Nandigram is proof that the state can no longer get away with its high-handedness. If land is needed for building factories, roads and power plants, it must be paid for at a proper market price and people who still wish to hang on to their land should be given the choice to do so. When they see the benefits that development and progress bring, they will themselves participate in the process, as we have seen in hundreds of villages around our metropolitan cities where land prices have gone from a few lakh rupees an acre ten years ago to crores of rupees an acre.

The state must learn to pay a proper price and our officials must learn that the times have changed. They can no longer get away with bullying ordinary people by terrorising them with the might of the state. Meanwhile, though, as someone who thinks of Marxists as the most morally corrupt of our politicians, it gives me a certain pleasure to see them try to defend the indefensible in Nandigram. More power to the people!