A morning at Singur

Singuru, people, Nano

The people of Singur want their land back. They also want the Nano plant. But they do not want the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Government. In fact, their show of anger against the Chief Minister is so forceful that, at times, one has to wince in embarrassment at the language used.

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It is mainly a question of distrust. As one elderly villager in Bajemelia – which is in the eye of the storm now in Singur (regarding the return of around 400 acres to the villagers) – said, it was promised by the State Government that the 700 young men from the area who were given the job of fencing off the plant area at the very initial stages would be given secure jobs at the plant site.

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“But they were asked to go home and security personnel have been engaged in their place by the plant authorities. If the authorities can go back on their word right at the beginning of the project, why should we trust them anymore?” they ask.

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There is a great sullenness all over the land, tempered by resignation for one set of villagers and by defiance for another group.

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The first group feels that they have been the victim of shots fired from a double-barrelled gun, the two barrels being the Left Front and the Opposition. People from the other group raise their voices to say they will not allow the plant to operate, even when its construction is complete. When one interjects weakly to suggest that winding up of the plant at this stage could lead to economic disaster for West Bengal, they shoot back with a logic which is down to earth but quite unanswerable.

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They say that the babus of Kolkata know that their children will get a “computer job” after college. The fathers of Singur do not know what will happen to their sons once they grow up because there is no land to till anymore. “We see no future for our sons. Why should we think about the future of the children of the Kolkata babus?”

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No meeting ground

Sitting around in Bajemelia and looking at the green fields and the Tata plant beyond them, the entire scene is pregnant with meaning. The fields beckon prosperity for the farmers; the plant will turn out a car that has attracted the attention of the world.

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Yet there is something amiss, for the two appear to be locked in mortal combat. If the plant comes up, the fields and the entire culture and way of life they have spawned over the centuries will die a slow death. If the greenery flourishes and spreads across the entire horizon, the industrial prospects of the State will be dealt a near-fatal blow.

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One wonders whether the villagers of the area have thought out the problem confronting Singur this way. If they have not, it is not their fault. After all, what they are going through is the very early stages of a change in the way of life they have been accustomed to ever since they got out to work in the fields.

Today, they have no work to do. They just sit and laze around and engage in desultory conversation, the way they were doing when we came across them on Wednesday morning.

To see the young people of a village do this is to set off a mental alarm because, all said and done, what this means is that a very precious national resource is being wasted.

In the earlier dispensation, with the fields of their forefathers there for them to till, they would be out toiling, returning home at the end of the day to take a well-earned rest.

One villager rued the fact that he was waiting for his lunch which would be just one small helping of rice with some other accompaniments – certainly not like the earlier days, when he did not have to buy rice from outside and when he and others, including the dogs and the ducks, could partake of a wholesome meal, all together. This was more the rule rather than the exception.

But, from now on, things will be totally different, he said. He will have to live a life with which he is completely unfamiliar.

Even his hut will no longer get the straw cover which it has been donning for centuries. As we saw, it already had a garishly coloured tarpaulin sheet. Some villagers openly say that even if the disputed land within the plant premises were to be returned to the farmers, it would be of no use because they had ceased to be arable.

However, there appears to be some uncertainty on this score because other villagers said that the land returned to them could be put to good use because “no one keeps land idle”.

Everyone, however, felt that giving land to the Tata plant on the other side of National Highway No. 2 would not make much sense because the land there was equally fertile.

Willing to talk

There is no anger against Ratan Tata. One got the impression that most villagers would have wanted to talk to him directly regarding land-sale, and most said that if that had happened there would have been no problem of the sort Singur is facing today.

There is, therefore, an amicable meeting point between the best of Indian industry and the tillers of the soil, at least in West Bengal. In that case, the million-dollar question is: why should Singur ever have happened?

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Outside the Tata factory gate, blocking the national highway, some sort of a carnival is on, with songs being sung from a makeshift stage, and announcements being made on the day’s programme.

A motley group of CPI(ML) people walk past with posters, followed by a larger Trinamool Congress procession.

The latter stops in front of the stage, at the corner of which one can see Ms Mamata Banerjee, pen in hand, deeply immersed in writing something or the other.

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The highway is empty, of course, giving the impression that it is a bandh day. But it is not, and that is the tragedy facing West Bengal today.

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