In Singur, Stage Set for Another Poll Thriller

A faded hoarding hangs outside the house of Rabindranath Bhattacharya in Singur. It shows him with Becharam Manna, his aide who worked tirelessly in order to ensure Bhattacharya’s win in the constituency in the 2011 West Bengal assembly elections. Bhattacharya and Manna were two of the prominent local faces of an agitation against land acquisition in Hooghly district’s Singur.

A decade later, Manna is the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s candidate from the seat. His wife is a TMC nominee in neighbouring Haripal, which Manna won in 2011 and 2016.

Bhattacharya, or Mastermoshai (as he is popularly called), is seething in anger. After all, he won Singur four times in a row (from 2001 to 2016) on TMC ticket. The 88-year-old has now joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and will contest against Manna.

“I want revenge. How badly she has treated me! I can never forgive her,” Bhattacharya told News18, referring to chief minister Mamata Banerjee and rejecting the argument that he was denied ticket because of his age.

Some 150 kilometres from Nandigram, where the core political action in Bengal is centred, another interesting electoral battle is unfolding in Singur, the site of a raging land agitation from 2006 to 2008. Though lost in the din over Nandigram, this one too has all the makings of a blockbuster, and is similar to the high-voltage fight in Nandigram in some aspects.

Both Singur and Nandigram have symbolic values for CM Banerjee; more so at a time when she is facing the stiffest electoral challenge for the first time in her decade-long rule. Massive land agitations against the previous Left government in Singur and Nandigram catapulted the TMC to power in 2011, with Banerjee taking up the cause of the protesters.

Like Nandigram, where Banerjee faces her lieutenant-turned-rival Suvendu Adhikari, the battle in Singur, too, features a disgruntled, influential local leader who has crossed over to the BJP, and is now openly challenging his former party. No matter what, the TMC will not like to lose either of the two seats. For the battle here is not for votes alone; it’s about prestige and bragging rights.

Manna knows that. “Didi (as Banerjee is popularly called) did say she would accommodate everyone who didn’t get ticket this time. He (Bhattacharya) could have waited. How can he betray our cause?…we all fought together.”

In 2006, trouble erupted in the area after the then Left government decided to acquire 997 acres of land to set up the Nano car factory by the Tatas. About 6,000 families feared they would lose their agricultural land and, eventually, their livelihood, while also claiming that they were not being given adequate compensation.

In came Banerjee, then a firebrand opposition leader. She marched there — Bhattacharya and Manna by her side — in support of those protesting against the car factory. She and a team of TMC leaders even camped there for days; a makeshift stage came up as the main agitation site next to the highway in the vicinity. Today, the structure of the abandoned factory is visible to those passing through that highway connecting Kolkata to other south Bengal towns such as Bardhaman and Durgapur. It was because of the agitation that the factory was shelved and a bill passed to return about 400 of the 997 acres of land to farmers.

It is exactly where the verdict gets split. While a section of villagers is happy that they got their land back — Singur mainly grows potato and rice — others are still awaiting industries and development.

“We are farmers; we are not educated. There is nothing else we can do. So we are happy that land and agriculture is given important in Singur. Our vote is for Didi…what Mastermoshai did was betrayal,” says a farmer, sitting under a tree adjacent to one of the plots once earmarked for the Nano factory.

Tukai Mahato agrees. “He’s 88 and a four-time MLA. Why this desire to contest again? He has joined the BJP now. It’s like getting married in old age.”

Gopal Kundu, too, seems critical of Bhattacharya, while also touching upon the protests over three central agricultural laws. “If he was part of the Singur agitation in 2006, how can he be part of a party which we know doesn’t care for the farmers?” he asks.

Even those who want to move beyond the land agitation here agree that Banerjee proved to be a “saviour” for them a decade ago.

Bhattacharya knows that. “I may not be with the TMC, but this much I still maintain: Mamata Banerjee feels for the farmers. She has been honest to the cause and the issue.” On the agricultural laws that have triggered protests among a section of farmers, he says: “I have no idea about all this. I am only concerned about Singur.”

A large part of the debate in Singur centres around land, but there are those who seek a new beginning but don’t know how and where to start.

“I don’t want to be a farmer. I want to work in a factory. I wish I could work in Kolkata or Delhi. But my parents are very old. I have to be around,” says a 19-year-old man in Singur’s Gopalpur. He rues the lack of employment in the area.

Mohan Beg, 60, feels enough is enough. “We can’t live in the past. We were told other industries will come up in place of the Nano factory. I am still waiting. How many jobs can land give? We have lost out. No land, no factories and no jobs.”

Singur and Banerjee both face a dilemma. Land needs to be protected. But the need of the hour is to move on. In Singur, the balancing act is what takes the centre stage in this context.