Brand Blood

The Statesman, 16 March

Tata deal truths from Nirupam’s mouth

At a time when the state government is under fire for the Nandigram fiasco, it was business as usual on the Singur front. State industry minister Mr Nirupam Sen today announced that Tata Motors would get a Rs 200-crore loan at a rate of one per cent interest from the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation for its small-car plant. He said no money was being spent from government exchequer but the WBIDC would take a loan from the market to extend this loan to the Tatas! The information was a part of the disclosure on the incentive package for Tata Motors made by Mr Sen in the Assembly. He said the government had offered incentives on land, a soft term loan and refund of VAT for the first 10 years of a 90-year lease. “We have acquired 997.11 acres of land of which 645.47 acres, on a 90-year lease, has been handed over to Tata Motors for setting up a small-car unit. The remaining 290 acres has been earmarked for an ancillary unit or vendor park,’’ Mr Sen said. “Out of the 645.47 acres, the state government would take up-front payment for only 290 acres. In addition, the Tatas would have to pay a yearly rent at the rate of Rs 8,000 per acre for 290 acres.’’ The minister explained Tata Motors will pay Rs 1 crore annually by way of lease rent for the first five years. Thereafter, for every five years, there will be a 25 per cent hike in the lease rent for the next 30 years. From the thirty-first year to the sixtieth year, there will be a 30 per cent hike in the lease rent every 10 years and from the sixty-first year to the ninetieth year, the Tatas will pay at an annual flat rate of Rs 20 crore. The comprehensive lease rent for 90 years will thus come to nearly Rs 850 crore, he said. The incentives had been offered to counter concessions offered by other states.

Editorial

Severest setback for a Panglossian agenda Bengal was quite totally stunned on Wednesday when no fewer than 14 farmers fell to police bullets at Nandigram. The Chief Minister ~ the faux pas of reaching the Assembly minutes after it was adjourned was, in the context, a relatively minor loss of face ~ must readily acknowledge that the farmers wouldn’t have died if the police hadn’t been used to defend the established order. That order has now suffered the severest setback in its 30 years in the pursuit of a Panglossian agenda. The armed offensive against peasants intent on protecting their source of livelihood was carried out with a calculated ruthlessness that was seemingly more brutal than the firing on refugees at Marichjhanpi (1978), against the Gorkhaland agitators (1986) and against Mamata’s rally at Esplanade (1993). It confirms this newspaper’s misgivings ~ for all the saccharine assurances of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee that the SEZ project had been kept in abeyance and could even be shifted in deference to popular will, the government was indeed inching towards an undeclared change in policy. There was no compelling hurry to enter Nandigram at 10 a.m. on Wednesday. It was a deliberate testing of the murky waters just when the frenzy, at once agricultural and communal, appeared to have subsided. This was all too evident in his studied silence when Nandigram was once again put on the melting pot by his closest aide and industries minister, Nirupam Sen, and the Salim Group’s point man, Prasun Mukherjee. The recipe for disaster was scripted a fortnight ago as both pitched in vigorously for a chemical hub on the same site. The enormity of the tragedy is a horrendous blight in the march towards high-voltage economic development, and the policy is now open to question as never before. If January’s bloodletting and arson was the fallout of the fiasco over a land acquisition notice, this week’s outrage points to a decidedly more sinister plan to counter the odds. The government has suffered what may turn out to be a crippling setback and not merely in terms industrial. Next year’s panchayat election will be the toughest contest for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) after 30 years in power. The risk of losing the Muslim vote ~ and thereby rocking the panchayat boat ~ ever so crucial in effecting a psephological swing, is substantial primarily because they constitute 50 per cent of Nandigram’s peasantry. The panchayat stakes are of critical moment for the future of the government and in the wider context of the Left movement in India. An economic module on a blood-splattered tract of fertile land will be the darkest chapter in Bengal’s contemporary history. There is time yet to reverse gears and literally so in another part of South Bengal as well. The historic blunder will be more profound than not joining the national government.