(M) Singur, and Debu Malik, a CPI(M) leader of that area, on charges of raping and then murdering Tapasi Malik, a teenaged girl. After raping Tapasi, they burnt her to death. Tapasi's burnt body was found from a trench inside the Tata Motors compound. Tapasi was leading an agitation of farmers against forced acquisition of land by the West Bengal government for the Nano project. Both the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment. The case, earlier being investigated by the state CID, was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which submitted the chargesheet in court.

This incident should serve as a rude reminder to a section of India Inc. and the national media which had been crying hoarse about Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee forcing Tata Motors to exit and making her out to be the villain.

The conviction of these two men shows that the real villain was West Bengal's ruling party which tried to forcibly seize fertile agricultural land from unwilling farmers through terror tactics in which both the CPI(M) and the police took part. The case also exposes how the CPI(M) cadres hold rural West Bengal under their firm grip.

The saga of Singur started early in 2007 with the announcement that Tatas' Nano plant will be located in the highly prosperous agricultural belt, after acquiring land from the farmers. Many farmers refused to part with their land and started a peaceful satyagraha. The government authorities imposed Section 144 and unleashed a reign of terror on the unwilling farmers. Tapasi was one of the leaders of the farmers' agitation. For this offence she was raped and burnt alive by CPI(M) men and her charred body thrown in a trench.

The case would have ended, as many such other cases have ended all over West Bengal, with the state police making a show of investigation and then expressing their inability to find clues or leads. But there was a public outcry and West Bengal chief minister had to hand over the case to the CBI.

The CBI arrested some local top CPI(M) leaders and chargesheeted them. They have now been found guilty by a session's court. The manner in which the police, along with the CPI(M) cadre, pounced on the agitators in the course of nearly a year is in sharp contrast to the manner in which the state authorities virtually abdicated all authority after Ms Banerjee and her associates started a dharna at the Tata plant on August 24, 2008. Incidentally, it was only then that the national media got seriously interested in Singur, ignoring all that had happened earlier.

In any dispassionate account of the Singur saga, the national media and India Inc. should not only focus on the dharna that started on August 24, but also the untoward incidents that occurred thereafter and the withdrawal of Tatas from Singur, but also the painful saga of atrocities that took place before the land in question - around 1,000 acres, most of which is reported owned by Trinamool supporters - was handed over by the state government to Tata Motors. The ruling party in the state owes an explanation to the nation. The judgment of the session's court of Chandan Nagar is a strong condemnation of the government and the party in power.

Also, an explanation is due as to why the party in power chose to dump an agreement, reached after long negotiations between the state government and the leaders of the agitation on September 15, and announced by the state government before the media with much fanfare.

All that the party said later was that this was not an agreement, only an exchange of views. This argument does is not convincing as the agreement was signed on behalf of the state government by the commerce and industry minister, Nirupam Sen, and it started with the clause, "The state government has taken the decision…" How could the ruling party resile from an agreement to which the state government was a party, within a day? There is no official explanation, only stony silence.

Well, the Tatas did object to the clause of finding "maximum possible land" from the 1,000 acres given to them. But this was not given as the officially reason for the party countermanding an agreement to which the government was party. Eventually, the Tatas chose to leave Singur as much because of the Trinamool Congress' agitation as because of the state government's inability to offer protection to Tata Motors' employees.

A perusal of the sessions court judgment and all the surrounding circumstances make it amply clear that Ms Banerjee was not the devil she was made out to be by India Inc. and a section of the national media. And that it was, in fact, the ruling party in West Bengal which was the real devil. Had they not tried to play politics over the Singur project this issue might not have ended in a fiasco.

Nitish Sengupta, an academic and an author, is a former Member of Parliament and a former secretary to the Government of India