It seems the long and winding road to Singur has finally hit a permanent roadblock. Ratan Tata has announced that Tata Motors will relocate its Nano plant. Perhaps it was inevitable, something that could have been effortlessly predicted from the moment the “agitation” gathered steam; but so absurd seemed the principles being pontificated upon, so great the issues at stake, so central its continued existence for a struggling state’s industry and self-confidence, that hope seemed to have lasted all this time. Perhaps it’s time to dash those hopes now.

This is a victory for nobody. Not for Mamata Banerjee, who lost control of another movement she launched for short-term political gain; not for the CPM and the Left Front, which has lost an opportunity to push through much-needed development thanks to its own dismal past record on such projects; not for the unreconstructed radical fringe that captured Mamata’s movement, because the rest of the country will have learnt from this example, and will seek to crush such opportunism if it rears its head again. But above all, it is a loss for Bengal: for its rural landless poor, who need the opportunities that industrial expansion will provide; for its small farmers, who needed to see land markets revived and the possibility of getting a good price for their land as well as a future for those children who did not want to enter a moribund profession; for its industrial workers, who would have hoped that a flagship project for the state would revive its long-dead reputation as an investment destination.

... contd.