Everyone has milked Singur, and left us villagers with begging bowls … Mamata Banerjee got her chair … now Tatas are getting their money back … only we the hapless villagers have lost everything ... our lands, our prospects ... and we have only the Rs 2-a-kg rice tossed at us by the Government to fall back on ... we have been rendered into beggers," says Haradhan Baag, an "unwilling" farmer who had "at the instance of the Trinamool Congress" resisted tooth-and-nail the Tata Nano plant about 17 years ago.
Baag was venting his woes in the wake of the Singur land Arbitral award directing the Bengal Government to pay about Rs 1,500 crore including 11 percent interest to the Tatas Motors which was forced to quit Bengal in the wake of a fierce land movement led by Banerjee the then Opposition Leader.
Land movements at Singur and Nandigram --- both against acquisition of land for industry had catapulted her to power dislodging the 34-year-long Marxist government from the State.
Banamali Samanta a graduate, who had completed an industrial training
and was scheduled to get a job in the botched Tata Nano plant --- but today has ended up as a food delivery boy who has to come to Kolkata some 45 km away everyday --- says: "my father was a willing farmer who had given his 15 bighas of land for the construction of the car plant which could have been a veritable alternative to the now shut Hind Motors … but the politicians killed our dreams."
The LF Government had acquired 900 acres of lands for the Tata Nano plant in 2006 post which Banerjee, fighting for her political survival started a land movement which later led to a court case besides leading Banerjee to power.
While the Calcutta High Court ruled in favour of the acquisition by the Left Government the Supreme Court in 2016 termed the acquisition illegal on technical grounds setting grounds for return of the lands to the farmers.
Subsequent developments saw a mammoth plant by the Kolkata-Delhi National Highway being pulled down and the land which had been cast in concrete by then --- and unfit for cultivation --- being returned to the farmers.
Meena Malik a homemaker whose son has been anti-Nano activist ready to die for "Didi's ideals" says how "were befooled into joining the movement which gave nothing but power to Mamata Banerjee … today we have been sidelined in the party and the riff-raffs have risen up the political ladder to make millions ... I am disgusted … I cannot look at the eyes of the local people who joined the movement at our instance but ended up getting their lands which is nothing more than a barren land worse than the Thar desert… The only person who has benefitted from the Singur land movement is our Chief Minister."
Her party mate Tapan Koyal says, "out of 10,000 farmers 8-9000 wanted a factory but we thought that Didi would bring us a better deal so we joined the movement and got our villagers to join it … but at the end of the day we got neither a factory not a farm land the land is unfit for cultivation … it is today filled with wild growth … some of it is being used as fishery by some powerful TMC leader … the villagers on the other hand are getting Rs 2 a kg rice as doll … now we realize how Singur could have changed the fate of Bengal … but just to satisfy her ego the Chief Minister blasted off a fully constructed factory house with dynamites after the Supreme Court order."
True, after the Tatas left the Singur acres and after the Apex Court verdict ordering return of land to the farmers not a sinle crop has grown in the past several years. The villagers who had visualized a bustling industrial complex coming up by the National Highway are today left with shattered dreams.
"Local TMC MLA and former minister in State Cabinet Rabindranath Bhattacharya who had alongwith Banerjee spearheaded the Singur movement rues too: "it would have been better if the Tatas had built a factory on 700 acres which was very much possible … it was only due to the unnecessary obduracy of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Government which refused to return (400 of the acquired 900 acres) some of the land that led to the trouble."
Former Left Minister Ashok Bhattacharya however says how "in her lust for power Mamata Banerjee misled the people of Singur into driving away the Tatas … remember how she used to abuse Ratan Tata in public in those days … and after that when the industry captain leaves a State how can lesser industrialists come here … the Arbitral award proves that we were right."
Says BJP leader Dilip Ghosh, "no one will come in Bengal till Mamata Banerjee is here ... firstly because her government is fully corrupt and secondly no one believes in her and this means that the people will suffer."