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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
© Copyright 2008 Malladi Rama Rao. All rights reserved.
By M RAMA RAO
New Delhi (Syndicate Features): Nano has said good bye to Singur and moved to Sanand in Modiland but has not given up its Mamata fixation. This is clear from Ratan Tata’s address to the youth of West Bengal. The tone and tenor of the letter is un-Tata like. And it means the last word on Tata-Singur-Mamata saga is yet to be heard.
By temperament, Ratan Tata is a low key industrialist. He is not at all byte-friendly.. Nor is he a proverbial media savvy tycoon. So, what prompted him to issue an ‘open letter’ as a paid advertisement in four Bengal dailies? Also what made him to hold aloft a certificate for Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the wronged comrade?
There are no ready answers. Tata camp claim’s that the advertisement was prompted by the taunts of Didi and the charges levelled against him and Tata Motors. But this contention doesn’t cut much ice. Because Ratan Tata took recourse to a language politicians are known to use; run of the mill industrialists, whether they are steeped in the Dirubhai traditions or not, generally try to keep politicians of all hues in good humour. For them, neither money nor politics has colour.
Ratan Tata, the architect turned business leader, was very direct in his letter. Absolutely no mincing of words. “The people of West Bengal, particularly the younger citizens, will need to express their views and aspirations as to what they would like to see West Bengal become in the years ahead”, he observed while briefly touching upon Nano’s Singur tryst that ended on Oct 3.
“Would they (people and youth of WB) like to support the present government of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to build a prosperous state with the rule of law, modern infrastructure and industrial growth, or would they like to see the state consumed by a destructive political environment of confrontation, agitation, violence and lawlessness’, he asked raising the hackles of Mamata Didi, and her new found ally, Amar Singh besides Sonia Congress and the Marxist baiters like Forward Bloc and RSP. Thundered Amar Singh: ‘people in Singur are more interested in ‘atta’ than Tata.”
Tata went on to charge Mamata: ‘Unfortunately, the confrontation by Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Bannerjee and supported by vested interests and certain political parties, opposing the acquisition of land by the state government, have caused serious disruptions to the progress of the Nano plant’. Explaining the reasons for the migration to ‘Vibrant Gujarat’, he said, he had made an appeal on August 22 to usher in a more congenial environment, but ‘unfortunately, the response to the appeal was escalation of the hostilities’.
Expectedly, the Mamata camp has ticked off Ratan Tata and asked whether he was going to be the Marxist trumpeter. They are planning a defamation suit. Whatever be the outcome of the Mamata-Ratan bout, one thing is clear. Tata’s letter reflects the growing sense of frustration amongst the entrepreneurs of the country at the tendency of those in opposition to make everything and anything a political football. Why did not other industrialists rally behind Tata Motors’ chief? Well, this is India that is Bharat, as late Babu Rao Patel used to say.
Nano may have moved out of Singur but Mamata Bannerjee is not resting, She is bracing for a fresh round of agitation this time for the return of land to farmers; she has the good company of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), which has already made the demand ignoring ‘coalition dharma’.
Like ‘Didi’, RSP (Forward Bloc also for that matter) is too looking for political leverage in rural West Bengal with an eye on the coming Lok Sabha elections and beyond. They will look for a Nano effect in Howrah municipality elections slated for end November, The civic body is presently under the Marxist control.
Buddhadeb’s loss was Narendra Modi’s gain. He pipped Rajasekara Reddy (AP), Yeddyurappa (Karnataka), Navin Patnaik (Orissa) and the flamboyant Vilas Rao Deshmukh (Maharashtra) and rolled out the Nano Map in Nanoseconds on October 7 to mark his seventh anniversary in office as chief minister. Ratan Tata was thrilled. “This is an extremely momentous day for us”, he declared as he inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at the Gandhinagar Sachivalaya, and said with a twinkle in his eye, “If possible, we would have shifted to our new home (Sanand, about 25 km from Ahmedabad) in a day”.
Tata Motors will take at least one year to construct the Rs. 2000 crore mother plant with a capacity of 5 lakh cars, up from 3 lakh cars planned initially. Much of the machinery is at present at Singur. It will take time to relocate them and the assets of Nano vendors, who too have suffered in the Mamatatrics. Loss to both Tata Motors and the vendors is put at a staggering Rs. 1000 crore.
Nano roll out plan is now slipped to middle of next year. Soft launch will, however, take place in November as planned using the company’s infrastructure at Pantnagar, Uttarakhand. Formal launch is set for Dec 23, as birth day gift to Ratan Tata, who says, ‘Aapne aanhiya na chhiye’ (we belong to Gujarat) – a reference to the fact that the Parsis had made Gujarat their home when they came to Indian long years ago.
Reports from Ground Zero, however, say Singur effect is haunting Modi-Tata combine. A newly formed local organisation, Rashtriya Kisan Dal is determined to spoil the party. Its President H K Thaker has filed a PIL in the Gujarat high court challenging Sanand land allocation to Tata Motors. His case is that 23 Rajput families had given this very land to the British government in 1902 on a 99-year lease. The Anand Agriculture University came up on the land nine years later in 1911.
The lease period ended in 2001 but the land was not returned. Instead it has been given away to the Tata Motors. ‘What about our compensation’, ask locals like Manuba Vaghela. ‘We will resort to satyagraha if Modi sarkar doesn’t relent’, he threatens.
Asks Thaker: ‘How could the government change the use of the land without compensating the original farmers’. He alleges that the Modi government had incurred a loss of Rs 1,796.95 crore in order to benefit the Tatas for its Rs 1,500 crore project.
The Gujarat Congress also has chipped in. It has invoked the Right to Information (RTI) Act to know the ‘details’ of the deal signed between the Gujarat government and the House of Tatas. ‘We have made an application under the RTI Act …. We have asked for details of the incentives being given to the company for setting up the Nano Car plant’, Congress spokesperson Arjun Modhvadia said. The Congress party has also come out in support of the farmers demand for compensation.
Why did the Congress adopt the Mamata route in Gujarat while swearing by economic reforms and liberalisation in Delhi?
Said Modhvadia: “As an opposition party, we should have got the details of agreement, but this government has not given us any information on the deal. So we had to resort to RTI. At least, we are assured to get some answer within 30 days”.
So, some ‘M’ is going to haunt Ratan Tata even as he made the transition from one bad M (Mamata) to one good M (Modi) with deal clinchers that were better than Bengal’s – land at Rs. 1100 per sq metres on staggered payment basis, deferred payment of VAT over 5-7 years and infrastructure worth Rs. 100 crore including roads, power, drainage, water an effluent treatment plant. And in the process pushed the price of land in Sanand belt. (Syndicate Features)
About the Author
Malladi Rama Rao is an analyst and writer on the Indian political scene and geo-political and security issues of South Asia. He directs a Weekly Feature Service in English, Syndicate Features, in colloboration with his wife Vaniram. He is also the India Editor of Asian Tribune.
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