Politics: Don’t Cry For Me, West Bengal

I am only part Bengali, and I have never lived in West Bengal. I have visited Kolkata only three times in my life, and my only frame of reference of my heritage are ancient sepia-tinted photographs of an old, palatial ancestral house on the banks of the mighty Ganges River that I have never seen. How green was my valley. Well, I saw it when I was one year old, so that doesn’t count.

Still, I do have a soft corner for the state, and it saddens me to see how this once-mighty state is now one of the poorest and most backward parts of India. This was not always so. For two hundred years until the 1960s, West Bengal was India’s leading state in terms of industry, education and thought. The state played an important role in the freedom movement, and produced great writers, poets and intellectuals.

For a little while recently, it appeared that the state was finally making attempts to shed the stupor and anti-industry attitude that has characterised it over the last forty-odd years. The state’s Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is that rarest of politicians – a man who genuinely believes in the welfare and happiness of his constituency. He is a Communist, but he is one of the very few political leaders in India that I have great personal regard for. I disagree with his political ideology, but heartily endorse his concern for the welfare of the people of West Bengal. Unlike his fellow comrades, he is a pragmatist who believes fervently in change and he has scant respect for long-dead retrograde Communist ideologies. He stirred up a controversy recently when he said that strikes by workers were counterproductive, hurt common people and should be banned. His Stalinist colleagues in the Communist Party were not amused. India’s communists make careers out of encouraging and sponsoring industrial strikes.

So the decision by the Tatas, India’s most respected India’s industrial house, to set up the first Nano car manufacturing plant in West Bengal was a matter of great pride and honour for the state and its administration. The Nano car has gotten a lot of attention globally as the world’s first car priced below US $ 2,500. Many hoped this prestigious project would mark the turning point for Bengal’s fortunes and end the long darkness in which the state has lived for the last forty years.

Unfortunately, that was not to be, thanks to that shrill rabble-rouser, Mamata Banerjee. Like everything in India that can actually make a difference in the lives of its citizens, the project has become the victim of politics. Even politicians supporting the project suddenly reversed gears. Witness Information and Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi from the Congress Party calling Ratan Tata’s withdrawal speech (in which squarely blamed Mamata Banerjee for the pull-out) “arrogant”. I am not sure how Ratan Tata’s speech could be classified as being arrogant. He has a right to be upset because his company Tata Motors has invested millions of dollars in Singur. Indian politicians are always upset whenever someone is honest and speaks the truth, since they are so used to lying all the time.

Three months ago, when the Communists were part of the Congress led coalition government at the Centre, this same minister was scathingly critical of Mamata Banerjee and her destructive, intimidatory tactics at Singur. At that time, Das Munshi (nauseatingly fawned over and referred to as “Priyoda” by news anchor Barkha Dutt) was all for the Nano car project at Singur. Now that the Congress is trying to ally with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress party, suddenly the plight of a few farmers in Singur has become very important, and Ratan Tata is a villain.

That apart, what exactly is the ground reality in Singur? The truth has been obscured by political posturing, misinformation and lying by Mamata Banerjee and her cohorts. The truth is this - a total of 13,000 farmers were told to give up land for the Nano project, of which 11,000 farmers or 85% gave up their land willingly. All of this overwhelming majority of individuals and families were subsistence farmers who were living in near-poverty and realized that the Nano project gave them an opportunity to educate their children and get them skilled jobs in the industrial sector. A small minority (15%) of farmers opposed this project and did not want to part with their land. It is not clear as to whether they did not want to sell their land at all or whether they were holding out for greater compensation. Mamata Banerjee and her colleagues never gave us a chance to find out.

Once Mamata started her violent anti-Nano agitation, she was joined by many self-professed “protectors of the poor” – a motley bunch of individuals and groups who claim that they represent the poor, but whose actual objective is to keep people mired in misery and poverty. Chief among these was Anuradha Talwar, a fat, hairy aggressive woman in her mid-fifties, who looks like a frustrated housewife from Lajpat Nagar in Delhi. Once people like her got involved in the agitation, the truth about Singur was obscured, sadly forever.

Now that the Tatas have finally decided to move out of Singur, there is a sense of dismay and dismay among most residents there. Many of them were landless laborers who were depending on the plant to provide them with jobs and livelihoods. Now they have been left stranded – without either their land or jobs. Of course, Mamata Banerjee and Anuradha Talwar have pronounced this a “victory of the people” and left. Who will now pick up the pieces for the poor of Singur, now that they have been deserted by their “protectors”?

In a recent debate on Singur, a senior editor of one of India’s leading business magazines brought up an important point. Mamata Banerjee and Anuradha Talwar ferried in thousands of people into Singur during the anti-Nano agitation. These people were outsiders, brought in solely to spread chaos and destruction and prevent the Nano plant from functioning. A back of the envelope calculation revealed that feeding and housing these thousands of agitators for 25 odd days cost about Rs. 1.5 crore per day, adding up to about Rs. 40 crore for the duration of the agitation . Who was paying for this? Anuradha Talwar claimed she did not know who was footing the bill, which is strange since she was the one who organized the agitation. The journalist also went on to add that in fact, the agitation was paid for by “a leading two wheeler manufacturer who is also planning to launch a small car in the US $ 3,000 price range”. He declined to name this company, but the answer was obvious – Bajaj Auto. Rahul Bajaj is collaborating with Renault to make a car similar to the Nano at a similar price. Bajaj is one of India’s richest industrialists. However, one does not know whether he tried to sabotage the Nano car plant at Singur. Ratan Tata has also repeatedly said that vested business interests have tried to sabotage the production of the Nano car. He is not one to make such allegations lightly, so the allegation could be true.

So once again, politics has prevailed as an obstacle in India’s progress. It is sad, it is tragic. The only silver lining in all of this is that Mamata Banerjee is now rightly being vilified by the people of Singur. They have realized that she is solely responsible for their plight, and for the Tatas’ pullout from Singur. She will lose the next round of elections there. However, it is cold comfort.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is still determined to industrialize his state. He realizes that it is not possible for such large numbers of people to eke out a livelihood on such small amounts of land. 65% of India’s population is dependent on agriculture, which contributes only 23% to India’s GDP. This is not a sustainable situation, which Bhattacharya realises. I wish him all the best in his endeavour. We have so few politicians who genuinely care about their constituencies – he is one of them. More power to him.