Singur farmers did not want the Tatas to leave as they were upset only with the government package, and today the same farmers were not in the mood for any agitation, Anuradha Talwar, the president of Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samiti (PBKMS), said here today.
“The farmers of Singur did not want Tata Motors to go back- they were simply not happy with the package given by the state government and had not accepted it”, Talwar said.
Talwar had led the group that had blocked Tata Motors engineers and foreign experts working on Nano project site in Singur from leaving the factory on August 29 till midnight.
This marked a major escalation of the agitation against the plant.
Tata Motors decided to stop work in Singur that day and abandoned the project later, blaming Mamata Banerjee of Trinamul Congress for it.
Talwar claimed today that her group sticking to the demand for return of 300 acres to unwilling farmers, but would relaunch the agitation only when local farmers wanted and also in the way they wanted.
She admitted that returning land to landlosers was not legally possible.
A negotiated settlement was perhaps the only way with state government help.
PBKMS supported Trinamool Congress (TC) led protests in Singur in 2008.
Talwar claimed her team was working on generating employment opportunities in the region at present.
She said she was involved in labour related issues in the state and worked on implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
West Bengal had not been able to utilise Rs1064.18 crore or 67.4 per cent of the allocation for NREGA, she pointed out.
With the fiscal coming to a close, PBKMS demanded that the state should make arrangements for providing 100 days of work as guaranteed under the NREGA. Talwar alleged that a large section of the bureaucrats and elected representatives ensured that little employment was provided to rural workers so that wages remained depressed.
Her NGO cited data to claim that West Bengal created only a marginal number of days of employment per household and lagged far behind the national average.
Number of days of employment created per household up to January 23, 2009, in Bengal was 22, against a national average of 40. Rajasthan topped the list with 60 days of work.
In 2006-07, when NREGA was launched, only 14 days were created in Bengal against a national average of 43 with the best state managing to provide 85 days of work. "There are issues with payment of wages that are tied to performance - hardly a worker gets paid the minimum wage of Rs81, for after an eight-hour work shift, he around Rs20-40", Talwar claimed.
