The Land Conflict Blot

Tata projects have faced numerous resistance movements against their projects and some have even spilled blood

- Snigdhendu Bhattacharya and Asghar Khan

ON October 10, when politicians, industry captains, business analysts and media personalities were busy singing paeans to Ratan Tata a day after the 86-year-old industrialist's death, Mahadeb Das, a resident of Singur in West Bengal, did not share the sentiments. The flood of admiration for Tata on TV channels, news portals and social media platforms triggered in him some bitter memories. He could not sympathise with Tata's admirers, for Tata had hurt him and the wound had not healed.

"Tata never sympathised with people resisting displacement caused by their projects. On the contrary, he defamed legitimate people's movements by attributing those to people with vested interests and his business rivals," says Das. He refers to Tata's December 2006 comment that the agitation in Singur against Tata Motors' Nano plant was being fuelled by his business rivals and his 2009 comment blaming land agitation on people unconnected to the land concerned.

"It may sound superficial, but more often than not, the conflicts pertaining to land are provoked by individuals not involved in the deal, and who are inclined to exploit the situation," Tata had said in 2009 regarding the antidisplacement agitations in different parts of the country that had prompted the government to take a relook at the industrial land acquisition policy.

The anti-displacement movements that finally led to the scrapping of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 and the formulation of a new legislation in 2013-offering agricultural landowners greater protection and scope for compensationincluded two agitations against Tata projects, Singur in West Bengal and Kalinganagar in Odisha.