India / Singur - a dismal lack of transparency in adiministrative procedures

Faculty members of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIM-C)- all leading economists - are studying the case of Singur.

They think Singur is a classic example where a rural economy is made to transform into an industrial one.

These academicians feel that industrialisation is essential for progress but have raised ethical questions.

The State could have looked at Bankura or Purulia for this, but might be under pressure from Tata, who want to stay close to the Capital city of West Bengal.

Industry may generate higher income than agriculture, but it is also important that each member of the displaced community be ensured of proper rehabilitation. It is not enough to just compensate the landowner, but also the landless, the tillers who depend on the earth to survive.

The government needs to evaluate if the compensations have to be made at today's market rate or at the higher rate the land will command once the factory caomes up.

It is also necessary to make sure that there are enough non-farming jobs so the labour force can be moved off the land.

There is also toal lack of transparency regarding the nature and number of jobs that will be created to cater the displaced tillers and farmers.

The transparency equally lacks in the entire process of land acquisition and conditions of handing it over to a private business group. Given that we live in a democratic polity, the rationale for important strategy decisions - atleast their broad contours - need to be discussed publicly.

Is this all to hoodwink poors?

The persuasion campaigne took off on 4 May. The CP(I)M leaders had frequent meetings with the owners of the land to persuade them to hand over their land at a price 30% higher than the current market rate. The town-wardly mobile middle farmers, those who hold several bighas of land were naturally willing to respond positively to this bargain.

However, no such meeting was held with the agricultural labours, the tillers, directly addressing their worries about the matter. At a street-corner meeting at Singur Bazar, about 45 km from Calcutta, a CPM leader maliciously promised jobs in the new factory for local people, though industries minister Nirupam Sen said in Calcutta no such guarantee can be given.

On Sunday, 3 December, WB Chief Minister said "After all, we are a pro-poor government. But that can’t stop development, urbanisation and industrialisation.We need industry because it will create more opportunities.We can’t just take the investors to the fallow land of Bankura and Purulia. We tried it, but infrastructure and availability of power have to go a long way before that happens. Till then, we can’t just remain content with our achievements in agriculture.”

"Ratan Tata [chairman of Tata Motors] has promised the small car would be available in mid-2008, and if the land is not handed over to us by December, we might be constrained to move the project out of West Bengal," says Ravi Kant, managing director of Tata Motors, which is promising to create 2,500 direct and 7,500 indirect jobs in Singur.

"We are already running very late and there is now no time left. This project is going to put the state on the world automotive map, it's caught everyone's imagination, and India should be proud of it."

For landless farm workers, however, there is nothing but incomprehension. Tata Motors has promised to provide them with training in carpentry, plumbing and other construction-related skills, but there are no guarantees of secure paid employment.

"If you are a non-landed agricultural labourer, you'll get neither a cheque nor a job," says Basanti Ray, 45, from the nearby village of Ghagata. "We are not against industry, but just not on this fertile land. If you set up industry here, one person from a family may get a job, but that's not sufficient."

The stakes are high for Mr Bhattacharjee, an admirer of China's economic development who has tirelessly solicited investment in an attempt to revitalise a state that was a byword for industrial militancy and decline.

In expending political capital on securing land for the Tatas on a prime site of their choice near a highway, he is gambling on substantial spill-over effects. Calcutta hopes the small car will become a magnet for automotive suppliers, traditionally based far away in Pune and Chennai, and that the lustre of the Tata name will entice other investors.

"It is a very important project for our state," Mr Bhattacharjee says in an interview. "I have to provide jobs and it is difficult to employ more people in agriculture. We must take over some farmland for industry as there is little wasteland here. Of course as this is the most densely populated state in India, where farming accounts for 26 per cent of GDP and supports 65 per cent of an 80m population, it must be done cautiously and in a balanced way."


DEVELOPMENT VERSUS DISPLACEMENT

Abhirup Sarkar
The Telegraph, 7 December

The unprecedented vandalism by the Trinamool Congress in the assembly, atrocities by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s police in Singur and the consequent agitation are gradually making investment in the proposed automobile factory by the Tatas a convoluted and ruffled affair. The Trinamool chief had never had a reputation for being levelheaded. But the Communist Party of India (Marxist), always known for its ruthlessly calculating moves, is posing the obvious puzzle: why is the party and its government dealing with the land acquisition question so high-handedly?

The administration is claiming that the large concourse in Singur, to protest and prevent the fencing of the agricultural land earmarked for the small car factory, comprised mainly of outsiders. The protesters, the claim goes, were an assorted lot, consisting of activists of the Socialist Unity Centre of India, Naxalites and others, who had assembled in Singur to enhance their own political visibility. Very few actual farmers were present among the demonstrators for the simple reason that most farmers had voluntarily sold off their land to the government for an adequate compensation. The opposite claim, of course, is that the congregation consisted mostly of actual tillers of the soil who were desperately trying to prevent the loss of their livelihood, the forceful appropriation of their only means of survival.

We are confused. We, the citizens of the country and residents of the state, have a right to know what is actually going on, especially because the land transactions in question are not private business dealings. Here, land is being taken away from the farmers by the state in public interest. So the public is perfectly entitled to have full information of the happenings. But even if the government had the good intention of providing information, it is not easy to do so. Among counter-claims by the opposition, how do we know if the government is telling the truth? How do we know if the demonstrators in Singur are mostly sons of the soil or politically ambitious outsiders? There are, indeed, ways of knowing. If direct methods fail, there are certain indirect methods of ascertaining whether the government is fooling the people. But before we go into them, we have to identify the issues, separate out facts from emotions, and isolate long-term economic questions from short-term political interests.

The basic issue is one of development leading to displacement. No sensible person will deny that agriculture in West Bengal has reached its frontier and to provide a decent livelihood to the wretched lot, who are still dependent on an overcrowded agriculture, it is now imperative to develop the long- neglected industrial sector. But industries cannot be built in thin air. Among other things, one needs land to build factories, roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructural necessities that are essential to put together an industrial network in the state. Where will the land come from?

In a state like West Bengal, where the man-land ratio is three times as high as that in the rest of the country, almost every bit of land is already in use in some form or the other. Out of this, a large chunk — 63 per cent of the total available land to be exact — is put under cultivation. So, if an investor comes to the state and picks up a piece of land at random for his factory, the probability that the chosen piece is agricultural, is indeed quite high.

Investors are unlikely to choose sites at random though. They usually have good reasons to supplement their choice. The Tatas, for example, have chosen Singur because of its proximity to Calcutta and its nearness to the Durgapur Expressway, the only modern highway in the state, and because plenty of water is available in the neighbourhood. And it happens that the land they have chosen is fertile agricultural land. If they are denied this land and asked to build their factory in some other place which lacks the essential facilities, they will probably pack up and invest elsewhere in the country.

Indeed, quite a few competing states would be much too eager to have their investment. Industrialization, it seems, is a competitive business. So it would be a disaster to deny the Tatas their chosen land. The fact that the land is fertile or that it produces two or three crops a year is of little macroeconomic consequence because the land in question is minuscule compared to the total cultivated land in the state. Its appropriation by the Tatas cannot possibly affect aggregate food production in West Bengal in any conceivable way.

The real problem is microeconomic; it pertains to those who are losing their land and their livelihood. It pertains to the tillers of the soil and to others who depend on the appropriated land for their daily bread, to owner-cultivators, sharecroppers, landless agricultural labourers and even small local traders, whose economic existence had so far been rooted in those tiny plots of land in Singur that are proposed to be handed over to the Tatas. How are these displaced people compensated?

Indeed, the question of compensation is of paramount importance. It is important not only because the government, which is grabbing land in the name of public interest, has a moral responsibility to compensate the loser, but also because the loser is the least likely candidate to get any employment in the factory to be set up by the Tatas. Most important, the entire compensation package has to be made public.

We have a right to know how land is being evaluated, on what basis compensations are arrived at and how they are distributed between owners and sharecroppers. We have a right to know whether landless labourers and others, whose livelihood depended on the soil but who did not have any legal right over land, are being compensated at all. If the whole package is made public and if by looking at it we can convince ourselves that compensations are fair, we can accept the government’s claim that most people have voluntarily handed over their plots of land to the authorities and we can believe the official story that most agitators in Singur are outsiders with political ambitions and axes of their own to grind. We know how much income a plot of land might fetch in Singur, we know the rates of interest and can predict the rate of inflation. So, we can roughly tell, if given full information about the compensation package, whether the offered settlement money is enough to maintain the living standard of the loser for a reasonable number of years.

The trouble is that the government has been frightfully non-transparent as far as the compensation package and other financial matters are concerned. What we need instead is a white paper from the government documenting the detailed calculations of the compensations. We also need to know how much money is expected to come from the Tatas as the price of the acquired land and how is the difference, if any, between the payment made by the Tatas and the money given out as compensation, proposed to be financed. We come across all sorts of unofficial figures in the media, which are often contradictory. We need to know the truth. Indeed, the whole affair cannot be a trade secret of the government. We believe that if the government were able to come up with a healthy dose of transparency, most of its critiques would be silenced. If, on the other hand, it continues to maintain its current stance of furtiveness, there would be good reasons to believe that it has indeed something vital to hide. The leftists of West Bengal must realize that the authoritarian Chinese model of development cannot be applied here. They should understand that a minimum consensus among the citizens is needed before any particular path of industrialization can be embarked upon, because, however faulty, we do have a democracy in our country which we all cherish.


Singur on lease & discount We have a package deal: CM

The Telegraph-Calcutta

Calcutta, Oct. 10: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s government made it clear today that it was giving the Singur plot to Tata Motors at a concessional rate and that the company was not expected to cough up the Rs 140 crore compensation the government was paying to displaced farmers.

Commerce and industries minister Nirupam Sen said the Tatas were being given a concessional lease as the government is under pressure to ensure that they invest here.

“We were competing with states like Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh, which were offering exemptions in excise duty and income-tax. We had to make them a concessional offer,” Sen said.

The minister, however, refused to divulge how much concession the government was allowing Tata Motors, saying that negotiations were still on. He also did not specify what the lease tenure would be.

The company will not have to bear the burden of the landlosers’ compensation because the plot is being given on lease.

The government had earlier claimed that Tata Motors would reimburse the government for the money spent on land acquisition.

Commerce and industries secretary Sabyasachi Sen had said that the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC), which acquired the land, would pass it on to Tata Motors at the same rate. “We’re not going to keep any margins over and above the cost of acquisition. We’ll pass on the land to the Tatas for the same price.”

Tata Motors officials declined comment today. “The Bengal government is in the best position to respond,” said a spokesperson.

However, Tata Group sources said a “controversy” at this stage was unwarranted as it would send wrong signals to other investors. “Tata Group is not a fly-by-night operator. It has a history of 100 years.”

The official added that the small-car unit in Singur, about 40 km from Calcutta, would have a multiplier effect on the Bengal economy.

“We’re not buying the land, only leasing it. The land will officially still belong to the government,” the Tata official said, indicating that the car manufacturer could not be expected to pay the Rs 140 crore that the government is spending on its acquisition.

Land and land reforms minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah said that according to norms, taking a land on lease should cost almost the same as buying it. “According to lease norms, we charge 95 per cent of the market value of land as upfront payment. This is in addition to khajna (land revenue),” he said.

Asked what the Tatas are paying for it, the minister said: “I don’t know. We haven’t conducted any transaction with them directly, but through the WBIDC.”

Mollah’s department has received a letter of credit from the WBIDC for the acquisition cost and has paid out more than half the land claimants.

Asked if his government was giving land virtually free of cost to the Tatas, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee flared up.

“Don’t ask me such questions,” he told reporters at Writers’ Buildings. Later in the day, he added: “The Tatas do not do business that way. We have got into a package deal with them.”


Tata Motors representative Ravi Kant's meet with the press on Singur

Express News Service
November 26


There is so much confidence in the market about the car that MNCs worldwide are keen to collaborate with the project – Ravi Kant

Kolkata, November 25: In his first ever interactive session with the media in Kolkata over the Tata Motors ‘One Lakh’ small car project, the company’s Managing Director, Ravi Kant said on Saturday that the project is a commitment to the state of West Bengal. “It’s going to be a jewel in the crown for Bengal — a project that will change the face of the region. It’s a dream car of international standard and it’s going to be a reality. Following are excerpts from the interview.

Did you have an interaction with the chief minister during your current visit?

Mr Kant: No, I did not meet him this time but we have been in constant touch with him.

Are you satisfied with the progress made so far? When do you expect to get the physical possession of the land for the plant?

Mr Kant: Yes, we are very happy with the progress made so far. We have been told that the consent letters for 927 acres of the land area have already been received.

Did any other state want the car plant?

Mr Kant: We had a number of proposals for the car project. But for us now it is a commitment to the state of West Bengal . We will like to have it here.We had many other options. In fact, we had already decided to set up this plant elsewhere. We changed this decision 11 months ago.

What were the reasons for changing your decision and where was the plant originally located?

Mr Kant: I can’t disclose the original location of the plant. But the reasons for changing the decision are many, the most important being the offer made by the West Bengal government to us. We had different perception about the state. When we talked directly with the state government we were amazed by the openness and sincerity of the discussion. It was totally different from the perception we had about the state.Besides, there was a “soft corner” for the Tata Group for the state, an emotional connect with the people of Bengal that might have influenced Mr Tata to take this decision. Of course, there were people who would say negative things about the state. At this stage we should not allow those things to be proved true so that those people can come and tell us “ I told you so.”

Any regrets now?

Mr Kant: No regrets at all. We are going to prove that this car project is a reality.

Why did you choose Singur for the project? What are the factors behind selecting this site?

Mr Kant: This car project is not an ordinary one in many ways. Its a dream car project that’s going to catch world attention.

Why should it be located in the back and beyond of everything ?

It’s going to be the jewel in the crown and one would be proud to take people and show it to them.

Why should it be located in some distant area ?

We have high regards for the people of the state and we are sure they would feel proud to have this project.Besides, there are more reasons why we wanted it in this region. By 2012, the road network in the country is going to improve vastly. Each and every village will be well connected. There is going to be a revolution in the movement and auto industry is going to be one of the main sectors to flourish. The Tata Motors small car is going to be a ‘disruptive product’ in the sense it will change the way the industry works now. Chennai has big auto factories, Maharashtra has it and more are coming in those regions. East is the only place where there is no such factory. Therefore, we decided to have it here.

Do you expect to keep to the deadline of mid-2008 when this car should role out?

Mr Kant: Yes. almost everything is ready. The technology has been chosen. The car has been under testing. The vendors are being selected. Orders for machines are being placed. And there is so much of confidence in the market for the product that a large number of MNCs are eager to get involved with Tata Motors. The new technology has been taken as a challenge worldwide.

Would you like to interact with the political parties who are trying to disrupt the project?

Mr Kant: Tata Motors is ready to interact with any stake holder in the project. The company will not be shy of the project. We will be more than willing to talk and show them what Tata projects have done elsewhere — be it in Jamshedpur, South Korea, South Africa, Pune or now in Pantnagar in Uttaranchal.


‘Left holding back crucial land details’

Romita Datta and Aloke Banerjee, HT
Kolkata, November 27, 2006

The West Bengal government has dropped all embarrassing and politically-volatile data on the critical land situation in the state. And doing away with the data is the Land Use Board under Industries Minister Nirupam Sen.

This explosive charge, levelled by Principal Secretary in the Land and Land Reforms (L&LR) department, Sukumar Das, comes at a time when the Opposition and a section within the ruling Left Front, even Land Reforms Minister Rezzak Molla, are expressing concern over the manner in which the government is acquiring agricultural land to build infrastructure and industries.

According to Das, though his department described Bengal as a “land critical state” and made suggestions on optimal use of land for industrialisation, the Board chose to paint a rosy picture in its report, to be placed before the assembly on Wednesday. Sadly, he said, the status report on the land situation will be published in the name of the L&LR Department.

Also, despite Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee promising at a recent Left Front meeting that a detailed land use map will be prepared, the report will contain no such map though the Land and Land Reforms Department prepared 180 pages of maps. Peeved L&LR officials said crucial data was deliberately dropped by the Board in its report to justify the government’s acquisition of multi-crop land in various parts of the state, particularly Singur.

Reacting to the allegations, the CPI and other Left Front constituents said they would comment after they had gone through the document. They claimed they were yet to get hold of the documents.

In a recent note to the Left Front, the RSP had demanded that the government prepare a land map that specifically mentions areas of fallow, mono and multi crop plots and also those used for fisheries. The CPI too had raised a similar demand, to which the chief minister had agreed.


Indian companies lead bribery ranking

Indian companies are the most likely to pay bribes when operating aboard, closely followed by China, Russia, Turkey and Taiwan, a Transparency International (TI) survey of 30 leading exporting countries has found.

The survey asked 11,232 business executives from 125 countries about the propensity of foreign companies operating in their country to pay bribes. At the other end of the scale, companies from Switzerland, Sweden and Australia were least likely to pay bribes. The UK was the sixth least likely.

The survey also found some countries’ companies to perform far worse when operating in Africa compared with, for instance, their doing business in Europe. Particularly noticeable was the increased tendency of Italian and French companies to pay bribes in Africa.

Similar figures appear when companies operate in low income countries, and TI suggested that many companies only resort to corruption where governance is poor and legal systems inefficient, meaning countries least equipped to deal with corruption are hardest hit.

Huguette Laeblle, TI chair, said by undermining efforts of developing nations to strengthen governance, these companies are contributing to the vicious cycle of poverty. David Nussbaum, TI chief executive, accused governments of merely paying lip service anti-bribery laws. “The enforcement record on international anti-bribery laws makes for short and disheartening reading,” he said.

Sourse: www.manifest.co.uk/manifest_i/2006/0611November/Ethics/0611ethicsbribes.htm

Singur villagers ready to die for their land, Left firm

Aloke BanerjeeSingur, HT
November 29, 2006

The proposed Tata Motors’ factory that promises tochange the face of rural Singur is not finding many takers.

Narayan Das of Berabari does not want to part with his land. Job has never been his priority with two MA degrees in his kitty. “My land has funded my education and has given me a roof on my head,” he says, pointing to a three-storied building nearby. “Tell your chief minister that I don't need a job in a car factory,”the 45-year-old man said on Wednesday.

Das reflects the mood of Singur — a cluster ofvillages, 40 km from Kolkata. It is the new flashpoint of Bengal politics: A battle between agriculture and industry.

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s slogan of“development through industry” does not hold good here. The villagers of Singur are affluent.

This was perhaps why women and children of Beraberi, Bajemalia, Purba Gopal Nagar, Khasher Bheri, Dobandhiand Gopal Nagar demonstrated with black flags for over three hours — when the Left rank and filed vowed to crush all voices of dissent to set up the automobilefactory, at a rally on Wednesday. The villagers, armed with sickles and sticks, were in war mode. “Kill us. Shoot us. Only then, you will get our land,” yelled 73-year old Chunibala Das, brandishing her stick. The policemen were at loss. They had no idea how to treat the old woman.

The 10 villages, which will empty themselves out for the car factory, are no mud-and-thatch shanty-towns. Most of the homes are pucca and almost every family owns a two-wheeler. Landless peasants are a rarity and 1,500 farm hands from Burdwan — Bengal's rice bowl —
have travelled all the way from Ranchi in Jharkhand.“The average daily wage in our state is Rs 30. But here, we get Rs 110, a kg of rice, along with lunch and dinner,” says Bhikhu Oraon, a tribal from Ranchi.“How much more the car factory can give us,” asks Basudeb Das, a CPI(M) member from Bajemelia.

“Work is not in short-supply. There are plots to tillround the year," says Atul Santra, who has come from Nabagram to work on Gadadhar Patra’s fields. Patra is one of the few farmers of Khaser Bheri, who has sold apart of his land to the Tata Motors Factory.

The Bengal government is acquiring land at random. Crop pattern and fertility are of little importance.“It is not true that the government is taking over only mono crop or double-crop land,” says Kajal Das, a graduate from Konnagar College. “My father raises five crops a year. We don’t need to buy rice or vegetables and we earn a lot by selling potato and jute. Will the car factory match the money we make every year?” she wanted to know.

CPI(M) central committee member Benoy Konar, however,is not convinced. “If they sell their land and deposit the money in a bank, the interest will be much more than what they are earning now. The factory will come up in Singur — and nowhere else. It’s a challenge,” he thundered.

Email Aloke Banerjee: alokebanerjee@hindustantimes.com