Review Land Acquisition, Strive For Consensus
By RAVINDRA KUMAR
MR. Ratan Tata cannot be faulted for his decision to pull the Nano project out of Singur, and West Bengal. He must have got a measure of the intensity of local opposition, and of the state government's inability, or unwillingness, to deal with it. And Mr Tata came to the conclusion that the risks to his project, and his staff, were greater than the state’s ability to provide protection. After all, the Singur factory was constructed under police protection, and under the benevolent eye of the local unit of the ruling party. Mr Tata was entitled to conclude that this arrangement could not continue indefinitely, and certainly not once production commenced, for while one factory can conceivably be kept safe it is not possible to protect 100,000 or 250,000 cars when they roll out of the gate. Mr Tata would also have been aware that popular sentiment in the area was not with the project. Local body elections that saw the Trinamul Congress wrest power were a virtual referendum on the acquisition of land, and the verdict, while far from unanimous, was unambiguous. Mr Tata is also right in maintaining that Tata Motors’ agreement with the state government and indeed the acquisition of land were legal. Courts had said so, and Mr Tata only iterated this position. However, he may not have been entirely correct in stating that the transactions were transparent; had that been the case his company would not have been in court to oppose disclosure of the agreement under the Right to Information Act. Where Mr Tata, and indeed the government of Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, may have got things wrong was in assessing the scale of opposition to the project. Because, let’s face it, this was a David vs Goliath confrontation. Arraigned on the side of Mr Tata were the power and influence of the state, an omnipresent political party, influential chambers of commerce, many television channels and newspapers that took sides fairly early on, a strong lobby of industrialists and a significant and vocal section of the urban middle class. Certainly in terms of the public space they occupied, Mr Tata’s supporters were an overwhelming presence. Mr Tata lost the battle because arraigned against him were the people of Singur, not all of them and perhaps not even most of them, but in significant enough numbers to make up a potent opposition. Miss Mamata Banerjee and her party would have been ineffectual without this support from the local people, a fact Mr Tata must acknowledge at least to himself. If he does so, he will begin to understand why things went so horribly wrong for his project. And if he does so, he will perhaps begin to appreciate just how much of a disservice he has done to his friend, the Chief Minister, with his words of unstinting praise, and how much he helped the cause of his most strident opponent with his unbridled attack on her. When industry embraces a politician in India, it is often the kiss of death as Mr Chandrababu Naidu and Mr SM Krishna learnt some years ago. A manifestly trading/industrial community such as the Gujaratis may be an exception to this rule. But India’s socialistic ethos, the innate distrust of its rural populace for big business, and the state’s inability to ensure inclusive growth come in the way of a Chief Minister or a government being so investor-friendly as to ignore societal realities. Mr Bhattacharjee is guilty of having overlooked this essential truth. The government he heads and the party he belongs to are guilty of having made the dangerous assumption that a mandate to rule allows the acquisition of land from many people without their unequivocal consent and its allotment to a few. Mr Bhattacharjee in particular is guilty of having failed to understand the basics of Indian democracy, curious because his party came to power using essentially the same tactics his opponents have now employed. Was Mr Tata justified in making such a violent attack on the Opposition? Perhaps he was. After all, he had seen a dream turn into a nightmare, suffered a significant dent in his prestige as an entrepreneur and endured a substantial loss. Neither Miss Banerjee nor her lieutenants ever chose to raise the standard of debate, and the venom spouted from the Trinamul platform was bound to provoke a reaction. There can be no prizes for guessing who, between them, would find a comparison between Mr. Tata and Haldiram Bhujiawala odious, indeed libelous. But was Mr Tata right? The answer to that question calls for greater circumspection. Mr Tata is free to invest in Browns Lane or Bromwich; to that extent he is a citizen of the world. But he is first a citizen of India, and it is as much his responsibility as anyone else's to create the circumstances essential for investment to flourish, in West Bengal and elsewhere. Resistance to the Singur plant hinged on the question of land acquisition. Unlike the Confederation of Indian Industry which has, quite reasonably, called for a review and a consensus on the manner in which land is acquired, Mr Tata and his company have chosen to say not a word on this vexed issue. This is a national problem, and while Mr Tata might have a slew of invitations from other states, it would require a very brave ~ or very foolish ~ Chief Minister to invite the Nano to his state with an iron-clad guarantee that there would be no opposition. Singur is inextricably now a part of India’s development agenda. It is in Mr Tata’s power to steer the debate on land acquisition; it is also in his interest. He may say politics is not his business. But land acquisition is a problem that society must address, not just government or politicians. Corporate Social Responsibility is not about planting trees alone. If society has to change its mores, companies will have to play a role. Is this then the end of the road for Bengal? If someone chooses ~ deliberately or maliciously ~ to be myopic, there can be no cure. But experience tells us that where humans exist, so will endeavour. People will continue to need goods and services, homes and infrastructure; investment will continue to be driven by geographical factors, and life will go on. If Bengal could survive its Partition, the Great Famine, the radical Left and militant trade unionism, it will survive the exit of the Nano. But as Mr Bhattacharjee puffs ruminatively on his cigarette, within or outside his office, he will have occasion to reflect on the irony of a party with 235 seats out of 294 having failed to impose its will. And if by the time he stubs his frustration out he has learnt the lesson of Singur, West Bengal’s Chief Minister will emerge a better man and a more credible leader. That is our hope, and misunderstood as the phrase might be in the context, where there is life, there is hope.
The writer is Editor, The Statesman
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