In October 2008, on the eve of the Durga Puja festivities, industrialist Ratan Tata – who died on Wednesday at the age of 86 – delivered a piece of shocking news to West Bengal: frustrated with the never-ending strife, he was pulling out of the near-complete Nano car plant project in Singur, about 30km north of Kolkata.
In a rather uncharacteristic outburst, he squarely blamed Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee-led anti-displacement agitation for his decision to withdraw from the project. Banerjee was so long holding a gun to his head and had finally pulled the trigger, he alleged.
“I think some time back I mentioned that if somebody puts a gun to my head, the person will either have to pull the trigger or take the gun away because I will not move my head. I think Ms Banerjee has pulled the trigger,” Tata said.
His comments were meant to be a political bombshell. He was evidently angry. Nano, the Rs 1 lakh car – branded as the world’s cheapest four-wheeler – was Tata’s dream project. But it ran into rough weather soon after he and West Bengal’s newly re-elected Marxist chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee announced the project at a joint press meet in May 2006.
Tata group officials got gheraod while surveying the designated land in Singur. As a section of landowners refused to part with their land, an amalgamation of many small organisations, celebrated writers and artists, human rights defenders and smaller Left organisations helped build a strong resistance movement, of which the TMC supremo eventually emerged as the main leader.
The government had used the police to take control of the identified land plot. Construction began under thorough police protection. However, nearly one-third of the landowners refused the compensation and some of them kept attacking the boundary walls of the plot. Sometimes construction and plant workers complained of facing intimidation from the locals.
While the plant was almost complete and had started assembling body parts brought from the Tata plant in Uttarakhand, the TMC’s sweeping victory in Singur (and the other land agitation site, Nandigram) in the May 2008 panchayat elections revived the movement. She stuck to her demand that of the 997 acres acquired for the project, 400 acres belonging to farmers unwilling to part with their land must be returned to them. Tata ruled out parting with any portion of the land plot, arguing that all of it was necessary for the project.
At the end of August 2008, Banerjee launched an indefinite dharna outside the Nano plant, drawing thousands of people to the site.
In October 2008, a day after blaming Banerjee for his decision to withdraw, Tata published an open letter addressed to the people of Bengal – which appeared in several dailies simultaneously – in which he batted for the Bhattacharjee’s Left Front government.
In that open letter, Tata said he felt compelled to write to explain how his company’s dream was shattered. He asked the people of West Bengal to ‘choose’ between the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government or a “destructive political environment of lawlessness.”
“Would they (the people of Bengal, particularly the youth) like to support the present government of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to build a prosperous state with the rule of law, modern infrastructure and industrial growth, or would they like to see the state consumed by a destructive political environment of confrontation, agitation, violence and lawlessness,” asked Tata.
The TMC quickly hit back, calling his remarks “politically motivated” and accusing him of “holding brief for the CPI(M) and the chief minister.” They demanded an unconditional apology and asked Tata to explain what he meant by “confrontative actions by the Trinamool Congress led by Ms. Mamata Banerjee and supported by vested interests.” Some TMC leaders alleged Tata stopped too low by directly batting for a party and a government.
But Tata continued to target Banerjee. Three days later, after sealing a deal on relocating the factory at Sanand in Gujarat, Tata said during a joint press meet with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi that he hoped there was “a bad M and a good M.” That Mamata stood for the bad M and Modi for the good M was clear to everyone.
Later, at the launch of the car at the Delhi auto expo, Tata jokingly said that some people had suggested that he name the car “despite Mamata.”
The TMC had argued that the Tatas could be given an alternative land plot for those 400 acres on the other side of the highway. However, According to a senior government official who was part of the negotiations between the government and the Tatas to find a way out, the Tatas turned down the proposal, saying that they needed a compact land plot, not a scattered one.
Tata’s 2008 outbursts against the TMC, though, did not cost the TMC electorally. The 2009 Lok Sabha election saw the TMC’s performance in Singur improve and the party wrested Hooghly Lok Sabha seat—of which Singur is a part—from the CPI(M)’s seven-time MP Rupchand Pal.
Overall, in the state, the Left’s Lok Sabha tally came down from 35 in 2004 to 15, while the TMC’s rose from 1 in 2004 to 19 in 2009, riding mostly the sentiments of the anti-displacement movements.
Soon after coming to power in 2011, one of the first decisions that Banerjee’s government took was to issue an order taking back the land from the Tatas. The government sent the police to take possession of the land overnight. The Tatas moved court.
The tension between Tata and the TMC never eased, even though Tata Group’s business and new investments in Bengal have continued. In August 2014, three years after Mamata Banerjee had toppled the CPI(M)-led Left Front government of CM Bhattacharjee, there was another war of words between Tata and the TMC leadership.
At a Kolkata event, asked whether he had noticed any changes in Bengal since the regime change, Tata said that while driving through Rajarhata—a new industrial and residential township in the northeastern outskirts of Kolkata—he noticed “unbelievable change in terms of buildings and development” but the area still looked like “a countryside under development.” He did not see “that much sign of industrial development,” Tata said.
Even at that event, Tata defended his decision to pull out, repeating the statement that one holding a gun to his head would either have to take it away or pull the trigger, as he would not move his head.
Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra hit back at him, saying that Tata must have “lost his mind” or had possibly not received the right information.
In 2016, after a prolonged legal battle, the Supreme Court held the land acquisition illegal, largely due to the government’s procedural gaps that the new government itself highlighted, and ordered the return of land to landowners. Subsequently, the entire construction was razed to the ground and the land plots were handed over to their original owners.
The Tatas and the state government are still engaged in a legal battle over compensation—the Tatas demand damage for their entire investment, while the government refuses any damage, blaming the Tatas for the withdrawal.
Meanwhile, Nano did not turn out to be a customer favourite. No new car was produced in 2018 at the Sanand plant in Gujarat as sales plummeted. The car was discontinued in 2019. While some blamed political unrest-related delays among the reasons for its failures, others highlighted customers’ lack of interest due to its external appearance and unsatisfactory protection from crashes.
