The principal characters:

•Paschim Banga Khet Majur Samity: This NGO held up bus loads of engineers and staff working at the Nano site on August 28 and it was after their threats of intimidation that Tatas decided to stop sending staff to the plant. It’s headed by Anuradha Talwar, 49, a graduate of Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Her husband Swapan Ganguly is secretary of the organisation.

Talwar and Ganguly established an NGO Gana Samhati Kendra in 1984 in Badu, North 24 Parganas. Talwar says that with funding from the Ford Foundation, they ran a project on healthcare and sanitation in villages. In 1987, they established the Khet Majur Samity, a trade union body, which they claim has no political affiliation.

The Samity monitored NREG progress in the state and exposed failures in its implementation. Today, the NGO runs an 11-acre “collective farm” and claims it is funded by collections from locals and donations. Eight acres are used for farming — which Talwar says sustains the residents — and three acres is for homestead. An estimated 115 locals live here, eating out of a mass kitchen that runs throughout the year.

“Industry is more powerful than agriculture,” says Talwar. “So agriculture and industry cannot sustain simultaneously. Industry always destroys agriculture. Industrial pollution will engulf agricultural land. So we are fighting to save agriculture from the Tata Motors plant in Singur.”

Clearly, Mamata has raised no such objections but Talwar is beside her at every public function and openly claims that Mamata asks her for advice on all matters involving the Tata project.

... contd.