The 600-acre IT park at Rajarhat, near Kolkata, is the latest casualty of Bengal’s land acquisition tragedy and the state government’s abdication of responsibility post-Singur, post-electoral rout. The CPM appears to be struck by a paralysis of will that’s putting every developmental project on hold. If the government, led by the party, keeps retiring hurt, paranoid about the next election, the list of the disappointed will not end with a Tata Motors or an Infosys — notwithstanding a reformist chief minister who’s been missing the plot for a while and an intriguing land reforms minister who opposes industrial land acquisition, but gave vested land to a luxury resort, and now, caught up in controversy, wants the IT park scrapped.

Indeed, the IT park is inextricably tied up with the Vedic Village controversy, as the land is contiguous to the resort and was to be acquired by Vedic’s developers for the government. Following violence and allegations of forcible land acquisition, the government has retreated. If Singur was about state acquisition of land, Vedic Village has exploded “direct” acquisition by developers. Evidently, neither Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s nor Mamata Banerjee’s preferred means of acquiring land is working. But the state government should not equate the mechanism of land acquisition with the fact of acquisition. The problem is with the former alone, where compensation packages do matter, while using goons unleashes all the goriness of Bengal’s brand of muscle politics.

If West Bengal’s industrialisation is put on hold, its people will pay a heavy price. But industry will not come without land; thus the state must find a way out of this morass. Bengal’s rural poor need industrial expansion and its small farmers deserve viable land markets. The abandoned and locked plot of land in Singur cannot continue symbolising the state’s reality and prospects.