An hour from Singur, a Tata story - just the opposite

Kolkata, October 4: Announcing the Nano pull-out from West Bengal, Ratan Tata referred to the Tata Cancer Centre coming up in the Rajarhat township, on the outskirts of Kolkata, as the bridge that remains between the group and the Government of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. That hospital is spread over just 13.40 acres of Government land but there is another Tata project on a scale as big as the Nano — and which is moving quietly ahead as per script.

Barely an hour’s drive from Singur, the Tata Telcon project in Kharagpur, a joint venture with Hitachi for making heavy earth-moving vehicles, also involved acquisition of agricultural land by the government right next to National Highway 6 (Kolkata-Mumbai highway).

Land acquisition began in June-July 2006 almost simultaneously with the Nano project in Singur. The Tata Telcon project envisages an industrial park of 1251.49 acres — Nano’s was 997 acres — of which the state government’s West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation has already acquired 967.96 acres. An estimated 80 per cent of this is agricultural. To date, Rs 63 crore has been paid as compensation to farmers and landholders. There are no “unwilling farmers” so far.

Consider the following:

• Telcon has its own vendor unit spread over 250 acres and will invest over Rs 500 crore.

• Tractors India has got 50 acres and will invest Rs 220 crore

• Arcon, a Canada-based vendor, has got 12 acres and is estimated to invest Rs 120 crore.

• York Consultant, a Tata holding company based in Singapore, has got 40 acres and is estimated to invest Rs 80 crore.

• US-based vendor P and H, specialising in coal mining equipment, has got 20 acres and is estimated to invest around Rs 60 crore.

“The Tata Telcon project is running smoothly. We have acquired land for the company and construction work has started recently,” said Subrata Gupta, MD, WBIDC. So why was land acquisition here smoother? The answers, officials admit, are hard to find. “Our compensation package was the normal one — Rs 8 lakh-Rs 11 lakh per acre, depending on the crop pattern on the land, which is primarily agricultural. (For Nano, the rates were Rs 9 -12 lakh). Just like in Singur, we held a regular dialogue at the grassroots level. We paid 25 per cent of the land price to recorded bargadars, which is also what was done in Singur,” said N S Nigam, District Magistrate, West Midnapore, in which the project falls. “Everyone cooperated, including the Opposition Trinamool Congress,” said Nigam. Asked why, Nigam said: “There was more attention on Singur. Maybe the stakes were higher given the publicity over Nano, the world’s cheapest car, and the firm deadline. Kharagpur was in the backyard and things proceeded here quietly from the spotlight.” In fact, an official said that Singur’s proximity to Kolkata — a mere 40-minute drive away — made it easier as a target since protesters had easy access to it. The area, dominated by the CPM, has a strong Trinamool and Congress base. A portion of the industrial park falls under Congress MLA Gyan Singh Sohon Pal’s Assembly constituency and the Lok Sabha seat falls under Probodh Panda of CPI. Said Partho Chatterjee, TMC leader and leader of the Opposition: “The right political atmosphere has been created there so therefore we did not protest. But Singur is different.”

... contd.