The Tata Nano plant at Sanand. Picture by Basant Rawat

Sanand, June 1: Price of car, Rs 1 lakh; return, “crorepatis”.

What Singur missed, villagers of Sanand are lapping up.

The Tata Motors’ Nano plant at Sanand, ready for commercial production, has changed everything around Chharodi — from its landscape to the aspirations of the local people.

Tomorrow, their hopes will take formal shape when Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi opens the plant in the presence of Tata group chairman Ratan Tata.

“Notionally, today everybody in the surrounding villages is a crorepati,” says Ravubha Vaghela, a farmer-turned-industrialist who played a key role in relocating the plant to Chharodi after land protests drove the world’s cheapest car out of the Bengal village.

The abandoned Tata Nano plant at Singur

Although the plant has not created much job opportunities for local people, land prices in surrounding villages have zoomed.

Vaghela cited the example of the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation’s move to give notices to five surrounding villages, offering them Rs 900 per square metre, which comes to around Rs 36 lakh an acre. It is at least 10 times higher than the price of land in the pre-Nano days, and also more than the market rate of around Rs 24 lakh an acre.

Vaghela and Chharodi village sarpanch Nazir Pathan are the only local representatives who have been invited to the inauguration, where the entire Modi cabinet as well as top bureaucrats are expected to be present.

(From top) Ratan Tata, Narendra Modi, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Mamata Banerjee

Sources said Tata’s decision to relocate the plant to Sanand was a result of the Modi regime’s “pro-industry and investment-friendly policy”. The plant had trial runs in December last year and was to have been inaugurated on May 1 but the launch was later rescheduled.

The company has invested around Rs 2,000 crore for the plant, spread over 1,100 acres of land that used to be a paddy field owned by the Anand Agriculture University.

So far, Tata Motors has been supplying the small car to the first 100,000 buyers from its Pune and Pantnagar plants.

For Tata, it would be the first time he would be visiting Sanand since he decided to pull out of Singur and relocate the Nano plant.

As of today, some 600 local people work at the plant as causal or contract workers, earning Rs 4,500 a month. Vaghela intends to urge Tata to hire more. “We have two Industrial Training Institutes here and there are many educated unemployed youths in Sanand who should be given preference,” he said.

It’s not that everything has been smooth. The Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) intends to acquire 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) near the plant to set up an industrial park. Villagers are opposing the move and, like their Singur counterparts had done, refusing to part with their land.

Principal industry secretary M. Sahoo admitted that there was resistance to the corporation’s plans but sounded hopeful. “The GIDC is trying to develop consensus and willing to re-negotiate the land price.”

Sources said the agitating farmers are willing to sell their land to the GIDC, provided they are paid more. According to officials, the state government is “considering the suggestion”.

One reason the state government is likely to be more flexible is that it is thinking of developing Sanand as a “special investment region”.

The industry secretary confirmed that the state government was planning such a move but refused to disclose details. “At the moment, it is just at the conceptual stage and we are fine-tuning it,” he said. But, he added, “a lot of companies have shown interest in investing around the Nano plant”.

Among the companies that have already decided to set up units in Sanand are Hero Honda, MRF and the Bosch Group.

If everything goes according to plan, Sanand will be Gujarat’s second special investment region after the upcoming Dholera port in Ahmedabad district.

Jagdish Shah, a senior government official, said the special investment region would be an integrated mix of residential colonies, industry and a knowledge city. “It is a new concept that has been evolved,” Shah added.