Content uploaded by Prasun Sadhukhan
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Prasun Sadhukhan on Nov 22, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
The Singur Nano Movement
Presented by: Prasun Sadhukhan, Roll. -
34
Introduction
•Tata Nano Singur Movement refers to the controversy
generated by the Rs. 1 lakh Nano plant at Singur in Hooghly
district of West Bengal.
•Singur gained international media attention since Tata Motors
started constructing a factory to manufacture their 2500 car.
•The then state govt. facilitated the controversy by using an old
rule to conduct an eminent domain takeover of 997.11 acres
(4.02 sq. km.) of farmland to have Tata build its factory.
•The rule is meant for public improvement projects and the WB
govt. wanted Tata to build in its state. Displaced farmers and
land-rights people became opponents.
Context
•Singur is a town in Hooghly District, West Bengal, India.
•This place gained international attention after Tata Motors
proposed the idea of setting a factory to manufacture the
world’s cheapest car- The Tata Nano.
•The land taken up was a fertile alluvial one. 83% of the land
was irrigated and the crop density was 220%.
•The six mouzas whose land fell under the Tata project site
are Gopalnagar, Beraberi, Bajemelia, Khaserbheri,
Singherberi and Joymollarberi.
•In the face of continued opposition, the Tata shifted the
project from Singur to Gujarat in October 2008.
Background of Struggle
•The government expropriated land
for the factory using the 1894 Land
Acquisition Act.
•Of over 13,000 people held claims
on the land acquired for the Nano,
about 2,250 refused to accept the
government's compensation.
•The lost acres proved equally fertile
grounds for a political :ght.
•The cause was quickly seized by the
main opposition in West Bengal, led
by Mamata Banerjee.
•Miss Banerjee wanted the
government to return 400 acres
to those who refused
compensation.
•Her demand could not be met without
losing the project.
•That would have added to the cost of
production, jeopardizing the “one-lakh”
price tag, that had made the Nano.
•The disputed holdings were scattered
throughout the site; thus, the govt.
cannot give the aggrieved farmers land
that was expropriated from someone
else.
Leadership Aspects
•Major political support by Mamata
Banerjee and Socialist Unity Centre of
India.
•Her “Save Farmland” (Jomi Banchao)
movement had received widespread
support from civil rights and human
rights groups, legal bodies, social activists
like Medha Patkar and Anuradha Talwar,
Booker prize-winning author Arundhati
Roy and Magsaysay and Jnanpith award-
winning author Mahasweta Devi.
•Several Kolkata based intellectuals and artists like Aparna Sen, Kaushik
Sen, Shaonli Mitra, Subhaprasanna, Ruchit Shah.
•The Nobel laureate Amartya Sen supported the idea of factory but he
however opposed forcible acquisition of land.
Ideology
•Many of the landed gentry, some of them absentee, who own bigger portions of land,
depend on ‘kishans’ (i.e, hired labors, bargadars etc.) for cultivation of their lands.
•The Left Front (LF) government is banking on these people in the process of land
acquisition, persons who are known to be traditional supporters of the anti-LF
parties.
•On the other hand, the poorer sections of the peasantry, who constitute the main
support base for the LF in the state, are in the forefront of the movement.
•The polysemic nature of social movements needs to be explored more thoroughly
with reference to the plurality of experiences, ideologies and interests they contain
and articulate.
Chronology of events - 1
May 18, 2006
Tata Motors
announces Nano
plant in West
Bengal
Jan 2007
Tata start
construction of
plant
Oct 2008
Ratan Tata
announces
pullout citing
prolonged
agitation
May 25, 2006
Singur farmers
start agitation
Dec 4, 2006
Mamata starts
hunger strike
that goes on
for 26 days
Chronology of events - 2
May 2011
Mamata
becomes CM,
decides to take
back land
June 2012
HC holds Singur
Act
‘Unconstitutional;
State moves SC
Aug 31, 2016
SC sets aside
land
acquisition,
directs land be
given back to
farmers
June 2011
Singur Land
Act passed;
govt. starts
returning land
to the farmers
June 2011
Tatas move
Calcutta HC;
SC restrains
state from
disturbing land
•The TMC
Narrativ
e
•The Leftist
Narrative
•The
Activist’s
perspecti
ve
•The Peasant’s
Narrative
1. The
Ultimate
Su8erers
1. The
Ultimate
Su8erers
2. The
Advocacy
group
2. The
Advocacy
group
4. The
movemen
t led by
whom
4. The
movemen
t led by
whom
3. The
movemen
t against
whom
3. The
movemen
t against
whom
Impacts of the
Movement
On October 3
rd
, 2008, Tata Motors pulled
the plug on manufacturing the Nano out
of Bengal, leaving behind rubble of
dashed hopes.
267 stories of broken dream are there,
who were selected by Tata Motors for
training and permanent jobs.
It resulted in displacement of mass
peasantry to the cities to search for
earning their breads and they marked as
urban beggars, unskilled laborers and odd
city workers.
The huge lands remain unproductive
and fallow till now.
Food security has become another
area of concern.
A greater acquisition of agricultural
land had a negative impact on food
production and created a greater
imbalance in the food security
situation of the state.
Success or failure – the ground
reality
WB govt. is yet to develop any comprehensive
resettlement and rehabilitation policy for the
thousands of displaced farming families.
The Trinamool government has already returned
400 acres of farmland to the “unwilling” farmers
around whom the agitation against the LF
government was organized by their party.
Critical questions (Way forward)..
A lot of questions should be considered 10 years after the
Singur Tata Nano Controversy:
1. Are the farmers really cultivating the land which was
virtually transformed into non- agricultural wasteland
after the takeover?
2. What happened to those farmers who were subsisting on
the absentee landowners’ land within the 400 acres?
3. What about the recorded and unrecorded sharecroppers
who were cultivating 2-3 crops in a season in the area
that was supposed to be returned by the order of the
apex court?
4. Are the farmers cultivating the land now ?
5. What has been the impact of the Singur Project o the
livelihood of the villagers/farmers?
6. How has the whole Singur episode changed the political
thinking of the villagers over the years?
Title Objectives Comment/s
1. Have we
learnt from
Singur? A
Retrospect -
Abhijit Guha
(2017)
To understand:
•The ground realities of
industrialization in a state
that was not only
predominated
by landless agricultural
workers, small
landowning peasants and
sharecroppers,
but was committed to land
reforms and the panchayati
raj system too.
•The main reason of
attention.
The TMC government’s
enthusiasm to generate
capital and employment,
either through legal means
or by the play of market
forces, seemed to be mere
populist political rhetoric for
contesting election battles in
West Bengal.
2. What made
the “Unwilling”
farmers
unwilling?
Buddhadeb
Ghosh 2012
To examine:
•The real reason for the
protests in Singur led by
many “unwilling farmers”
•The real impact on the
livelihood of the people
•Reasons for not agreeing
to part with their land.
•Acquisition of agricultural
lands in Singur destroyed
the livelihood of rural
people.
•Most of the unwilling
farmers had lost very
small quantity of land, due
to acquisition.
•The Tata exit was a great
setback for the Left Front
government, but it did not
necessarily mean victory
for the protest movement.
References
•Arnab, Ganguly and Uttam, Dutta. 2012. Art of Masking Singur Dissent: Disgruntled
Farmers asked to keep off, ,TheTelegraph, ,Calcutta, p.7,Dec 1.
•Banerjee, P. (2006). Land Acquisition and Peasant Resistance at Singur. Economic
and Political Weekly. pp. 4718-4720.
•Guha, A. (2017), Have We Learnt from Singur? A Retrospect. Economic and Political
Weekly. pp. 18-22.
•Mohanty, M. (2007). Singur and the Political Economy of Structural Change.
Working Paper Series, IIM Calcutta.
•Nielsen, K. B. (2009). Four Narratives of a Social Movement in West Bengal. South
Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Routledge. pp. 448-468.
•Peasants, Land and Revolt in Sungur - The Scenario. Chapter 2. pp. 35-77.
•Pradeep, Chakraborty. 2012. Report on Singur Land Issues on Bengali News Paper
AaiSamoy, The Times of India Publishers,Kolkata, Dec p.7,Dec,17.
•Singur Movement: The full story - The struggle of Ma, Mati, Manush. (2013). Singur
Timeline compiled by Asis Kumar Das.
•Wahi, N., Bhatia, A., Gandhi, D., Jain, S., Shukla, P., and Chauhan, U. Land
Acquisition in India: A Review of Supreme Court Cases from 1950 to 2016, Centre
for Policy Research, New Delhi, 2017.
Thank you..
For your kind attention.