Mamata Banerjee is the product of post independence era of nuisance politics where capturing power at any cost is the prime motive of most politicians even it means colossal loss to the people and the country.
Tata Nano, caught the imaginations of Bengal and Indians at large and even when the world was looking in utter disbelieve the USD 2500 car at 22 km per liter with all the four wheels and five seats intact, Mamata Banerjee pulled the curtain down on Nano Project, as she felt that success of CPM at Singur would have consigned her politics to flames. To her it was a case of her personal survival and survival of the people of Bengal was nowhere as important.
Success of Tata Nano would have opened the floodgates for new industrial investments in Bengal generating hundreds of thousands direct and indirect jobs and many more ancillary and other businesses much needed for a massive population of 85 millions crammed into a small state of mere 86000 square Km. Singur is not the only arsenal in Mamata’s inventory, she has effectively started blocking a 1100 acre land take over in Katwa, required for a Super Thermal Power plant with installed capacity of about 3000 MW. She has also incited peasants to refuse land for an Atomic power plant at Haripur.
In fact, she has clearly said that land cannot be taken from unwilling peasant. She had turned deaf ear even to appeals from Ex-Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen for the cause of Tata Nano. Incidentally, as per a survey conducted by CNN-IBN & The Telegraph and published in the newspaper today the 6th September’08, Sourav Ganguly has been declared winner in the polls for ‘Greatest Living Bengali.’
It is worthwhile to mention that Mamata resigned from the post of Railway minister in Central government in 2000, one year after assuming charge. She also resigned from the post of Deputy Minister of sports in the Central Government in 1992. In a recent meeting she has told the Bengal Chief Minister that even if her party won in Bengal elections, she would not accept the post of Chief Minister and shall work for the people. What a nice (!) way of avoiding responsibility.
Thus the process of mass Industrialization in Bengal has been nipped in the bud thanks to personal survival strategy of Mamata Banerjee, to hell with the people of West Bengal.
The annual festival ‘Durga Puza’ is soured by Nano departure and people at large are sad and grieving the colossal loss. In effect a paradise of opportunities is lost and a dream is shattered with the departure of Nano from Singur, but I firmly believe that the grieving people of Bengal will teach her a lesson at the first available opportunity, for letting them down and they will see that there is another ‘Paradise in the making’ in not too distant a future.