For more than three years, peasants at Singur near Kolkata have been protesting against the forcible takeover of their land by the West Bengal government for the establishment of the Nano car factory by the Tatas.  Despite all the pressure on them, and despite the fact that the Tatas went ahead and built the factory and started operations, they have not given up the struggle.  Since August, after their protests have gone unheeded for so long, the agitating villagers have organised a gherao of the factory, blockading the roads to the plant and not permitting supplies to reach it. The Durgapur Kolkata Expressway was blocked for a number of days, bringing home to the whole of West Bengal and India, the determined resistance of the peasants. 

The Tatas, who had earlier thought that they could just carry on with ‘business as usual’ ignoring the objections to their takeover of the land, have started to bare their fangs.  Just as they had done more than three years earlier, when they had threatened to take their capital elsewhere if their conditions were not met, they reacted this time by threatening to close down the factory entirely and move it out of the state.  Ratan Tata arrogantly declared that this would be bad for West Bengal and bad for the country.  One after the other, all the chieftains of the Indian big bourgeoisie, starting with the Reliance chief Mukesh Ambani, came out in support of the Tatas and denounced the protests.  The chorus of condemnation has been picked up and amplified by the news media as well.

The fighting peasants of Singur refused to be intimidated by Tata’s threats. In these conditions, the West Bengal government began negotiations with Mamta Banerjee of the Trinamul Congress, to “save the Tata Nano project”. According to news reports, the West Bengal Government has agreed to a “land for land” deal. Under the broad terms of the agreement, some land from the Tata project area as well as more land from other areas will be given to all those peasants whose land was forcibly taken over and who had refused to take compensation. While the details of the agreement are yet to be revealed, it is clear that the fighting peasants of Singur have made a definite advance in their just struggle.

Interests of capitalists presented as ‘greater common good’

When the West Bengal government acquired 1000 acres of land from the peasants of Singur and handed this over to the Tatas, the livelihood of tens of thousands of people, including agricultural labourers was destroyed. This land acquisition was carried out using the force of the state machinery, and legalised by the antiquated colonial land acquisition act. Thousands of peasants however resisted this from the beginning and refused to take any compensation. They demanded back their land, their source of livelihood.

According to the Tatas and other big capitalists and the West Bengal government, the demand of the agitating peasants is against the interests of the industrialisation of West Bengal.  They are covering up two major issues which reveal their own ugly face. One, that violence was used to take over the land of peasantry, in the interests of the Tatas. And two, that the state government and the Tatas have brutally deprived tens of thousands of peasants and agricultural workers of their only source of livelihood, with no alternative in sight.

The big bourgeoisie, through its control over the media and the political system, is adept at making out that its own interests – the making of maximum profit for itself – are the interests of the country and the people as a whole.  The whole process of liberalisation and privatisation of the economy, which has seen the profits of the biggest capitalist concerns in India soar, has been presented as the greatest thing that ever happened to this country, even though the facts show that the poor have only grown poorer, and that wholesale loot and plunder of the land and other assets belonging to the people is taking place. 

In the past few years, the biggest capitalist companies from all over India and abroad have been flocking to West Bengal to invest their capital in all kinds of industries.  “Industry friendly policies” and “easy procurement of land” are the reasons constantly cited by investment analysts and others to explain the current attraction of West Bengal for big capital, both Indian and foreign.  The West Bengal government has already acquired 40,000 acres of prime agricultural land and tens of thousands of acres of other land for this purpose. 

Before the Tatas decided on Singur, they were shown five different sites in West Bengal where they could locate their plant, including those which were primarily wasteland.  They insisted on Singur, which consists of prime agricultural land, because of its proximity to Kolkata and because, since the infrastructure in this area was relatively well developed, they would not have to expend their own capital on this.  The fact that a large number of villagers did not want to give up their land counted for nothing with either the Tatas or the administration. 

In their defence of the Tatas, several of the other big capitalists have referred to the Tatas as a “model” business group with a great sense of “social responsibility”.  In fact, the Tatas have used their connections with every single government, from the British colonial government in earlier times, to the Congress and non-Congress governments after 1947, including the Left Front government, to acquire tremendous assets, including forests, mineral and iron ore deposits.  Where was their sense of social responsibility when dozens of people in Kalinganagar, Orissa, were mowed down in cold blood when they protested against the acquisition of land for the Tatas in January 2006?  The Tatas and other monopoly capitalists like them are the maharajas of the modern day who are used to having their own way and know how to use the state machinery to get what they want, in however “polished” a manner they go about it.  Although they knew about the opposition of farmers in Singur to their takeover of the land, they were confident that they could bypass it with the help of the state government and force the villagers to accept their presence as a fait accompli.

Singur is an example of the fight that is being waged from one corner of the country to the other – between the monopoly capitalists on the one hand who are seeking to maximise their profits by ruthlessly taking over land, forests and other assets belonging to the people, and people who are resisting this and demanding that their claims be heard and respected.  The full might of the state machinery is being used to effect this wholesale transfer of resources and assets to the big capitalists, employing the whole arsenal of colonial land laws, police and paramilitary forces, goon squads and high-pitched propaganda against the fighting people. 

CPI(M)’s stand is inexcusable

The Left Front government is West Bengal, headed by the CPI(M), has been in the front rank in defence of the Tata Singur Project, and in defaming the fighting peasants of the area. This is completely inexcusable, and does not behove of communists. They used the full force of the state machinery to try to crush the Singur peasants’ struggle in an earlier period. They slandered all opposition to the land acquisition as the work of maoists, terrorists, and those opposed to ‘development’. Even now, when they finally came to the negotiating table, it was done to shamelessly defend the Tata Singur project, not the peasants whose land had been forcibly seized.

Communists do not talk about industrialisation and development in the same language as the capitalists. Capitalists are only concerned about maximum private profits, and do not carry out any development or industrialisation if this is not ensured. Communists care about the wellbeing of workers, peasants and all working people. They stand for that kind of development and industrialisation which benefits the masses of people. They cannot and must not give top priority to the demands of the capitalists and then use force to impose it on an unwilling people. On the contrary, they must involve the working masses in taking decisions which affect their lives.

The people whose land has been taken from them refuse to be convinced by the arguments of the political leadership in Kolkata, that the Tata project will benefit them.  They are aware of the miserable conditions of the crores of people all across India, who have been displaced and divested of their livelihood by various “development” projects since 1947.  The majority of those directly affected have been left to fend for themselves. 

The struggle of the people in Singur is just and should be supported.  It is a source of inspiration for all others who are waging similar struggles against the corporate land grab that is going on in the name of industrialisation and development.