Lost Opportunity-Tata Motor's NANO out of Singur (West Bengal)

i sincearely hope you can say the same if your land has been aquired against the will of yours.

with due respect the the above statement of yours shows complete ignorence of the law of the land. the acquired land has been leased to the tatas (for 99 years) and cannot be given to any third party without the concent of the tatas. dont think the tatas are interested "for some other industrial project" or giving their consent going by their past record. aquiring land for industrial purpose and leaving it to rot is nothing new for the tatas. they have done it in orrisa (more than 3500 acres) and now its bengals turn.

suffering is also a part of history. India has suffered under its colonial master for 300 years. but that suffering has produced some ideologies which will guide not only India but the whole manking for eternity.

everybody, every state, every country, in short everything has its own uniqueness. has its own charm. mindless apeing leaves one no where. some years ago used to hear that bombay will become manhatten. bombay changed to mumbai. now we hear mumbai will become shanghai. dont know what mumbai will be, but if you ask me i would like bombay to be bombay. or mumbai to be mumbai, if you please

cheers....

What is now a loss to West Bengal may be a gain for one of the state vying for NANO Project. Every Chief Minister worth his salt is trying to woo TATA in a spectacle never seen before.
Some of the State

Gujrat : Here Tatas have advantages of Land availability( three locations identified incl one near Amehdabad). Tata have several factories may fit into their plan.

Maharashtra: Pune, primarily. There they have Auto Factories for various other vehicles. Components Vendors are also available here with ready to spare capacity.

Orissa: 3500 acres available with TATA. Law and order problem .

Karnataka: Dharwad. Already have sufficient space. Advantage of Airport and Nearby Port, good for export.

AP: Cm promised all requirements would be met.

Uttaranchal: Tata are planning to get NANO off the ground from here to meet the deadline. Already Land has been allotted.Vendors have also been promised speedy allocation of Land. Availability of Land is no problem. People of the area are nice and peaceful by nature.

Others are HP, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, MP etc.

Looks Like TATAs are having a whale of a time. Their CEOs and senior officers are meeting with CMs and deciding comparative advantages/disadvantages

Each state is trying to better their offer. That is how competitive our economy has become. Now it does not depend on political patronage of Industry but rather industrial patronage of Politics.

Narendra Modi and Yeddiyurappa are looking good with upping the ante. On the other hand left and Congress , both may end up with egg on their face.Now unless AP wins the race, congress would be unable to tom tom their achievement in next election.

I have a feeling when left was trying to scuttle the Nuke deal, it was left to defend itself on Nandigram. J&K was given to Congress and their CM was thrown down. And to keep left further occupied, Singur was given to them to manage while congress got busy sealing Nuclear deal. See Mamta and Amar were together on the Stage.

Assam violence is a counter attack for Orrisa. Tarun Gogoi will not be able to manage and if president's rule is imposed in Orrisa the Congress would be open to charge of partisan action. Coalition politics and different ruling parties in Centre and state has left strange scenario to contend with. All this may not be true. But then industrialization would become casualty of Politics.
Election years bring lot of action from stakeholders and all of them may not be ethical.

Unfortunately , there is so much scope for industrialization and all round development for each state that there need not be any jostling on these matters resulting in loss of precious lives and displacement of families. There would be more Nano type cars and other states could very well offer competitors advantages over others.


States have to provide

1. Land (Non agricultural land). When Jamshedpur was setup there were no major township in the 200 km periphery of it. The site was in the midst of Jungle a village called Sakchi. Now it is a major industrial Town in Jharkhand.

2. Good Road , Rail and Air connectivity. Port should be available withing 500 Kms. for easy transportation .

3. Power, preferably cheap but should be available 24x7 even if little costly.

4.Better Law and Order situation.

5. Responsive Administrative Machinery. Nobody likes slow moving indecisive machinery. CMs have great role to play in this. Single window system might be of some help.

6.Easy availability of skilled and unskilled manpower and very few labour problems.

7. Some sort of concession on few items:
Stamp duty, Sales tax, Income tax holiday,Excise Duty Holiday.Land at lower cost.

8.Local entrepreneurs to set up ancillary and other sectors.

Well anything to add to above thought.

pk


ps: It might be a good idea to incorporate a clause in lease agreement that if the intended project does not come up then lease is terminated and land would be allocated for other purposes. Revenue loss would be entirely responsibility of Leasing Party.Normally lease agreement does provide for some sort of termination arrangement.I don't know whether it is the case with Singur as Land could be used for other similar purposes.However if Land is acquired under Land Acquisition act for a specific purpose then its entirely different matter altogether.In any case return of Land to Land owners may not be legally feasible but Govt could use it.

We may have forgotten that the Tata's where intially offered Land near Kharagpur,where there was no dispute regarding agricultural land.But Tatas selected Singur ,where land had mostly 2-4 yields per annum,at that moment Left Front succumbed becoz they where on receiving end & the Local Party Machinery misguided the Boss's of Kolkata that they would be able to garner the land within no time,becoz of their (the local CPM parties) vested interest.
Even initially Mamata asked them to select Land strech just opposite of the National Highway,means the Right hand side of NH than the Left hand side,becoz the right hand side land was having max 1 yield & slightly Low land.
But the Tatas where disagreeable.
Now when the pesants revolted just by not accepting a single paisa compensation,we thump our chest hai hai Industrialization.
Tell me why a factory cant be set just on the opposite side than the present site,dont give me any crap of cost effectiveness blah blah .

Around 1000 acres is now under Tata's lease for 99 yrs @ Rs 5 crore per annum Lease fee.This Rs 5 crore is to be adjusted from a soft loan of Rs 200 crore to the Tatas by West-Bengal Govt !! Apart from 21 yrs TOTAL VAT FREE.

When DLF is giving Rs 26 Lacks per acre & here Rs 6 Lacks,i knew Amitav Bacchan is son in law of Bengal did not knew the adopted son Ratan Tata (unmarried) to be son in law of Left Front Govt.

I am a Capital Mkt trader & this is my only source of income i am 100 % for industrialization but in this specific case lost some respect for Mr Ratan Tata,who 30 yrs back was entrusted with 'Nelco' ,an organization at that time was in Red,he single handedly turned it.Mr Ratan Tata had to prove his salt vis-a-vis Rusi Mody the GIANT ,the Doyen & Mr Ratan Tata earned his position to become the Boss.
At this age he can still fly a fighter plane having all his mental & physical abilities well tuned.
He has shown the World that Tisco is the ONLY steel manufacturer including Mr Lakshmi Mittal's companies,that COST of Tisco per tonne is LOWEST,that Tisco's balance sheet can be leveraged to Buy a 10 times it's size Corus,not by Mittal's methodology but by sheer excellence in Manufacturing.

Keeping all this in mind i say that Mr Ratan Tata behaved partisanly & forgone Rs 500 crore LOSS to share holders.

I still believe as per the 'Game Theory' ,may be this is not what we see,may be there are few more things to happen in future.

Hi!

Some background for Tata Motors.

The all time Great JRD had decided to get into a new business and had appointed a young Project Officer to identify a company that could be taken over for this venture.

This Project officer identified a company "Futura Automotive" near Pune which was in auto ancilliary, and also had a lot of land in unutilised condition.... few hundreds of acres.

Take over went smooth. Name was changed... company grew an had it's IPO.

The Project officer then had already become the Technical Director first and later became the Executive director. JRD was the CMD.

Then for expansion purposes, and with obvious reasons, Jamshedpur was chosen.

Company grew, and now the Executive director became the Joint MD.

Later he became the MD, with JRD was still the chairman.

Finally, he became the CMD, with JRD only as a director on the board.

It is said that after his death, as a tribute to him, one car was named with two letters each from his name and surname.... Sumant Moolgaonkar.... and the SUMO was launched.

And with this background, when someone metions "Telco also has a plant in Pune" it is definately NOT the complete information.

Mamta trying for a better and fair price for farmer's land.... is a joke. Now the prices have crashed BELOW what they were two years ago..... Thanks o Mamta.

I wonder, if Tata's had refused any kickbacks to Mamta that had led this agitation. I do NOT see any other reason, and politicians in India are capable of doing it. Like I heard that the anti-smoker law was a result of refusal of kickbacks from tobacco majors to the concerned Minister. We shall never know the facts.

Cheers!
SS

Will Tata Motors use the Singur fiasco as an excuse to renege on the promise of 1 lakh small car and increase the price of the car?

What asish says is correct. Why TATA choose Singur instead of Khragpur may be because of proximity to Kolkata and it is straddling one of the busiest National Highways. Fertile Land for industrialisation may not be a good policy.TATA should have the confidence to make any place a paradise on earth.

The argument that TATA have a timeline to meet and promises to keep, for walking away from Singur may not hold water. Having identified Land and invested so much money, they have to start all over again. Even if accelerated mode is adopted, still it would take one to one and half yeat for new plant to come up. NANO was in anycase being produced at Pantnagar plant for its first launch. So TATA could have waited.

The only argument which goes in favour of walking away is that there was no solution within six month horizon. Safety and security of employees were threatened and plant could not function under police protection unless there is a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

Rs 500 cr or more that TATA have spent may be peanuts for the scale of operation which is projected. In anycase shareholders do not worry much about these things if there is ultimately profit at the end of the road.Mostly short term investors or traders would worry least and seek better fortunes elsewhere and wait for NANO to turn corner before investing or trading.

Thanks SS for pointing out SUMO story. It is inspirational.

Importance of NANO in Singur was not in investment or other benefits, but it was a Statement of Policy by WB Govt. NANO , by itself , is a revolutionary product that has capacity to galvanise car markets in new areas just as Maruti did earlier and Ford did century ago.

pk

she is doing what any polititian would have done. after all she is also a politition.

but then who is affected by this. some odd land sharks and their comrade in arms. a farmer does not buy or sells lands on daily basis.

its not about knowing the facts, but knowing about prevalent ground realities which i am sorry say, you are not much aware off.

and yeah let me add, your kickback theory is not irrelevent going by the the records of our polititians. but dont you think it shoud be applicable to our comrades also. how much money the comrades pocketed? what raises eyebrow is the fact that the comrades even refused to divulge the agreement which the govt has signed with the tatas. whats the secret about it, after all its no state secret.

1 lakh is not 1 lakh but atleast 1.3 when it reaches your hand even if there were no fiasco. you might have missed the * after the 1 lakh price tag