Bushes everywhere?

George Bush will walk into the sunset in a few months but many of us pious souls will continue to speak his language. One of those imitable Bushisms is this with us or against us rhetoric. Let's see how many of us liberal, patriotic sons and daughters of India who populate the media and chatteretti parrot this with/against twitter. Take what's happening in Singur these days and how it is filtered to you through your morning newspapers and evening tele-debates.

If the Tatas/nano stay in West Bengal, the state will reportedly turn into an industrial heaven. I wonder why the very people who reduced it to a wasteland are so keen today to turn it into an eden. Let's forget these quibbles and ask a few simple questions.

Why did the Tatas not acquire the lands from the title holders themselves? Why did the state government have to step in and hand over the land virtually free to the group? On what basis was Singur chosen over other places in West Bengal? Why, for instance, did they not choose to take over some place in say Purulia or Bankura or Burdwan? Why was it hidden from the world that a handsome portions of the lands taken over were extyremely fertile agricultural tracts? More importantly, why were these very fertile tracts dubbed fallow and entirely useless to agriculture?

The answers to these questions, even if they were to come today, would not make much of a difference anymore. Given that the car is likely to debut in a couple of months, it is obvious that the factory has been built and is operating more or less at its optimal capacity. The acquired lands are likely to become useless for agriculture anyway, even if they were to be returned today and Tatas were to quit Bengal with their 1500 crore investment and so on.

Now the media and the middle class is up in arms against the agitation demanding restoration of a portion of lands to its rightful owners. There are indeed many problems with the agitation being led by Mamata Banerjee. For instance, she has no clue as to how to secure some compensation for bargadars who has no tiltes but who depended on these lands for livelihood. But that is not what irks the media and many of us. We think she is merely impeding West Bengal's industrial redemption. Whether we have enough roads to drive lakhs of nanos is not for us to worry about. Whether something can be done to improve our public transport system is for cities like Indore to worry about. We are only wooried about how to show our face to the world if Tatas quit singur and nobody else invests into any industrial projects in West Bengal. An editorial in the journal that calls itself a friend of the Bengali intellect (Bangalir Mononer Songi) dismisses those who have other things to say as idealists fond of an agricultural life and all that. Please note the pejorative turn of the phrase agricultural. Let me illustrate this point with a cricketing term, since all of us are born cricket experts. When you do not approve of a batsman's technique--and Bengalis make a fetish of technique--and yet see that he's hitting sixes after sixes, you tell the chap sitting next to you that the felllow's technique is ,after all, agricultural. Those who practice agriculture are by defintion backward people and those who support agriculturists who refuse to accept whatever compensation is doled out to them have, by implication, an agriculturalist (read backward/superstitious/stupid) bent of mind.

Excellent. Capital. But tell me why would someone cling on to a strip of infertile land if she is being offered a better life? Would she refuse a price that is commensurate with the appreciatiation of her land after the factory becomes fully functional? So either these people are downright stupids or they are being hoodwinked. How many of us would finally muster the courage to look beyond the oracle of this intellect-friendly journal? The question is with whose intellect is it so pally? It's not a moot question, it's a mute question too.

In practical terms what is feasible now? If the Tata logic that the 400 acre lands in dispute are absolutely crucial for their pricing policy is true, then the prospect does not look very bright. To start with though, can the entire layout plan of the factory be made public? An RTI on the question may be. On the face of it the entire 900 acre is necessary but very knowledgeable sources say quite a lot of it is not. Let us not get into the question of the new trend in global capital to just retain control over lands so that an artificial scarcity follows. I am sure you all follow the logic. Now that is only a speculation (pun intended) at the moment. Is it possible to objectively determine the truth on this question? Wish some activist judges had an idea.

Finally, it all boils down to the question of an acceptable compensation. Whether we support big industrial projects on on ethical and environmental questions are good questions but irrelevant at the moment. Just as irrelevant is the Tata threat of pullout simply because no sane businessman would sink so much money. He has not come to Bengal because he loves it but because Bengal has offered him opportunities that he could not get elsewhere. The Tatas may be making Indcas and Indigos but they don't sell them to Indians for free. And if you go back in History, they've had a perfectly loyal career-loyal to the British rule that is. Even TISCO, such an integral part of the nationalist myth had received unqualified blessings from no less a person than Lord Curzon. This is attested by the best known-and most respected- historian of that period. Let's face it-capital loves nobody but its own continuous reproduction.

Let's forsake our righteous posture for a moment and start trying to work out decent compensation packages for the victims. This is going to be an arduous process and reasonably compromises will have to be made by all parties. Whether we like it or not, the factory will go ahead. But if we cannot lend our voice to the cause of securing a just compensation package for those who has nothing to fall back upon once their land is gone, tomorrow it is going to be you and me. For your own sake stay alert whenever such with us/against us debates begin to take over public space. Please come forward to complicate the picture or it will not take you long to become a picture yourself. Stop asking for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.