WRT: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/49662
Mr Adhiraj Bose has the right to defend the Tatas but it is depressing to note that his posting seems inspired, a PR-style defence.
Tisco, TFIR etc are milestones, but there are black sides too.
Shall we forget Kalinganagar brutality? Let me share with you what we heard from an eminent economist, Prof Amit Bhaduri. He found several people with lower limbs amputated among the protesters from the local farming community. He asked them why. Pat came the reply. Mines were around the site so that agitators couldn't enter. But people didn't know. Over a dozen of them innocently walked in and lost their limbs. That's the bonhomie between the Tatas and BJD-BSP coalition government in Orissa. Ratan Tata or anyone of Tata empire behaved like silent spectators.
During the diamond jubilee of Tisco, the Tatas claimed that there were no strikes at Jamshedpur Steel Plant and our ace journalists like R N Sinha, Nantoo Banerjee and Sunil Mukhopadhyay ( a former CPI member who worked at the USSR consulate office for nearly two decades) parroted the claim. Satyanarayan Singh, the Naxalite leader, was among the second-line leaders of AITUC-led strike there in the early 1950s and in the colonial period, Hazara Singh was deliberately run over in front of Tisco gate while on a sit-in strike. All this is documented.
About technological pride. In the mid-1990s, the Tisco officials stated that the steel plant would replace dolomite with olivine for technological upgradation. It was frontpaged in Economic Times, filed by a pliant reporter.
I read Chemistry last in 1958, thst too at the undergraduate level. I found that dolomite is double carbonate of calcium and magnesium in 50:50 ratio, used for reduction of iron ore while olivine is a mineral silicate of calcium and magnesium used for slag-preparation. I sent a questionnaire, There was no straight answer.
At a press conference, in presence of senior journalists, I asked the same question, The then Tisco managing director Dr J J Irani and Dr T K Mukherjee, a senior GM - both pampered by journos as Ph.Ds in Metallurgy from Sheffield ( as if Seffild is the Mecca of meteorology) evaded the question and Dr Irani accused me of maligning the Tatas. No journalist lodged even a token protest.
After sometime, the idea was dropped.
So everything is not bright with the Tatas. Ratan Tata kept mum when Tapasi Malik, daughter of a landless agricultural labourer, was gang-raped and killed. Had Russi Mody been there, he might have behaved differently, I think, without having any illusion about him. He was too a crony of J R D Tata.
Finally, let's have a look at a news in Indian Express today.
ASSOCHAM offers talk with Tatas to resolve the deadlock
Express News Service 2 Sep 08 (http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/ASSOCHAM-offers-talk-with-Tatas-to-resolve-the-deadlock/356300/)
Kolkata, September 1 The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM)has offered to talk to Ratan Tata to break the Singur deadlock, said Venugopal N Dhoot, Videocon chairman and former president of the chamber.
Dhoot was speaking to the media after emerging out of a meeting with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Writers' Buildings on Monday.
"Tatas should directly talk to the farmers. Their earnings are nearly Rs 100 crore a day and resolving this issue should not be a problem for them. On behalf of ASSOCHAM, I am ready to talk to the Tatas and I have already sought an appointment from Ratan Tata," Dhoot said. But he quickly added that he was not seeking to mediate on behalf of the government.
Dhoot said that West Bengal was not dependent on any specific project as its GDP has been growing and investors were interested in coming to the state.
The Videocon chairman, who plans to invest Rs 15,000 crore in steel and power projects in the state, said: "For all my projects, we are ready to offer three alternatives — cash, jobs or shares. We do not want to exploit farmers."
Dhoot added that he was ready for direct purchase of land from the farmers at Raghunathgunj in Purulia, where he is going to set up a solar power plant. "We received a royal reception from the villagers. They treated us so well. And in Jamuria in Burdwan, where we are going to set up a steel plant on 4,000 acres, we have already purchased 400 acres from private parties," he said.
Tata Motors, meanwhile, kept its employees away from the small car project site for the third consecutive day in the face of the siege laid by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee demanding the company to return nearly 400 acres of land to farmers.
Sankar Ray
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