The journey from Kolkata to Singur is surprisingly short. It takes a little over an hour once you leave southern Kolkata and hit the Durgapur highway. It is a journey that moves between a grim present that is today?s West Bengal and a gleaming future that Tata Motors? small-car project may bring to the state.
Location-wise, Singur is prime property. Railway tracks run astride and the great Calcutta port is just a couple of hours away. Plus, the connectivity from Jamshedpur steel plant. What more could a car maker ask for?
Corporate security here is at an all-time high. The Tata Motors plant is surrounded by three rings of security ? two are private and the rest are from the West Bengal police force. It is encircled by a high wall that lends it a forbidding look. Add watch towers and guard dogs, and this could well be Alcatraz.
With no one officially commenting, a visiting a highway dhaba near the plant seems a good idea for an itinerant newshound. Some who frequent this dhaba are contractors involved with the site work.
One is a labour supplier and another, an electric contractor. Both work on the imposing structure at the front of the compound. It is a large looming structure of steel, and is easily in excess of 20,000 sq ft of factory space. Behind it, finishing touches are being put to even a bigger structure.
These will be the yards for the assembly-line finishing.
Everything is happening here on a war footing, with 3,000 unskilled and 280 skilled workers, and 200 engineers, are at the site every day. All around you are flat-bed trucks plying the highway. On them are cold-rolled steel, cement pipes and concrete-mixing equipment?everything here is on a large scale. Sources say the Tatas have spent nearly Rs 200 crore already on the plant.
The real story of a ?boom? that this plant is likely to bring is in the ancillary industries and other collateral development. Here, the Tata spokesman is more forthcoming. Says he, ?The project, in its totality, in Singur will restore to West Bengal, once one of the three centres of auto manufacturing, a place on the industry?s expanding map. The project includes some of the best-known names from the auto component industry. ?
It has already done a bit for the property prices. Says Debidas Chowdhry, a southern Kolkata property dealer, ?There is a rise in the property prices around Singur. A year ago, warehouses were difficult to rent ? now they are difficult to find. In a ten-km radius around the plant, the prices have gone up three times.?
Vishnu Mathur, executive director of the Association of Component Manufacturing Association, says, ?There is a lot of excitement in the industry because of this project, since cost-cutting will translate into outsourcing. At least a dozen players have shown interest in setting up ancillary plants.?
Among those keen are, Delhi-based Sona Steering and CK Birla firm AVTEC. One big reason for this interest is that the West Bengal government brought duties down on motor vehicle spare parts from 12.5% to just 4% in the last state budget.
Lastly, the logistics industry is looking up. Unitech already has a massive project 20 miles down the highway for a dedicated logistics park. DLF is reportedly next in line. Come January 10 and the Tatas take a giant step in manufacturing. Will this be a firm or tentative one only the market response to the Rs 1-lakh-car will decide.
