Pain & Peace

It was almost 1.30 in that 2007 night of early spring when we entered a zone of dense fog where our car’s headlights seemed to be reflecting backward. We couldn’t help but make a brief halt at a highway dhaba that came up there only recently. The young owner of the eatery joint — apparently grown quite popular in a short time on the NH-2 where truck drivers relaxed themselves on khatias — told us how he hoped that the upcoming Tata Nano plant near his dhaba would change his fortune, like many others. We also thought that with the new government — second Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government bulldozed opposition parties to victory just nine months back with industrialization on lips — could turn the tide before heading towards Bankura.

Same dhaba, two years later. On our way to Santiniketan, i told my friend that we should stop there for breakfast. I was not at all nostalgic but i could see from a distance that the once-bubbling dhaba was looking shabby with its thatched-roof verandah caved in during Nor’wester. I asked the young man, who obviously didn’t recognize me, what about his dhaba’s expansion plan he had told me a couple of years back. “My dream is lost somewhere under the blue tin sheds of the Tata plant. Can’t you see that?” terse was the answer with pain in his looks. That was in February 2009, a little over four months after Ratan Tata had announced the decision to shift his proposed plant from “Bad M (Mamata, Banerjee) to Good M (Modi, Narendra)”. Back to wheels, my friend said: “Because of one lady, many a dream has been shattered like this.”

In the past four years, i’ve taken this highway many a time and seen how a real greenfield project was coming up flattening fields that yield golden crops, how a woman resisted forceful takeover of land, how an under-construction plant with 80% completion gets its equipment shifted overnight and moreover, how the people still stare at the 1000 acres with disbelief. Singur has many definitions and dimensions now. People, especially farmers in Bengal villages, have now realized that their lands are acquired for some projects and most of these hardly come up in their lifetime. They can part with their land but who will ensure their survival? The industries won’t give jobs to unskilled farmers, like what happened in Rajarhat. The government won’t allow farming in urban vicinity, like what happened in Salt Lake. The elites won’t allow an entry to their domain, like what happened in Santiniketan. They will always be marginalized.

A few days ago, i was on a bus going to Bakkhali, a tourist spot off the Bay of Bengal. After it left Namkhana on its last leg, i spotted some bull-dozers pressed into service for widening of NH-117. An old woman, sitting by the window, asked her relative (maybe husband): “What will happen to those who have land by the side of the highway?” “The government has given them compensation and also recruited our villagers in the job. Why should we complain if the 30ft wide road adds another lane to it?” he said. I was not surprised as people have realized two things: awareness is necessary, and development is the keyword but not at gunpoint.