As one drives past the torn down Tata Nano project area down Durgapur Expressway a dull twinge somewhere within reminds of the shattered dreams that this vast barren tract of 900 acres once stood for. The decade-old memories of how a full-blown gigantic car plant was blown up and bull-dozed by the powers that be still linger in the mind of the local people.
For many years this land had become a place of tourist interest with travelers whooshing past this national highway linking Mumbai-Chennai and Delhi often asking their drivers to exactly locate where the Nano car plat stood.
A furlong past the Nano land you take left turn to enter the Joy Molla village. Past the village a gang of local youth sit on a bamboo platform whiling away time playing cards. As you stop to ask the way towards Beraberi one of them speaks up, “Presser dada … okay ekhan thekei arombho korun (my dear brother from the media you start reporting from here) … look at the new road the panchayat has constructed … it was ‘so well constructed’ that the casting had to be done twice in six months as the entire concrete came up within a two months.”
When asked to explain the reasons an old man bathing at a tube well a few metres away butts in: “there was no mark on the cement bags that were being used to construct the roads … we knew it was half cement and half clay.” Then why did they not raise an issue? “Are you crazy? Who wants to get murdered?”
When asked about the shattered Nano plant of them replies: “Birat bhool hoye geche dada (we did a great mistake) … Now we are left with nothing. I had two bighas of land their inside the project … now it is as good as stone … nothing can grow there. Not in fifty years hence.”
So what was the movement about: “A big trap …” the old man says adding “we had told the young boys that “Tatas are coming here … lap up the project … this area will become a second Jamshedpur … but they were swayed by Didi’s apparently simple ways … and now we are fighting without fate.”
One of the boys lead you to Purbabara past Pirpukur (a tank) even as he tells you that “this tank was dried up thrice for dredging … hundreds of days were shown in the 100-day work but not a spade was purchased… all the fund was looted.” And then he shows the house of a local panchayat member.
“Go and have a dekko of the house. They will not stop a reporter at least during the elections… This panchayat member constructed his house for more than a crore of rupees and wedded off his daughter spending Rs 18 lakh (which is a huge amount considering this impoverished village),” the youth refusing to get himself identified for obvious reasons says.
At Beraberi however the women speak profusely about Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. “Why shouldn’t we adore her?” Malati Jana asks. “Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee took away our lands but she restored them back to us … today she gives us free rice and Rs 2,000. That takes care of our household to some extent.”
And what about her children? “Two of them are working with a goldsmith in Delhi,” she says. Like Malati’s husband there were a few hundred farmers who would not part with their land for the Nano factor but the Left Government forcibly acquired them triggering the Singur movement led by Mamata Banerjee.
“Out of about 12,500 farmers more than 10,000 had given their land for the factor and their children had even taken industrial training at Tata’s various facilities … we had dreams but all that was shattered due to the politicians… now neither we can cultivate this land nor we can do anything else … there are snakes and foxes roaming inside the area,” says Dipak Hajari a local from Singher Bheri.
What do they want now? “Today Amit Shah came here. He assured us of an industry here … let us she whether the BJP Government does it or not…” What makes assures him of a BJP victory and not TMC’s or for that matter Left Front’s.
Nibaran Biswas a graduate who goes everyday to Kolkata to earn a paltry salary of Rs 10,000 says, “We would have loved Buddha babu back … But he cannot and the CPI(M) is a spent force though they have put up bright young faces --- who may be of use five years later. For TMC, no question of voting for them … they already trailed from this area by about 18,000 votes in the Lok Sabha elections… it seems that only the BJP can dislodge this Government for now … so we are relying on them about doing something… Let us see.”