:: Pran Chopra

Who or what drove Tatas out of Singur?

By Pran Chopra

This question has many possible answers, and all of them have implications, some extending far out of Singur, some even out of West Bengal. The question will become easier to answer when — and if — the concerned parties lift the veil on the course followed by the talks which went on for weeks between the West Bengal government, the Tatas, the Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Banerjee and the West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi.

When Mamata Banerjee met the press in New Delhi on October 14, she complained copiously about the "failure of the West Bengal government to honour the agreement which" according to her "was brokered by the governor", and also about the refusal of the West Bengal government "to disclose the details of (the) agreement between the West Bengal government and the Tatas." But she also declined to throw much light on her own agreements, if any, with the state governor or the government or the Tatas. Nor have the latter said much of any value about them.

Without knowing much about these talks one can only speculate (and all that follows below falls short of even that speculation) about why the talks were held at all, why they broke down, what the consequences of that sad event can be, why the Tatas preferred to incur the huge cost of shifting the whole project to distant Gujarat instead of reaching any of the several possible and probably less costly compromises available within Singur. Was it Tata’s pride, or obstinacy on the part of Mamata Banerjee, or calculations by or about the future of CPI(M) either in West Bengal or even wider afield? Tata Motors had chosen Singur with their eyes open as the base for manufacturing their dream car — the Nano. Some of their reasons for choosing this site then remain valid today. For example, Singur continues to lie at the heart of that whole region which has the unique advantage of being close, on one side, to the industrial hub of Kolkata and its outlet to the sea, and close on another side to the Tatas’ traditional base and nursery for new enterprises, the Tatas’ network of iron and steel industries in the region of Jamshedpur, in Bihar.

This hub is also poised for a new thrust towards a better economic future as West Bengal — once dependent upon agriculture everywhere outside Kolkata — moves deeper into a mixed economy under a political dispensation which can better deploy the state’s manpower resources without frittering them away in the politics of extremism.

Such resistance as the Communists faced in recent years came for a time from some splinters of the Congress. The Trinamul Congress was among them. Gradually the Trinamul splinter began to prick the Left particularly hard, with covert support from the Congress. At the national level, the parental Congress and Trinamul Congress joined hands against the Communists, while in district politics they opposed each other.

But in Singur they found a shared reason for jointly opposing the Left even in district politics, whatever be the effect of that upon Tata Motors. It should not surprise anyone that even in distant Gujarat the shrewd Mr Narendra Modi smelt an opportunity for himself in the predicament faced by the beleaguered Mr Ratan Tata in Singur.

To say this is not to suggest that Mr Tata was interested only in a chance to sit at a larger political chessboard than he could fit into a little Nano. But it would be interesting to know what were the relative costs or advantages that weighed with him in choosing between any of the following possible compromises, which would have enabled him to complete his once cherished project at Singur.

He could have reduced his demand for some of the large area of land the state government had reserved for him at the site desired by him, or could have moved some of his works outside the designated area if they did not need to be so closely integrated with the main plant area, or could have compensated some of the affected labour for its commuting costs. He or someone else would have had to shell out some money to give effect to any of these compromises, but probably not as much as shifting the whole plant a thousand miles away. Therefore, there has to be some other explanation for his choosing the course he chose.

Possibly none exists outside his own mind, but which else existed, where? Did some decision-maker, in Delhi or West Bengal, feel sufficiently annoyed with some part of the Left Front to try to destabilise the Front by pulling down the Singur project? Was Mamata Banerjee a willing party to that scheme to topple the Front?

One notable chronicler of the Indian scene, Gurcharan Das, has recorded that "Although the state had offered farmers a higher price than the market, some refused to sell their land… When they protested, the ruling CPI(M) let the police loose and acquired their land forcibly… Mamata Banerjee insisted on the return of 300 acres of land. By now the factory was almost ready; Tatas claimed they needed the land to keep costs down… Mamata’s agitation soon went out of control… Tatas decided to leave Singur." If this account is correct, it reflects poorly on every single actor involved in it.

It casts undeserved doubts on the right of a farmer to refuse to sell his land if the price offered to him for it does not satisfy him. The CPI(M) had no right either to "let the police loose" on the farmers or to acquire their land "forcibly". Tatas got the factory "almost ready" before they had got undisputed title to all of the land on which it was to stand, or all the farmers had been persuaded to accept the price offered to them. The Tatas "claimed they needed the land to "keep the costs down". But at whose cost? Who let the "agitation" go "out of control"? Were any alternatives put on the table by anyone before the Tatas "decided to leave Singur"? At that time what was the status of their negotiations with Narendra Modi? Had the latter "negotiations" served a possible parallel purpose by that time, the purpose of covering the negotiations with Gujarat?

As for the future of CPI(M) in Singur or in West Bengal, the damage it has suffered as a result of the Singur project now falling into the rival hands of Gujarat can be assessed only when the answers to these questions are known, and it is in the interests of all the concerned parties to make the answers known before the motives of any of them fall under clouds which they might not merit.