It is ironic in more ways than one. The Left Front rule of 34 years in West Bengal came to an end following the Trinamool Congress’ powerful land right movements of Singur and Nandigram in 2007-2008.
The farmers’ land rights was given a stamp of approval by a Supreme Court judgment in 2016 that said that the land acquisition for the Tata plant was illegal.
However, though the 955 acre land was returned to the farmers by the government, every year the land under cultivation has been reducing. The facts were stated by the chief minister Mamata Banerjee in the state Assembly on Wednesday.
Answering a question, Banerjee said today that the land under cultivation in Singur was now 260 acre. This was earlier 640 acre. Approximately 955 acre had been returned to the farmers from the 997 acre acquired by the former Left Front government for handing it over to the Tatas for the Nano small car plant.
Banerjee said that the government could not force people to farm, and it was a matter of choice for them what they wanted to do with their land. She said that the price of land in the area was steadily increasing and so did the cost of cultivation. Under this backdrop, perhaps people thought they would gain more if they did not cultivate the land, she said.
She said the government had extended all kinds of support to the farmers in the area – paying Rs 10,000 each as an initial investment cost, plus seeds and manure.
The former Left Front government had gone on an industrialisation drive and land was acquired by the state for the Tata’s Nano car plant at Singur. However, there was opposition from farmers in Singur to “forceful” acquisition by the government. Farmers did not want to part with their fertile land in Hooghly’s Singur, the way it was in many other parts of Bengal.
And though the Nano plant could never be set up in Singur (and was shifted to Gujarat’s Sanand as per the decision of the owners), the powerful land movement in Bengal helped the Trinamool Congress win the Assembly elections in 2011 and form the government.
However, Trinamool Congress lost the Hooghly Lok Sabha seat this time (won by Bharatiya Janata Party’s Locket Chatterjee) under which Singur falls. After the loss, Banerjee in an internal party meeting recently, told her workers “it is our fault that we lost Singur”. She also said that the party workers had lost connect with the people.
Over the years, the shift from agriculture to industry has always been tough for governments to handle, and more so perhaps in West Bengal, where most land is fertile and fit for cultivation. But many political battles have been lost and won in the process, and therefore the purpose with which the Singur movement had begun may have been ultimately defeated — and that is what makes it so ironic.
