INDIA: Thousands of protesters yesterday surrounded the factory producing the Nano, which is being billed as the world's cheapest car, in the biggest demonstration yet against seizure of farmland for industry in eastern India.
Enthusiasm for Tata Motors' $2,380 (€1,612) snub-nosed "people's car" has been dampened by months of protests by farmers refusing to give their land up for the project, now hobbled by cost overruns. The car's planned October launch is also threatened.
Waving flags and shouting slogans, thousands of villagers and activists gathered at the factory site in Singur, an hour's drive from Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal. Many protesters arrived in trucks and rickshaw taxis.
Some sat in rows of makeshift stages built along an expressway leading to Singur, a verdant countryside of paddy fields and small houses.
"We have gathered today to get back our land. Money cannot compensate our loss," said Kajal Das, wife of a farmer who lost land.
Thousands of armed policemen guarded the factory.
The protests reflect a larger stand-off between industry in India and farmers unwilling to part with land in a country where two-thirds of the billion-plus population depend on agriculture.
For Tata, India's top vehicle maker, trouble started after the state's communist government took over farmland for the factory. The state offered compensation, but some villagers complained they did not receive their dues.
Others refused to accept compensation. About 400 acres are still being fiercely disputed out of about 1,000 acres acquired by the government.
The crisis offered political capital to the opposition Trinamool Congress which has led the protests, and its chief, Mamata Banerjee, says she could negotiate if Tata returned the disputed acres.
Tata Motors chief Ratan Tata has threatened to move the plant if violent protests continued, despite having invested $350 million (€240m) in the project. The issue is seen as a test of the government's resolve to industrialise.
A West Bengal minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, said an "alternative rehabilitation package" was being worked on for those who had lost land.
- (Reuters)