In striking contrast to the Ananda Bazar Patrika which - as usual - shows its abominable ability to suppress facts ( spiking the other view), The Statesman does the opposite.
Today it carried two exposes of the state government: 150 farmers wrote to the Block Dev Officer asking the latter to return the land they gave in exchange of returning the compensation cheque (BDO confirmed) and several companies like Proton in Malaysia and Hyundai in Chennai have manufacturing capacities much greater than the 650-crore by the Tata Motors. Dr Dipankar Dasgupta, formerly a professor at ISI, every day defends the Tatas more than the TML does in the blatantly pro-CPM TV channel - 24 Ghanta - even justifying real estate strip.
The online edition does not contain the portion inside bracket, I have typed from page 8. There the TML says, it needs land for "Transmission shops to make Engines and gear boxes" at Singur. Yesterday, Statesman carried a news that CITU and AITUC units agitate at Kharagpur Aptech factory of Kharagpur, 150 km away from Singur by road, that manufactures gear box for Nano. Similar gear boxes for Nano are manufactured at Kinetic Honda in Pune.
Here are the bunch of news items in The Statesman.
New twist to Singur (http://thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=1&theme=&usrsess=1&id=223157)
Rajib Chatterjee
KOLKATA, Sept. 18: In an interesting development, more than 150 farmers of Singur who had given their land voluntarily for the Nano project have submitted applications to the block development officer expressing their willingness to return their compensation cheques and get their land back.
Mr Prasenjit Chakraborty, BDO, Singur confirmed to The Statesman: "I have received their applications. They want to get their land back by submitting (returning) their compensation cheques."
The applications have been forwarded to the district magistrate Hooghly, Mrs Neelam Meena, and authorities of West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC). The applicants have not given any reasons in their applications as to what prompted them to ask for their land back from the state government.
Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee members alleged that these farmers had been forced to part with their plots for the project by CPI-M cadres two years ago. The CPI-M, on the other hand, came up with a counter allegation, that Trinamul Congress cadres are pressuring willing farmers to submit applications to block authorities demanding return of land.
Meanwhile, the state government's initiatives to end the Singur deadlock by offering a lucrative package to unwilling farmers suffered a setback after a majority of farmers refused to accept the government's new offer.
Reports available to Singur block office states that only six out of more than 2,000 unwilling farmers of Singur have accepted the fresh rehabilitation package which the state government had announced on 14 September. The package was announced to pacify unwilling farmers who have been waging a war to reoccupy their plots.
According to Mr Chakraborty, only six unwilling farmers have submitted application to the district magistrate stating that they don't have any objection to part with their land for the Nano project if compensation, as stated in the fresh package, is provided to them. "The package was expected to attract agitating farmers who have been spearheading a movement against the state government for the last three years for 'forcibly' taking away their land. But it has failed to convince agitating farmers," said another block official. Having realised that the fresh package has failed to attract agitating farmers, local CPI-M leaders have been mobilising cadres to convince unwilling farmers.
Tata claim
A statement by Tata Motors today said 17 farmers who lost their lands in Singur to make way for its car plant have applied for the new rehabilitation package announced by the West Bengal government.
>>
Stalemate persists (http://thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=1&theme=&usrsess=1&id=223156)
KOLKATA, Sept. 18: The imbroglio over the small car factory at Singur showed little signs of being resolved. While Mr Prakash Karat, CPI-M general secretary, said that the state government was taking steps to solve the problem, an appointment which the Trinamul Congress had fixed with Governor Mr Gopalkrishna Gandhi was cancelled today. A senior official at Writers' Buildings said: "The chapter is closed as far as the state government is concerned as there is nothing more to offer". The Singur issue figured at a meeting in the state Assembly today during the visit of a French Senate delegation. Meanwhile, Miss Mamata Banerjee, Trinamul Congress chief, said a party delegation would apprise the Governor of the developments. SNS
>>
997 acres? CM, experts must come clean (http://thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=1&theme=&usrsess=1&id=223155)
Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, Sept. 18: Does Tata Motors need 997 acres for its "integrated" car manufacturing facility at Singur? At his interaction with the media yesterday, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had insisted the company needs all that land. He went on to say the government's experts had independently corroborated this requirement. But inquiries by The Statesman suggest the experts may not have been right and that comparable car manufacturing facilities around the world do with far less and if this is so, the CM ought to explain how his experts came to their finding.
Mr Bhattacharjee had maintained that at the most 70 acres from the project area could be returned to unwilling farmers. He had said that "the central issue was not 50 or 100 acres but how much land would be required for setting up an integrated factory and how much could be taken out of the project area". Mr Bhattacharjee had added that the land requirement was not "merely a claim by the Tatas, but we have consulted experts before arriving at the quantum of land required for the project".
Tata Motors is said to need some 650 acres or so for the manufacturing plant and about 350 acres for ancillary units, to together make up the 997-acre "integrated" facility that Mr Bhattacharjee spoke of. Reports suggest that the company will make 100,000 cars annually, but that the Singur plant will eventually have capacity to produce 350,000 cars.
Proton, the Malaysian car company, makes 250,000 vehicles a year on a 250-acre factory in Shah Alam. Hyundai Motors India has installed capacity to make 530,000 cars at its 500-acre plant near Chennai. Ford Motors makes 300,000 vehicles annually on a 345-acre plot in Turkey. Toyota Motors makes 500,000 cars plus 500,000 engines in a 7 million square feet factory (about 180 acres) in the United States. Honda Motors makes nearly 200,000 cars on a 231-acre plant in Thailand. On the basis of land used by these facilities, it would seem that about one acre of land would be required to make 1,000 cars annually. Tata Motors would then need 350 acres ~ and not 650 acres ~ to make 350,000 cars, perhaps even less as the Nano is much smaller than the cars made by the other companies.
The Statesman asked Tata Motors Limited two questions:
1. Could you share with us the basis on which the Nano project needs 997 acres for the integrated production facility at Singur, given that comparable industry facilities producing as many ~ or more ~ cars than you propose to annually manage in much smaller areas?
2. Facts on land use by car production facilities in India and abroad collated by The Statesman would indicate that one acre for every 1,000 cars produced annually would be a fair industry benchmark. Do you agree?
Tata Motors replied: If the implicit purpose of these questions is to allude that Tata Motors and the vendors will be using land for other than manufacturing the car and its aggregates/components, let us proactively inform you that neither Tata Motors nor its vendors, being located at the Vendor Park, are creating realty for sale or any such purpose. We do not require to do it ~ it is not our business.
(If you have come across studies, we too can cite studies that in atypical plant of 100,000 unit capacity, minimum space requirement for the main plant is about 450 acres, increasing by 25 per cent for every additional 100,000 capacity. This is without taking into account requirement of vendors, who may collectively need about 90 per cent of the area needed by the main plant on a conservative basis.
The Singur Nano plant's capacity is 350,000. For a 350,000-unit plant, therefore, the land required would be more than 700 acres. For the vendor facilities, land required would be more than 650 acres. Together it would be more than 1300 acres.
But as you have noticed, the project is coming on much less. , Tata Motors' project at Singur for manufacturing Nano is an integrated project comprising the company's manufacturing facilities and Vendor Park , a normal feature in modern world-class auto plants. The land leased by the WBIDC to Tata Motors for its own plant and land leased to vendors setting up facilities at the adjacent vendor park is what is required for the project.
Land required for an automobile plant depends on the manufacturing process, activities in-house and that outsourced. An automobile plant comprises different activities – Press Shop to make body parts, Weld shop to join them, Paint Shop to paint the body.Engine & Transmission shops to make Engines and gear boxes. Assembly Line to assemble all of them to make the car, Test truck to test them, besides internal road utilities, R & D centre, training centre, storage areas etc. The Singur plant requires all these facilities, and hence the area.
Similarly, Vendor Park houses vendors supplying key aggregates and components for the car, without which the project is not viable. The location of the Vendor Park, next to the plant, is essential for 'just-in-time' inventory management.)
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