India’s cheap car plant remains shut

Protests against a factory being built in eastern India to make the world’s cheapest car forced work to halt for a second day Saturday as vehicle giant Tata Motors mulled abandoning the plant.

“There has been no improvement in the ground situation so far, hence the conditions are still not conducive for resuming work today,” Tata Motors said in a statement.

“We continue to assess the situation closely” at the plant in Singur in the Marxist-ruled West Bengal state, said the company making the $2,500 compact car, known as the ‘Nano’ and billed as the world’s cheapest.

The protesters say poor farmers were forcibly evicted to make way for the factory and want 400 acres (160 hectares) returned. The government acquired 997 acres for the project but activists insist the project needs only 600 acres.

The halt to work came a week after Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata conglomerate, warned he would move the plant from the state if the protests kept up at Singur, on the outskirts of state capital Kolkata.

Tata Motors, India’s top vehicle maker, was expected to make a decision soon on the fate of the plant in which the caompany has already invested 350 million dollars.

At the company’s general meeting in Kolkata earlier this month, Ratan Tata said, “We would move, whatever the cost, to protect our people.”

“I can’t bring our managers and their families to West Bengal if they are going to be beaten, if there is going to be violence constantly,” said Ratan Tata, who conceived of the flagship project as a way to get India’s masses off motorbikes and into cars.

The shutdown came after police had to escort hundreds of workers on Thursday from the factory when angry demonstrators blocked the exit.

Thousands of protesters yelled “Go back, go back,” when some labourers reported for work on Saturday at the plant, which according to the government is 85 percent complete.

A court on Friday ordered security forces to clear the highway outside the plant that is the main thoroughfare for bringing supplies to Kolkata.

But protesters continued to block it, squatting on the road and holding placards saying “Give Back Our Land” as heavily armed police protected the factory gates. The road has been blocked for a week.

West Bengal police inspector general Raj Kanojia said the plant site had turned into a “sanitation hell with protesters relieving themselves along the boundary walls, eating and cooking their meals and dumping garbage.”

The West Bengal government wooed the Tatas to set up the plant in the impoverished state to create jobs.

India’s top business leaders have warned the country’s global image as an investment destination could suffer a major setback if the tea-to-trucks group was forced to withdraw the small car project from West Bengal.

“If the House of Tatas can face such resistance, the much-needed fresh wave of industrialisation in the country could suffer,” Sunil Mittal, chairman of India’s largest mobile phone company Bharti Airtel, said in a statement.

West Bengal has been at the forefront of recent battles over land rights in India. The struggles have pitted the interests of farmers, who say they will starve without their land, against those of business and India’s government, which say the country needs to industrialise rapidly.

Tata Motors hopes to start selling the four-door car in October. But analysts say the demonstrations have put the target date for the debut of the snub-nosed car, whose innovative low-cost engineering has been hailed by industry watchers, under severe threat.