It is Singur Utsav. In right earnest, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has started handing back papers for the plots acquired by the Tatas in Singur to their original owners - the farmers. Alongside, her government is looking for investment opportunities, also for the Tatas, elsewhere in the state. Standing a few metres from the abandoned land on Wednesday, the CM proclaimed: "I give you [Tatas] one month. Think a little. In a month's time, I will give you 1,000 acres of land. In Goaltore, we have such land in the land bank. Would you do it? It is our land, the government's, not snatched away forcibly from the people."
Every other publication in the country splashed photographs of the CM meeting, greeting and handing over land parchas to smiling people on Singur Divas.
But smiling pictures don't tell the whole story. And the truth is, the people of Singur, the farmers who gave up their land willingly and those who gave it up unwillingly, don't know what to make of this "windfall".
Singur, barely 45 kilometres from Calcutta once boasted 26,803 acres of cultivable land. On May 18, 2006, the very day CPI(M)'s pro-industry Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was sworn in as chief minister for a second term, Ratan Tata, then Tata group chairman, announced his decision to set up a car plant in Singur to produce the Rs 1 lakh car, Nano. Around 1,000 acres of Singur's arable land was earmarked for the Nano plant. More than 6,000 of nearly 9,000 identified farmers - from five mouzas or villages of Gopalnagar, Singherbheri, Beraberi, Khaserbheri and Bajemelia - signed up to sell their plots; the others resisted, but in vain.
The Singur farmer is not the archetypal kisan living in a mud hut, just about making ends meet. The place itself is semi-urban in character - it lies along a four-lane highway in Hooghly district, with a railway station, schools and a college; most people live in concrete houses, with electricity, have been to school and own some land.
Subodh Ghosh is among the 6,000 farmers of Singur who backed the project and gave up his land "willingly". Himadri Patra, one of the 2,250 farmers who opposed it, had no choice but to give up his plot. Ghosh took government compensation for his land. Patra refused.
One would have thought that the August 31 Supreme Court ruling invalidating the acquisition and directing the state government to return the land to both groups of farmers, while allowing them the benefits of compensation for their sufferings, would make for a happy ending. But, as it turns out, this has only reopened old wounds.
"What the willing farmers got in 2006 has doubled in banks in the last 10 years. Although we will get the compensation, we won't get any interest on the amounts due to us,'' says Patra, a resident of Bajemelia. He adds, "It's a shame that those who fought against the land acquisition will lose out in the end, while those in favour of it will have the best of both worlds.''
Ghosh of Gopalnagar does not agree. "We gave our land for the car plant so that our sons and grandsons could get a job or something in Singur in the future. But that did not happen," says the 83-year-old who received Rs 15 lakh compensation for his 1.5 acres in 2007. "And how we have suffered at the hands of those who accused us of selling out to the Tatas."
Manik Chandra Das of Beraberi lost 1.8 acres. "We grew rice, potatoes and jute on our land, but the CPI(M) snatched it away from us without paying proper compensation or offering jobs,'' says Das, who sided with Mamata Banerjee in the three-year-long protest and emerged as a Trinamul leader. The 57-year-old is a senior functionary in the Trinamul-controlled Hooghly zilla parishad.
Indeed, the anti-Tata agitation has transformed the political landscape of Singur. Once a Left bastion, Singur today is a staunch Trinamul pocket - of the 16 gram panchayats, Trinamul holds 15. The local MLA and MP (Singur comes under the Hooghly Lok Sabha constituency) are both from Trinamul. And all that's left of the Left: soured loyalties, festering anger and blame piled on blame.
Dudh Kumar Dhara, also from Beraberi, lost 1.3 acres to the project. "They [CPI(M)] did not even discuss the land acquisition with us. At one point, we were open to a compromise, provided they paid more for our land and left 300 of the 997 acres they acquired,'' he says. "But the CPI(M), which then had a brute majority in the state Assembly, would not hear of us, much less talk to us,'' adds Dhara, who currently teaches at a school and is a Trinamul panchayat upa-pradhan. He will now get Rs 12 lakh or more in compensation.
Even the willing farmers blame the Left for queering the pitch. "Had the CPI(M) leadership not been so arrogant and compromised with the unwilling farmers, the plant would have been functional today,'' says Joydeb Ghosh of Gopalnagar, who along with his brother Nirmal Ghosh, gave away 5.7 acres, taking home a compensation of Rs 35 lakh in 2006. "We were all for this plant,'' says Ghosh, who had even dreamt of a Nano dealership.
With the division bench of Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice Arun Mishra ordering the state government to return the acquired land to the farmers within 12 weeks and pay compensation to those who had refused, the state administration has gone into overdrive. As bulldozers flatten the project area, tear down walls and other structures put up for the ancillary units, district land officials pore over paperwork in three camp offices in Singur. "The identification and verification of plots and their owners, as well as the identification of the farmers who had refused compensation is going on in full swing, simultaneously," says Singur block development officer Suman Chakraborty.
Identifying the real plot owners is crucial to solving the Singur imbroglio. "Several of those who received compensation in 2006 and 2007 were not the actual owners. They had already sold their plots but the change had not been made in the government land records,'' says Das of the Hooghly zilla parishad.
There are other worries.
The Trinamul government, which came to power riding on the Singur farmers' movement, had been giving Rs 2,000 a month to each unwilling farmer along with 16 kilos of rice at Rs 2 a kilo. "More than 3,000 people including the farmers and bargadars (sharecroppers) who were dependent on the acquired land have received this for the last 52 months, thanks to our Didi," says Beraberi upa-pradhan, Dhara. This largesse, which has cost the state exchequer several crores in the last four-and-a-half years, may stop once the plots are returned and compensations paid.
"We will certainly try to farm the land once again when we get it back. But it is a matter of concern if the monthly stipend and the cheap rice stops immediately," says Patra of Bajemelia.
While the unwilling farmers cannot help but look back in anger, the willing farmers don't know what to look forward to. "It's all over now, with the Tatas gone from Singur. What are we going to do with our plots when we get them back?" asks Barun Chandra Barui of Beraberi, who then goes on to think aloud, "Maybe, we will sell them again.''
Not a bad idea, given that land prices here have spiralled. A plot of land that sold for Rs 50,000 a cottah (0.016 acre) in 2006 now costs Rs 3 lakh or more.
In fact, in today's Singur, few are interested in farming. "Only those who have no alternative take up farming. You earn very little after paying the labourers or share-croppers. None of my sons are interested," says Nimai Chandra Das of Beraberi who gave away 1.35 acres in 2006. With the Rs 13 lakh he got in compensation, he bought a plot in nearby Kamarkundu and built a house for his five sons.
Twenty-eight-year-old Uday Ghosh of Gopalnagar says he trained in Tata Motors' Jamshedpur and Pune plants as part of the company's efforts to hire skilled workers locally. "I had trained for 17 months in the company and received Rs 2,700 monthly stipend for six months,'' says the ITI-trained fitter. He was looking forward to a salary of Rs 25,000 a month when the Tatas left. "Now I work in a factory in Howrah, earning one third of that salary. I have just become a father. I don't know how I will run my family,'' he says.
The chief minister has promised to return the plots as they were taken, but this has not stopped farmers from fretting about the condition of the land. "We don't know if that [getting back the land in an undamaged condition] is possible, considering the way the fertile land was turned into concrete,'' says Chandanath Ghosh of Gopalnagar.
As things unravel in Singur, everyone waits with bated breath for the denouement. Chandanath's neighbour, Bhudeb Ghosh, owns a small store selling electric items and has no land to speak of. He says he was looking forward to an uptake in business 10 years ago. ''Nothing happened. We are in deep water financially today." Vegetable vendor Gopal Das says his sales had tripled when the plant construction was on. Niladri Ghosh, a businessman from Singur's Doluigachi, rented out his 3,000-square-foot house to the construction company that was building the Tata Motors' plant. "They all left in 2008. We still haven't found any tenants for the property we built keeping the project in mind."
"I have dreamt of this verdict for so long, for the people of Singur. Now, I can die in peace," said the chief minister.
Banerjee, it seems, has got what she wanted. The Tatas haven't yet taken her up on her new offer, but they are likely to be wary, given their Singur experience. And the people?
Says Ghosh from Doluigachi, voice choking with bitterness, "They all played politics with the project and we..."
The future's up in the air. It is hard to believe what Singur could have been and what it has become instead.
