Opposition’s conspiracy

The lead editorial by CPM Politburo member Sitaram Yechury in the latest issue of People’s Democracy suggests that those who are opposing the Tata small car project in Singur are enemies of West Bengal’s prosperity. He argues that those spearheading the agitation led by Trinamul Congress’s Mamata Banerjee had been spreading the “canard” for the last three decades that industrialisation in Bengal is impossible under the Left Front government.

“Now when concrete and significant industrialisation efforts are successfully advancing, these very forces seek to thwart them. The politics of this is not far to seek. If industrialisation advances in Bengal under the Left Front government, then the raison d’etre of the opposition’s political existence will simply cease,” he says. “Hence, for their political survival, they need to prevent industrialisation in Bengal and, therefore, to sabotage greater employment opportunities and better livelihood for the people. They, thus, emerge as the enemies of Bengal’s prosperity,” he notes. Yechury also adds that the same political forces had “violently opposed” land reforms brought about by the Left Front Government after it came to power in 1977 and had “openly sided with the landlords protecting their illegal possession of vast amounts of land above the legal ceiling”.

The compensation for land acquisition in Singur compared to elsewhere in the country is highly favourable. Not only were the peasants given three times the current market price, for the first time anywhere in the country those non-owners of land but dependent on the land for their livelihood, like tenant farmers, were also given compensation, he claims.

Singur vs. Gurgaon?

An article by West Bengal industries minister Nirupam Sen goes into the details of the Singur project. He says a total of 997.11 acres of land have been acquired and admits that quite a few landowners are yet to accept the compensation amount. “Eleven thousand owners of 690.79 acres of lands have accepted their payments. Owners of roughly 300 acres of lands are yet to accept the compensation. The number of these owners may be a little more than 1100,” he says.

He says that the lands of those ‘unwilling’ land owners are not contiguous plots and argues that “even a child will understand that releasing those plots will mean dumping the whole project”. Noting that there had been legal battles over such similar issues earlier, he says the Supreme Court had given a clear verdict in this regard that a piece of land cannot be returned to its previous owner once it has been acquired. Drawing a parallel with the Maruti factory and its ancillary units in Gurgaon which are spread over 1250 acres of land, Sen says the amount of land acquired in Singur is less than the actual requirement for producing 3.5 lakh cars per annum.

... contd.

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