What Others Say

It is heartening to read this headline

It’s official: Tatas set to bid Singur goodbye

It reads

''This decision was taken in order to ensure the safety of its employees and contract labour, who have continued to be violently obstructed from reporting to work,"

Here is the fundemantal question. JRD TATA set up a steel plant defying the impearlilist. It created a movement for Indians. Today the clock has turned anti-clock, TATA killed Indians joining hands with communist for its Nano Car.

Hunger

...a village of farm workers most of whose 90 families lost their livelihood after the fields they worked in were acquired for the Tata Motors project.

Rape and Murder:

Suhrid Baran Dutta, CPI(M)'s zonal committee secretary from Singur arrested for his suspected role in the murder of a woman opposing land acquisition for the Tata Motors' car plant at Singur in West Bengal, Thursday refused to undergo a lie detector test in a Delhi court.

Tapasi was in the movement launched by the Trinamool Congress against the acquisition of farmland for the Tata project. Her charred body was found Dec 18. She was also allegedly raped before being killed.

This is just a glimpse.

Turning Agricultural land into Industrial land

The statistics cited earlier in this dispatch quoting state government sources, the fact that the whole Singur block has an average crop density of 220% and the fact that the proposed Tata Motors site is most well irrigated and the most fertile in the block and scores of photographs and video clippings in the print and electronic media showing the fields of the area nails her lies.

Did TATA not know all this?

On that afternoon, the Chief Minister Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharyee, sitting alongside Mr Ratan Tata, the chief of a dominant Indian capitalist group - the TATA’s, announced in a press conference that Tata Motors had made an agreement with the state government to set up a factory for small cars at Singur. In the press conference it was also made public that the state government would hand over 1000 acres of land in Singur. It cleverly remained silent on whether any Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) had been signed.

Why Singur?

This is the Singur that the Government chose for Tata’s small car project, About 27% of the five mouzas (out of 16) of the Block has been finally selected ‘acquired’ and fenced off with a massive police action for the purpose. The process of selection of the site is quite unprecedented and queer. From the statements of the Chief Minister, only this much could be ascertained that the Tatas opted for it and the government accepted readily. Even as late as on 26 December, the CM was reported to have said that the government had no option but to accept Tatas’ proposal.

Here is a tale told by the Singur BDO in presence of the local Panchayet boss Ranjt Mandal recorded on 15 June--Singur is a 40 minutes’ drive from the airport along the newly built Expressway via the new Vivekananda Setu under construction. So the Tatas or their top brass flying from other metros will have to waste little time to reach their destination.

Didn't Ma tell not to keep wrong company?

A senior Tata Group official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the company has left it to the state government to resolve its differences with all such farmers who are protesting against “forceful” acquisition of land for the Nano project.

What has become of TATA group? It cares only about its employees? What about the poor people? Why does it has to resort to such practices? This is not what JRD TATA built. I am sure he must be turning in his grave.