A day after Ratan Tata announced withdrawal of his Nano project from the state, the outskirts of Singur looked like Nandigram revisited. The village road was cut, the highway was blocked with smoke billowing out of burnt tyres filling the sky. But this time around, the agitation was by the CPI(M) supporters and people working for the Tata project who were demanding that Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee stop her ?anti-industry agitation? and Tatas stay on.
The syndicate workers, who are engaged in the delivery of building material to the Tata factory, also shouted slogans. The rail blockade by the pro-industry people continued for few hours in the morning.
Though there was palpable tension on the highway and near the Tata factory gate where the CPI(M) supporters stay put for hours in the morning, everything was normal inside the Singur villages.
The overnight blockade on the highway continued till 2-30pm and was lifted because of the initiatives of the local CPI(M) leaders. Later in the day, security workers? union, affiliated to the Centre for Indian Trade Union (Citu), organised a meeting opposite the Tata factory.
During the agitation, around 2000 people, who are directly engaged in the Tata factory, demanded that Mamata Banerjee and governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi should come to Singur and apologise for the whole thing.
Mahadev Pal, who works in housekeeping company BVG India Ltd, was sitting on the road with a blank stare at the factory. Like the rest of his 450 colleagues, he does not know how he will survive the festival season with nothing to spare for his family. The company engaged him as a daily worker for cleaning machines. Pal was earning around Rs 3500, Rs 110 per day.
?She is never with the poor people. Otherwise she would have been for the Tata factory,? Pal said about Mamata Banerjee.
Debaroon Chakraborty, a graduate working in India Bulls, shares a similar sentiment. His family had given their half a acre to the Tatas for the project as it does not have any interest in tilling the land. In fact, his father left agriculture long time back and is working in the government sector.
?Mamata should realise that young people like us need the Tata factory. Otherwise there is no hope left for us in West Bengal,? said Chakraborty.
But reactions to the Tatas? pullout have not been different. A significant section of Singur farmers still believes that the state government should return part of the Tata land.
However, at the same time, there is a feeling that Trinamool is losing its electoral base. The party, which won 15 out of the 16 panchayat seats in the 2008 election (as against five in the previous panchayat election) in Singur, may lose a substantial number of seats if elections are held today.
Saumyadeep Chakraborty, a computer science student, said Banerjee might not fare well in the next elections. ?We voted for her as we were against CPI(M)’s policies. But today, the Tata issue has brought us close to the CPI(M) again.?