Land acquisition clarity could be Singur’s legacy
Tata Motors to set up a factory, but a frenzied agitation against the project forced the company to relocate it to Gujarat in 2008 after it had invested a claimed ₹1,800 crore there and was on the verge of rolling out its Nano cars. In 2016, the Singur acquisition was quashed by India’s apex court, but, given the losses borne, news that Tata Motors has won an arbitral award of ₹766 crore (plus interest) as compensation should not surprise us. Nor should the fact that the state’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government may contest this order, given the key role this party played in the project’s ejection before it achieved power.
Still, it would be best for West Bengal to signal a truce by paying up. The Singur episode damaged West Bengal’s reputation as an investment destination and thwarted its effort to stage an industrial revival. The irony was that it was heavy-handed action elsewhere—in 2007, protestors lost their lives to gunfire in Nandigram as farmers were being evicted for a chemical hub—under the time’s communist party regime which had infuriated folks, giving the TMC a poll-winning agitational plank.
Today, the least that the 2011 victor can do to attract industry is signal a shift in stance by accepting the need to compensate Tata Motors for the collateral blow it took. Such a gesture may also cue other Indian political parties to shield industrial projects from populist politics. India needs to industrialize as an economic must, but sentiments over land deprivation are far too easily evoked, even when payouts are far more than a pittance.
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