Today’s headlines scream Ratan Tata’s comments to Barkha Dutt in an NDTV interview that was partially telecast yesterday afternoon on NDTV Profit. I’ve seen that and I’ve also read what the main newspapers have to say this morning. [Picture source at right].
Opposition leaders in Bengal threaten to sue Tata for defamation for saying that his company’s business rivals are fueling the Singur controversy. Here is what he said (excerpted from today’s The Telegraph, Kolkata edition):
Let me just say it is not just political, because I happen to know that some of our competitors are also fuelling some of this fire, which they would be very happy if the project got delayed.
If, going by the main opposition’s charge, he said his business rivals are ‘sponsoring’ their agitation against Singur plant (though clearly Tata didn’t say that), let’s see what is happening on ground.
It is easy to conclude from newspaper and TV reports that there is a heterogeneous mass of protesters at the dharna manch where the opposition leader is on indefinite fast. From ultra-left to ultra-right, they all are there. Even Medha Patkar had to run in occasionally to lend her support (not to dharna manch though).
When disparate groups meet for something, there is a cause for suspicion. Because, even though the immediate plan here is to scuttle Tata’s Singur plant, each has its own long-term agenda. They’ve met together since on their own none has enough mass support to carry on its ‘struggle’.
It’s here that Ratan Tata’s remark assumes significance. Since a motley group with individual interests has congregated on Singur issue, who knows if one or two elements in them are actually playing a proxy game!
Supposing that is so, what is noteworthy is that despite an emotional agitation for more than 3 weeks interspersed with bandhs and rasta-rokos, there is virtually no groundswell of support for them. This is so glaring that this must be telling on those who are taking part in the agitation.
I’ve a strange feeling that the opposition leader’s indefinite fast is in fact her way of atonement for the unprecedented shameful vandalism her colleagues unleashed at the Assembly House not long back in her presence (see my post, SHAME).
This then is the truth on ground. In spite of massive inverse publicity on Singur issue, people in Bengal have remained steadfast in their belief that perhaps the car plant at Singur and more such plants are an absolute must for the state’s industrial revival. This is precisely the reason why Ratan Tata made these ‘famous’ remarks (excerpted from today’s HT, Kolkata edition):
If I believe that we were doing something wrong, then I will be the first one to pull out. If I believe that this is being manipulated and turned around to meet some specious cause, then I think, what I would do is to dig my heels in. I am unfortunately a person that has often said, you put a gun to my head and pull the trigger or take the gun away, I won’t move my head.
There is no doubt that such powerful comments can indeed come from a person of the stature of Ratan Tata, a man of eminence, who is a Padma Bhushan having received the honor on 50th Republic Day in the year 2000.
Today he turns 69. It’s my privilege to wish him happy birthday. For him here’s a slightly altered Douglas McArthur quote:
Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up hope wrinkles the soul.
Related reading:
- Ratan Tata’s interview by Rajiv Dubey on the future of Indian Manufacturing.
- Arundhati Roy and Singur
- Bengal’s Singur
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