Losing plots

The 600-acre IT park at Rajarhat,near Kolkata,is the latest casualty of Bengals land acquisition tragedy and the state governments abdication of responsibility post-Singur,post-electoral rout. The CPM appears to be struck by a paralysis of will thats putting every developmental project on hold. If the government,led by the party,keeps retiring hurt,paranoid about the next election,the list of the disappointed will not end with a Tata Motors or an Infosys notwithstanding a reformist chief minister whos been missing the plot for a while and an intriguing land reforms minister who opposes industrial land acquisition,but gave vested land to a luxury resort,and now,caught up in controversy,wants the IT park scrapped.

Indeed,the IT park is inextricably tied up with the Vedic Village controversy,as the land is contiguous to the resort and was to be acquired by Vedics developers for the government. Following violence and allegations of forcible land acquisition,the government has retreated. If Singur was about state acquisition of land,Vedic Village has exploded direct acquisition by developers. Evidently,neither Buddhadeb Bhattacharjees nor Mamata Banerjees preferred means of acquiring land is working. But the state government should not equate the mechanism of land acquisition with the fact of acquisition. The problem is with the former alone,where compensation packages do matter,while using goons unleashes all the goriness of Bengals brand of muscle politics.

If West Bengals industrialisation is put on hold,its people will pay a heavy price. But industry will not come without land; thus the state must find a way out of this morass. Bengals rural poor need industrial expansion and its small farmers deserve viable land markets. The abandoned and locked plot of land in Singur cannot continue symbolising the states reality and prospects.