Singur

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Singur
Singur
State - District(s)	West Bengal - Hooghly
Coordinates	22.81° N 88.23° E
Area - Elevation	- 14 m
Time zone	IST (UTC+5:30)
Population (2001) - Density	19,539 -

Singur is a census town in Hooghly district in the Indian state of West Bengal. Singur railway station is 34 km from Howrah Station on the Howrah-Tarakeswar line. It is 2 km ahead of Kamarkundu junction, the crossing point of Howrah-Bardhaman chord and Howrah-Tarakeshwar lines. It is just off the Dankuni-Shaktigarh Durgapur Expressway.

1 Geography
2 Demographics
3 Economy
4 Politics
5 References
6 External link
7 See also

[edit] Geography

Singur is located at 22.81° N 88.23° E.^[1] It has an average elevation of 14 metres (45 feet).

[edit] Demographics

As of 2001 India census,^GRIndia Singur had a population of 19,539. Males constitute 51% of the population and females 49%. Singur has an average literacy rate of 76%, higher than the national average of 59.5%: male literacy is 81%, and female literacy is 71%. In Singur, 9% of the population is under 6 years of age.

[edit] Economy

[edit] Proposed car factory

Tata Motors have planned to construct their $2,000 car factory at Singur. The small car is scheduled to roll out of the factory by 2008. They expect the small car to mark a watershed in the global automobile industry.^[2] Singur would become a mini-auto city. As many as 70 vendors would set up shop along with the factory. The project brings in an investment of Rs 1,000 crore to Singur.^[3]

[edit] Land acquisition

This article documents a current event.
Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

While the ruling party has gone all out^[4] for acquisition of 997 acres (404 ha) of multi-crop land required for the car factory, questions have been raised about the land acquisition by the opposition parties and others spearheaded by Mamata Banerjee.^[5] Along with Trinamool Congress, SUCI, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, CPI(ML) New Democracy, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Kanu Sanyal) and civil society groups are active in the protest against land acquisition at Singur.

The veteran leader Jyoti Basu has clarified, “There is no provision in the (land acquisition) law making it obligatory for the government to seek consent for acquiring land. Yet the government has sought it. And the government is correct when it says that it has got the consent of all farmers whose land it has acquired.”

All eight business chambers in Kolkata have expressed concern over the politicisation of the industrial process.^[6] However, with allegations of police excesses,^[7]^[8]^[9] the issue has drawn in protestors from beyond the political arena– the social activist Medha Patkar, and the author-activists Arundhati Roy and Mahasweta Devi. However, others like the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen have appeared to defend the West Bengal Governmen'st decision to give agricultural land to Tata Motors for setting up a car plant in Singur. He termed the opposition to handing over agricultural land for the project "politically motivated."^[10]^[11] Mamata Banerjee brandished on 21 December 2006 affidavits^[12] of farmers owning, in all, 387 acres (157 ha) of land to buttress her claim that the chief minister had been lying all along about having received the consent of farmers for acquiring 920 acres (372 ha) of land at Singur. She said some Singur farmers had filed affidavits at Chandannagore court that afternoon, submitting that they had not consented to land acquisition.^[13] The total area claimed to have been acquired without consent has risen to 488 acres (197 ha).^[14]A 10 km long fence^[15] has been put up around the area. Tatas have secured ‘permissive possession’ of the land.^[16] Only 10 percent multi-crop land has been taken.^[17] West Bengal government has put up its land acquisition list on the web.^[18]The West Bengal government, in its newly released “status report on land acquisition at Singur for Tata Motors’ small car project”, has statistically proved that Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee and her party leaders, while alleging forceful land acquisition from unwilling farmers, did not have the remotest idea of the land-map of the project site. Mamata during her fasting days, gave six separate lists to the West Bengal governor, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, where she highlighted 406 acres (164 ha) of land at Singur as being forcefully acquired by the state government. The status report, the state government has pointed out that of these 350 acres (142 ha) were not even a part of the proposed Tata Motors’ project site and hence was never acquired.^[19]

[edit] Construction of plant

Tatas ceremonially initiated the construction of the plant on 21 January 2007.^[20]

Tata Motors on Sunday said it has started construction of its small car plant in Singur after approval of the West Bengal government.^[21] This construction has been started even before the land has been officially handed over to the Tatas.^[22] The Director (Industries) of the West Bengal Government M. V. Rao, overseeing the entire project, said although the Government was yet to hand over the land to Tata Motors officially, the company was permitted to start initial phases of construction work. The formal handover of the land would take place in one or two weeks, he added.

With the project work on in full swing and agitations proving ineffective, the Naxalite faction of the ‘Save Singur Farmland Committee’ has resorted to threats and violence against the locals who have voluntarily sold land for the project or are getting involved in construction of the fencing.^[23]