Earth Equity News

In India, Massive Protests Shut Down Tata Plant. By Emily Wax, WashPost, September 22, 2008. "Rickshaw-puller Robin Gosh hoped for a better-paying job when Tata Motors announced plans to build a factory in [Singur in] India's West Bengal state to churn out the world's cheapest car. The $2,500 Nano was hailed as 'the People's Car,' and people like Gosh were going to help build it. Gosh, who lives in [Bajemelia] near the Tata factory... sold his bicycle rickshaw after he landed a job unloading trucks at the 1,000-acre plant... But in recent weeks... massive demonstrations led by the state's opposition party, the Trinamool Congress, have shut down the Tata plant... Many of Gosh's fellow villagers say they were pressured to sell their farms to West Bengal's government at a pittance. The land was then turned over to Tata, leaving about 1,000 farmers in this fertile potato belt along the Ganges River out of work. Now Gosh has found himself out of work, as well -- and at odds with his neighbors, who say they oppose the Tata factory because of what they call the company's predatory land-grabbing practices. 'I thought that if the factory is there, the next generation would have a better future,' said a furious Gosh, sipping tea in a monsoon rain with other jobless men. 'Now my neighbors say: Go to Tata, you traitor. Let them take care of you.'"