Mamata vs. Tata
Yeh ladaai hai diye aur toofan ki

Mamata is fighting the mighty Tatas, all alone, braving the media blitzkrieg unleashed by the great industrial house. The Narayan Murthys, Birlas, Ambanis, Bajajs, the who’s who of the corporate world have lined up behind the Tatas. All the top-notch economic thinkers and mediagogues are out in full strength to prove that Mamta Banerji is fit to be sent to a mental asylum. Young things in the media are talking about how West Bengal is going to be left behind in the race of economic and industrial development if Tata’s Singur unit fails to start.  

Mamata refuses to relent. She carries on her fight. Hats off to this great fighter in rubber slippers who fights for the marginalized and the displaced! I would like to know what moral justification Narayan Murthy has for supporting the Tatas. He should stop talking from a high pedestal. He and his ilk are exploiters. Why do they seek free land from various state governments to run their businesses?  State governments take away the land of poor farmers for a pittance to hand it over to the Narayan Murthys and the Tatas to construct their towering dream pyramids. Do they care for what happens to the displaced farmers and the kind of corruption that goes into the acquisition of such land? Do they? They don’t. They care only for their bottom line and their f#@*#*# dreams.

Did Ratan Tata ask the West Bengal CM how he was going to give him the 1000 acres of land needed for the Nano project? He didn’t. He admits it. He says the fight is between Mamata and Buddhdev and the Tatas have nothing to do with it. But who is fighting Mamata today? The Tatas through their massive media campaign. The best of the PR pundits have been employed to browbeat the fiery and sassy little woman of Bengal who has the guts and gumption to take on the combined onslaught of the media, the Marxists, and all the corporate giants. 

Nobody is talking about the raw deal the farmers of Singur got from a government that refused to listen to them.  The opposition to the unit started immediately after its announcement. What did Ratan Tata do? He left it to the Marxist goons to carry on street fights with Mamata on his behalf. He was so confident of the coercive strength of the CPM cadre that he went ahead with the project in spite of massive protests from the farmers. He was not concerned about them. His worry was to fulfill his dream car project at the cost of the poorest among Indians, the petty farmers of West Bengal. So many protesting farmers were killed by the West Bengal police and the CPM goons! Ratan Tata was not bothered. Does it not establish his complicity in the criminal and immoral act? 

And Narayan Murthy is threatening that a Singur-like situation is not conducive to creating a favorable investment climate. Screw you and your investment Mr. Narayan Murthy.  You and the rest of your industrialist friends should be running high class five-star brothels at Dharamtalla since moral issues are nowhere on your corporate agenda. I am sure there will be a lot of money in it. The problem is Mamta won’t let you do it. She will resist you there as well, fighting for the poor sex workers who may be displaced by high class, long-legged, imported nymphs. 

The English educated urban India is so self-centred, immoral, and corrupt. It fails to appreciate that more than sixty percent of our population may not have formal education, but they are not fools. They want to live with a certain dignity. They are small entrepreneurs who invest in their land, produce, and sell food and carry on with their non-polluting existence. They don’t need or aspire to lead a flashy jet set consumerist lifestyle that will turn this world into a wasteland. When you take away their land with a government decree, you snatch away their life and dignity. You compound their pain by not giving them a choice. And what do you do yourself as you grow older and get too tired of corporate corruption? You buy farm houses to live in peace like these poor farmers. But you won't let them live in peace. You turn them into beggars for your greed in collusion with a corrupt government. What can be a greater height of callousness? Mamta’s struggle is about these issues. 

The other thing that pisses me off is the arrogance of the corporate world. They are behaving like smart-ass hustlers. They tell us without any shame that the country will be doomed without them.

Let us calculate how many Indians are employed directly or indirectly by the Tatas and Murthys and their contribution to India’s GDP. Compare it with the contribution of our farmers to the total employment generated and to the GDP of our nation. The Tatas and Murthys are pigmies before our hard-working small farmers and yet they talk as if India exists because of them and for them.

And what is Mamata saying? She wants four hundred acres of the 1000 acres of land given to the Tatas to be returned that was forcibly taken from farmers who never encashed the cheques stuffed into their unwilling hands. The West Bengal government says it cannot be done. Why? The land is not contiguous. Who is fooling whom here? Every plot of land has a notional value which is called ‘maaliyat’.  Whenever there is a reorganization of land, it is redistributed on the basis of that value. The process is known as ‘chakbandi’ and it is done all the time. It won’t even take a month to complete this process. This way the Tatas can have their six hundred acres of contiguous land without any issue and the unwilling farmers will get back their four hundred acres. The West Bengal government says it cannot be done since those who gave up their land for the project will get short changed as the land prices have gone up in the area. They will have to be compensated too and the government cannot afford it. The Tatas won’t compensate them either. Their project cost did not include the cost of land, which was gifted to them by the Buddhadeb government. So, this was it. The people of West Bengal in general and Singur farmers in particular were going to pay for Ratan Tata’s Nano dream.

Ratan Tata did not go to Gujarat for his Nano project. Do you know why? A wily and wise Modi made it clear to these greedy industrialists that his Government won’t gift them free land. It will not even negotiate with the farmers on their behalf. They have to work their ass off to buy the land at the market price and then relive their nano or mega dreams.  

Carry on Mamata Banerji as long as you can. Khullamkhulla is with you all the way.

RKS