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.

The main Tata factory here will cover 562 acres — the equivalent in Singur was about 650 acres — and the total investment in the project, including that by vendors, is expected to be around Rs 2000 crore. Like Singur, besides the main plant, several vendors form part of the project. The state government and WBIDC have successfully acquired and allotted land to key vendors.

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