Rumours persist to this day that business rivals played a role in scuppering the Singur project, such as a Pune-based industrial family had funded the Trinamool agitation, and rival auto manufacturers fermented trouble in the media. But with lack of any paper trail, nothing was ever proven, writes KUSHAN MITRA
Tapasi Malik’s murder had already led to protests led by Mamata Banerjee; she had enlisted the support of ‘civil society’ in Kolkata and habitual anti-industrial protesters, such as Medha Patkar, to assist her. This had brought in the national media. By staging road and rail blockages, she had perversely built up her support. The Communist Party ruled Bengal, thanks to its use of muscle power, but the muscle had seen the writing on the wall. Even though the State elections were four years away, there were just two years to go for the national elections, and the Trinamool Congress wanted to display its strength to the country.
Assisting Mamata in her quest was her local Trinamool strongman, Becharam Manna, who was a local Councilman. Manna went on to become a legislative Assembly member and a minister. I went to Manna’s office in the town of Singur, which incidentally is a good 20 minutes away from the plant site on a good day.
There was nothing particularly noticeable about this town; a stop on the main suburban train lines leading out of Howrah Station, it provided hundreds of office workers to Kolkata daily. There were hospitals and schools and several training/tuition institutes promising young men and women better career prospects (outside Bengal).
Manna came in, as is standard for local strongmen across upcountry India, a Mahindra Bolero. It appeared he had more questions than I did, asking about Delhi and the Bengali community there. He could understand my urban-accented (and as my parents never fail to remind me, very poor) probashi Bangla far better than I could understand his rustic version of the language.
The obvious question for me to ask him was ‘why not industrialisation’IJ Manna touted the line that was becoming far too common for Trinamool leaders: “We don’t want this kind of industrialisation, but we do want industrialisation.” The region, he argued, was a major potato-growing area and it needed refrigerated storage area and potato processing. “Why can’t we make potato chipsIJ” he asked, before he added, “I have heard in Russia they make vodka out of potatoes; I want to bring (Vijay) Mallya or even Russians and ask them to make vodka.” His retinue of hangers-on all nodded in excitement and must have thought that I was quite stupid to have had a follow-up of: “So you would rather have an alcohol factory than a car factoryIJ”
I do not claim to hold a candle for the Tatas, but none of my arguments about the merits of industrialisation and having proper heavy industry in the region convinced Manna. He spoke of “other land” being available down the road, closer to the town of Sreerampur. “It is not much more expensive,” Manna argued, saying the land is under “our control”. The hints were clear: If the Tatas wanted to go ahead with the plant, they should speak to the Trinamool.
As I headed with Falguni to offer my obeisance at Tarakeshwar, I did note that the situation could easily be salvaged. The Communist leadership, both at the local and State level, had bungled up the land acquisition, and Tata Motors had left the acquisition of the land they clearly wanted completely to the Government. Maybe, if they had been more involved in the project, maybe, if they had engaged with Mamata — clearly an Opposition politician on the upswing — things would not have been so bad. As I prayed at a temple, which my family had visited for generations, I wondered what would happen next.
At the end of August 2008, Tata Motors pulled out their executives and workers from the Singur plant. Ratan Tata planned to use this withdrawal as a threat to West Bengal, a threat that he would move elsewhere, in the hope that this would force political opponents to the table. After all, who wants to sign away Rs 1,500-crore investmentIJ
The tides of political change had turned in West Bengal; with the General Elections a few months away, Mamata was on the verge of turfing the Communists out. Singur had been her crutch, justice for a raped and murdered girl her rallying cry. Mamata had won; Buddhadeb Bhattacharya — the Chief Minister of West Bengal, who was handpicked by Jyoti Basu to succeed him — had lost. At the Singur plant, close to 1,500 permanent and contract employees had to bear the brunt. It would be another six years before the Supreme Court decided that the land must be returned, but the war was already lost.
At a dramatic press conference in Kolkata in September, Ratan Tata, the man who had stood almost like a God on a stage in Delhi nine months earlier, conceded defeat. Just like in Delhi, there was a media scrum and hundreds of journalists wanted to quiz the grand old man of Indian industry. But the look on Tata’s face said it all — exhaustion. Here he was, trying to bring industry back to Bengal and got caught up in a political battle that torpedoed his dream.
Rumours persisted that business rivals had played a role in scuppering the Singur project. From pretty direct hints dropped by Tata PR flacks that a Pune-based industrial family had funded the Trinamool agitation, to other suggestions that rival auto manufacturers had fermented trouble in the media. These rumours persist to this day, but with lack of any paper trail, nothing has ever been proven.
Step into the fray the man loathed by the Communists and Mamata alike — Narendra Modi. The future Prime Minister of India knew an opportunity when he saw one, and quickly instructed his bureaucrats in Gujarat to ‘get’ the Nano contract. Just over a month after the Tatas abandoned Singur, Gujarat allocated 1,100 acres to Tata Motors in Sanand. There were issues here as well, but Modi ruled Gujarat with an iron grip, and the few protesting farmers had their voices drowned out. Although they found an audience with the growing ‘Anybody but Modi’ parts of the national media, their number was far too few to really make a difference. The Gujarati media celebrated the return of their prodigal son. After all, it was Gujarat where the Parsis had first landed in India, fleeing religious persecution in Persia. The Nano would now be Gujarat’s gift to India and the world.
But the Nano itself was well behind schedule. Even though the plant in Sanand was to be built in record time, with massive convoys of trucks literally shifting the factory from one end of National Highway 6 to the other, there were no Nanos in showrooms. The consumers whom Tata had built the Nano for — motorcyclists and scooterists with families wanting a safer ride — were being enticed by rivals, primarily Maruti-Suzuki and their best-selling Alto.
The boss of Maruti’s parent company Suzuki Motor, Osamu Suzuki, had publicly questioned several times the ability of Tata to make a car for Rs 1 lakh, and Maruti executives in off-record conversations stated that this was now an “ego” thing, and “they’ll never make money on this”. Just the logistical costs of shifting a factory and the lost money in Singur and the acquisition costs in Sanand together meant that the Nano would take at least a decade to make money, according to Maruti production experts. That too, if it was priced “realistically” and production hit the planned 250,000 units a year.
Would it hit that targetIJ One had to find out.
To be continued