Ratan Tata today drew flak from all quarters — industry and political — for his open letter to the citizens of Bengal, in the form of an advertisement in four newspapers, asking people to choose between the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government or a state consumed by a destructive political environment of confrontation, agitation, violence and lawlessness, allegedly represented by Mamata Banerjee.
The Tata advertisement appeared to have embarrassed the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the largest party in the four-party Left coalition in Bengal, and attracted disapproval from the other coalition partners.
Left parties like the FB, CPI and RSP severely criticised the Tata ad, saying Tata was a typical businessmen focused only on profits.
“Tata should keep his nose out of politics — he has applied dirt on the face of the politically aware people of West Bengal by dictating to them how they should vote,” said Asok Ghosh, state secretary of Forward Bloc and the senior-most Left leader in the state after Jyoti Basu.
“Tata has no right to tell the people of West Bengal who to elect,” said RSP leader and state Public Works Minister Kshiti Goswami.
“Tata came to Bengal for the money promised, not out of love for the state,” added CPI leader Manju Kumar Majumdar.
Meanwhile, the ad gladdened the opposition Trinamool Congress, which led the protests by land-losers to the Tata Motors Nano project in Singur, causing the company to pull out.
Trinamool is framing Bengali ditties to put up on walls ridiculing the Tata endorsement of the Left Front under Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s chief ministership.
“The government has nothing to do with the advertisement and would not like to offer any comment,” was the official line at the CPI(M) headquarters in Alimuddin Street here.
“The chief minister is not happy with the way the Tatas had to leave the state which this advertisement refers to,” admitted a senior CPI(M) leader.
Nonetheless, “CPI(M) has nothing to do with this,” defended state CPI(M) and Left Front leader Binay Konar.
A top Trinamool leader, alleging that the advertisement was issued at the behest of the CPI(M), said, “People in West Bengal are amused that the CPI(M) today needs a ‘good boy’ certificate from Ratan Tata and that CPI(M) leaders are abusing Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi for seeking to resolve the Singur issue.”
The Trinamool leader added, “We can understand that Ratan Tata is feeling the pinch — he had to pay Rs 400 crore for 1,100 acres in Gujarat when he was getting land at Rs 1,290 per acre per month in Bengal and also close to a thousand crores as subsidies annually at the expense of the farmers of Singur and taxpayers of West Bengal.”
The West Bengal government had acquired the 997-acre plot for the Singur Nano factory for Rs 120 crore, and actually distributed less than Rs 100 crore to farmers.
Industrialists who are also big investors in Bengal were shocked that Ratan Tata chose to write the letter. On condition of anonymity they said, “It was completely unnecessary. It is also embarrassing for the West Bengal government.” They also said Tata was passing his own failure to manage the problem to Mamata Banerjee.
“Tata earns Rs 100 crore a day, he could have given even one day’s earnings to the farmers, but he just chose to ignore them,” said an industrialist.
Another Kolkata-based industrialist added that the problem had been brewing for some time now, but Tata chose to look the other way. He said Ratan Tata was getting into politics by asking the young citizens to make a choice and that too when he refused to participate in the discussions under the aegis of Governor Gopal Gandhi, saying it would have to be solved by two political parties.
Even Tata group insiders were baffled at the timing of the advertisement, especially since the company had pulled out the project from the state.
West Bengal government officials working closely on the Singur project said this advertisement did not help in any way.
The CPI(M) party mouthpiece, People's Democracy, had in early October charged the Tatas with taking an unreasonable position and equated the Tatas with Mamata Banerjee. The editorial alleged that the Tata group took the stand that unless everybody co-operates they would not continue and like Mamata Benerjee, took an unreasonable position.
The CPI(M) mouthpiece denied that the government of West Bengal had failed to provide security to the Tata Motors Nano factory at Singur.
