West Bengal: Look beyond Singur

West Bengal: Look beyond Singur

FPJ BureauUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 12:55 PM IST
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Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee talking to the media after a meeting with State Governor in Kolkata on Thursday. PTI Photo by Ashok Bhaumik (PTI5_26_2016_000196B) |

The Supreme Court order restoring the lands acquired from farmers in Singur, West Bengal, a decade ago reaffirms the need for equity and justice even if the objective is to advance the public welfare through industrialisation.

Without following due process, even an act taken in the larger public interest becomes untenable. This is what seems to have happened both in Singur and in Nandigram when the Marxist government acquired land for private industry in the teeth of stiff opposition from the then opposition Trinamool Congress.

Having neglected industry and commerce all along the Marxist regime sought to reverse course in later years, inviting well-known industrial houses to set up shop in the State. The Tatas were supposed to build the then iconic Nano car in Singur. But before they could lay a single brick, popular agitation paralysed the State.

An ascendant Mamata Banerjee seeing an opening spearheaded the protests. In Nandigram police firing on violent protests resulted in 14 deaths. Meanwhile, the Tatas developed cold feet and took the Nano project to Gujarat.

However, the WB government did not return the acquired land to its rightful owners. A good percentage of the owners in fact accepted the meager compensation while a few others held out. The challenge to the Singur acquisition finally ended in the apex court which earlier in the week pronounced it illegal.

The two-member bench differed on the question whether the acquisition for the Tatas constituted ‘public purpose’, with one saying it did while the other disagreed with him. Acquisition for industrialisation, which can create jobs and generally boost economic activity in the surrounding areas, ought to be a bona fide public purpose.

The objection by one of the judges would suggest that a vast swathe of industry throughout the country from the early years of the Republic was in violation of ‘public purpose.’ Such reading of public purpose seems to be erroneous. However, both judges agreed that the Singur acquisition was marred by other legal infirmities such as the failure to notify the acquisition before dispossessing farmers from their lands.

The court also ruled that the acquisition process was completed without granting the affected owners an opportunity to lodge objections. Though the Tatas had shown interest in retaining the acquired Singur land even after they had set up the Nano plant in Gujarat, the TMC Government was keen for the apex court to nix the acquisition for purely political purposes. It provided the feisty chief minister a triumphant moment, having exploited the Singur-Nandigram protests to dislodge the Marxists from power after more than three decades in power.

Yet, how she will push industrialisation in the State is a question that must concern her vitally. Without creating employment opportunities, without modernising the decrepit State economy, there is every chance that she too might go the Marxists’ way. From a low base, the State economy has picked up somewhat but there is no growth in terms of new opportunities for the people in the industrial and commercial sectors. If the service sector is beginning to do better it is only aping the overall national trend.

Quite aside from scoring brownie points against the Marxists, who are yet to recover from two successive electoral losses, the TMC government should reflect on the need to generate industrial jobs. Without land for industrial estates for small, medium and large enterprises there can be no industrial revival of West Bengal.

The CPI(M) in power initially believed it could kill industry  and yet provide for the welfare of the people. By the time it learnt the bitter truth that without large scale industrialisation there can be no employment opportunities for the ever growing army of jobless youths it was too late. It lunged headlong to acquire lands in Singur and Nandigram. The rough and ready tactics employed in those acquisitions became the cause of its rout.

Banerjee can gloat at the apex court verdict but the new acquisition law, the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation Act, 2013, has not made her task easy. Moving from protest to development mode ought to make her reflect better on the implications of the Singur order.

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