Should not have taken land for industry in Singur: Bardhan
By IANSMonday, July 12, 2010
KOLKATA - A prominent Communist leader Monday said West Bengal’s Left Front (LF) government should have refrained from taking land at Singur for Tata Motors’ now defunct Nano plant, as it only helped the anti-Left forces to come together.
“I think land should not have been taken for industry in Singur,” Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary A.B. Bardhan said at a media meet here.
The veteran CPI leader said the acquisition of land for the Tata Motors’ Nano plant in the Hooghly district belt led to a feeling that the LF, which had carried out land reforms in the past and conducted Operation Barga to distribute land among the landless, “was now taking it back”.
“Though in reality only a small portion of the land was taken back, the perception created was different. And the media also played a role in this. This helped in the anti-Left forces to come together and mount an offensive,” Bardhan said.
However, he disagreed that the LF government had been pursuing pro-imperialist policies.
“I have not read any such comparison anywhere. But what I can state is that one must learn lessons. The question is when industrialisation should become a priority.
“I will welcome agro-industries and labour-intensive units. If industries like jute, tea, small engineering, which are now in crisis, are revived in the state, I will welcome them.”
The state government’s acquisition of 997.11 acres of multi-crop land for the Nano project had led to a strong peasant movement led by the Trinamool Congress from mid-2006.
Various political and the civil society groups joined the agitation and ultimately the Tatas were forced to shift their factory from Singur to Sanand in Gujarat.
The new combination of forces against the Left Front government also resulted in the ruling combine suffering heavy losses in its so far-impregnable rural vote bank.
Since then, the LF seems to be on the decline in the state, having lost last year’s Lok Sabha polls, besides elections to civic bodies and by-elections to state assembly constituencies.
