I was in Kolkata during the Singur takeover by Police and local CPI(M) cadres- visiting home from USA for 3 weeks. Couple of observations: 1. CPI(M) should be thrown out of power-only way is Army rule for at least a year, to neutralize the cadre and criminal strength build over 30 years. 2. For the 1st time CPI(M) did something anti-poor and pro-industry- thats good for Bengal. Hope this succeeds, since in the long term the farmers and the area surrounding the new Tata project will be urbanized. Also farmers are worst off in Bengal and rest of India. They are selling tomato for 50 paisa/kg, whereas the market price is Rs7/kg. 3. Mamata-didi is right about going against CPI(M) rule. ( so Singure is just a story to start with). In fact she is heard to be having food in the toilet at night (local sources), otherwise you can imagine the health condition of someone fasting for more than 3-4 weeks. 4 Finally, no matter what part of India, we should be pro-industrialization -Tata or Ambanis or others, since finally it always benefited the locality. We are competing against China and other far-eastern economies, so some hardship will have to be undertaken initially. -from New York
