Twenty years ago, Singur changed the course of Bengal’s politics. It handed the project to Tata Motors, which planned to build the Nano, the country’s most affordable car, at a plant there. The factory never rolled out a car.
After the 2006 Assembly elections, the Left Front government of then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee set out to bring industry to the Hooghly farmland. Instead, it set off a farmers’ agitation that helped Mamata Banerjee drive the last nail into the coffin of Left Front rule in 2011.
The Tata group moved the project to Gujarat then, where Narendra Modi, as the chief minister of a BJP government, cited it as proof of his pro-business policies, a big step in his rise to national prominence within half a decade after that.
It has also announced a separate package for large industries. Back in Bengal, on Thursday, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, who heads the state’s first BJP government, signalled that industry may finally return to Singur. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari and others at the policy launch in Kolkata. Photo: NDTV. Tata moved out within two years. Under the new policy, the state will offer special incentives for using eco-friendly energy. Units that employ women will get additional benefits, and the state will offer grants to build hostels for working women. Manufacturing units have been promised financial assistance linked to State Goods and Services Tax (SGST). “During the tenure of the previous government, the industrial belts of Chittaranjan and Haldia were completely devastated. Syndicates and extortion rackets will no longer be tolerated in Bengal.
Mamata Banerjee, then the Trinamool Congress chief, had alleged in 2006 that the acquired land was highly fertile, multi-crop farmland.
Adhikari said in New Town, after unveiling the state’s new industrial policy, that his government had held preliminary talks with heavy commercial vehicle maker Ashok Leyland about the land once given to Tata. Every promise made in our election manifesto will be fulfilled,” Adhikari said.
