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The quiet Hoogly district in West Bengal comprises mainly of farmers who have been in the cultivation business for generations. They have owned land, cultivated on them and sold the produce, overcame droughts, and changing governments with the same unfulfilled promises and sustained their double digit family members. They do not know any other way of life. Enter the Tata Nano, the cheapest car on offer for just 1 lakh INR. The manufacture of the cheapest car requires 1000 crore for production to commence, which includes the cost of land. Tata is a reputed organization that can raise funds for their dream project in a jiffy but then what about the space? The Tatas received six sites as proposals for this plant and chose Singur, after a lot of satellite study, its adequate elevation, good water supply and its close proximity to Kolkata.
The 935 acre production site and the adjacent 290 acre vendor plot has seen a lot of hurdles since its inception with the CPM creating havoc in June and disrupting work. Then there was the problem of water logging. Of course you would expect so since it is agricultural land. Those farmers who owned single crop land were paid Rs.8.4 lakhs per acre and Rs.12 lakhs for double crop land. But then there are issues cropping up on whether the acquisition was with the consent of all the farmers, with forged and forced signatories.
Singur is in the Ganga delta. Need we say more? This land is blessed with perfect agricultural properties. Is it really that difficult to find land less favorable for agriculture, thus suited for industry? Adjoining Orissa, Jharkhand and other states do have such sites. But then the Tatas themselves chose this land. The sheer size of the project scared the other states away. Such land would mean the removal of agricultural or forest land. Maruti requires 300 acres to produce a little more than 3 lakh cars a year but only 1 lakh Nanos will be built from a 900+ acre plot. Clearly I am not aware of the manufacturing process but this does seem odd. We are all for industrial growth and are proud to share the same nationality with the Tatas and their contribution to our country and the launch of the Nano would be on the same list as Abhinav Bindra’s gold at the Olympics, but then we are not here to supplement agricultural land with industrial sites, especially if it is rich and fertile land, the scarcity of which is known to all. The industrial township of Jamshedpur is beautifully managed and self sufficient and the Tatas deserve all the credit. The township apart from creating employment, has managed to form a fully functional society. Do we expect the same in Singur? This is something we need to wait and watch. The dynamic leaders of Bengal need to find a way to supplement the farmers for their loss or give them a wider understanding of the outcome. They need to be exposed to other areas of wealth creation.
The homegrown Nano is expected to shake up the automotive industry (or not) and also the lifestyle (or not) of the middle class man. There has to be fine balance maintained with the expansion of the industrial sector and the neglected agricultural community as they seem to be at logger heads with the advent of the SEZs here. The Nano should be in the aspirations of the wider Indian community which will include our friends that till the fields. In a few years, we will have Wi-Fi enabled townships and cities, whereas certain rural sectors have never come across the concept of electricity for more than 5 hours at a time. Only if the developments move hand in hand will we have a better India or else the industrial revenue would go into importing food. Coming back to the original topic, if Tata decides to move out of Singur the repercussions would be hard to imagine. The inhabitants of Singur, the Nano project and the people waiting for it, all of them will be affected. More importantly it will highlight once again the incompetence of our so called leaders that are in fact the biggest obstacles towards India’s growth.