Paper short abstract:

This paper re-examines the widely debated development-displacement narratives of Singur-Nandigram, contextualising these against the contradictions embedded in the political negotiation tactics adopted by the West Bengal government to engineer a pro-market transition in its development policy.

Paper long abstract:

The India growth story has frequently been marred by increasing struggles over land acquisition-displacement, ranging from the ongoing struggles around the Posco site in Orissa to the protests over the Yamuna expressway in Uttar Pradesh and many more. This paper re-examines with one story that has attained a cult status in such development-displacement narratives - that of Singur-Nandigram in West Bengal¬. Between 2006-2008, state government initiatives to acquire land in these areas for developmental projects led to a series of protests that not only gathered political momentum to bring the government down in the subsequent elections, but also coalesced into a nationwide discourse against large scale displacement of peasantry in the name of development. The Singur-Nandigram incidents occupy a unique position in this discourse, as these happened in a state that was ruled by a communist government from 1977 to 2011, with a substantial development record of initiating large scale land reforms and democratic decentralisation.

This paper tries to present these incidents in a new light. It examines the process of negotiation that was spearheaded by political cadres of the Communist Party of India, Marxist (CPIM), trying to maximise local political benefits. It also attempts to contextualise such negotiations against a much larger process of the state trying to engineer a transition from its erstwhile development policy to a market-centric one, and argues that the celebrated failures of Singur-Nandigram are a culmination of the contradictory political character of the entire transition process, and an ideological deviation of the communist state government.