Image Credit: bbjee

About a couple of weeks back, we ran a story Mamata sings for Singur, Tata says Tata Tata, bye bye. When we ran this article we were pretty sure that Tata would eventually move out of Bengal. And they did, leaving a thousand farmers wondering about their future.

West Bengal is supposed to be the intellectual capital of India. With the likes of Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Netaji and thousands of learned men, this land of the learned has slowly and steadily become the land of agitators, unions, addas, lazy babus and most of all “pointless” fighters. Their greed and fight for unjust right has always landed them in trouble with Corporate India. Now, every corporate or multinational that plans for India will plan India sans Bengal.

I am happy for the farmers of Singur that they got back their land. But I am not happy with the fact that thousands of farmers who were in the brink of rejoicing a great future for their children, a secured job and an opportunity for growth will miss it indefinitely until a new Corporate messiah dawns the soil of West Bengal.

I will not be surprised, if a few of these farmers take some extreme steps. We have already seen this happening in other parts of the country where farmers took their lives after they landed themselves in financial crisis and Singur is no exception.

In a smart and quick move Tata Motors on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Gujarat government for relocating the Nano plant to Gujarat. The plant will be located in Sanand, near Ahmedabad and will have an initial capacity of 2.50 lakh units, which will be expanded up to 5 lakh units. The project, comprising the mother plant and the vendor park, will come up on an area of about 1,100 acres.. This project is expected to generate over 10,000 direct and indirect jobs.

It is learned that the launch of Nano, will be slightly delayed – apparently in the first quarter of 2009. Tatas had earlier said the rollout will be in the last quarter of this calendar year.

According to sources close to Tata Motors, the company would assemble the first few units from their Pune and Pantnagar plants. Tata Motors currently makes  the Ace Minitrucks from its Pantnagar facility.  It would be interesting to watch Tata sticking to its original promise.

Whatever said, Budha’s loss is Modi’s gain in the fight for Nanoland.

On a different note, immediately after Tata’s exit from Bengal Karan Thapar ran a “War of Words” show on CNN IBN featuring CPM politician Neelotpal Basu, Trinamool politician Trivedi, industrialist Sanjeev Goenka and industrialist Rahul Bajaj. Here is the link – Tata gone, West Bengal wonders whom to blame

Popularity: 16%