Singur: another political setback for Left in WB

POLITICAL GAIN: With Mamata claiming victory, the TMC has begun replacing the CPI-M as a friend of the dispossessed.

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Singur: After two weeks of deadlock over farmland in Singur, the way for Tata Motors' small car project Nano was cleared late on Sunday as West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi brokered an uneasy truce between Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee and state Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

Many now question if the resolution was a compromise made by a desperate government that knew it could not give up the "dream" Nano project.

"I believe the people of Bengal want this project to come up and Mr Ratan Tata understands that," Industries Minister Nirupam Sen said a few days back.

On Sunday, Buddhadeb went out of his way to accommodate Mamata's demands in order to avert an industrial tragedy. He could have earned popularity by voluntarily making the concessions long ago.

But now with Mamata Banerjee claiming victory, the TMC has begun replacing the CPI-M as a friend of the dispossessed.

This is not the first time that the CPI-M has owned up having committed a blunder. In the past, the government admitted to making a huge mistake in Nandigram.

Nandigram violence, which Buddhadeb had termed as a "political and administrative failure," started a downhill journey for the CPI-M in West Bengal's rural hinterland. The panchayat elections showed how these mistakes have been converted into electoral gains by the TMC.

Nonetheless, the fact that the two adversaries — TMC and CPI-M — came together on a common platform to discuss Singur, however grudgingly, augurs well for West Bengal's political equation, as it may have opened up a window for future negotiations.

(With inputs from Diptosh Majumdar and Sukarno Sen)