West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026: 18 years after Tata Motors exit, Singur grapples with derelict land, political legacy

Singur (West Bengal): On the edge of Singur, one of Bengal's most politically loaded landscapes, men dig through the earth for rusted iron rods -- remnants of the abandoned Tata Motors Nano factory -- to be sold as scrap.

In 2008, Tata Motors abandoned plans to set up a small-car factory here amid relentless protests. The exit has caused a seismic shift in the state's political landscape, unseating the Left Front and propelling Mamata Banerjee to power.

Eighteen years on, that decision by Tata Motors still haunts Singur as it remains trapped between two ruins -- farmland that no longer yields as before and a factory that never came up.

"Neither agriculture happened, nor did industry," says 93-year-old former TMC MLA Rabindranath Bhattacharya, known here simply as 'Mastermoshai', which roughly translates to respected teacher. He was one of the prominent leaders during the Singur movement.

In 2006, the then Left Front government acquired around 1,000 acres here for Tata Motors' small-car project. TMC supremo Banerjee built a mass agitation around claims that the fertile multi-crop land was being taken from unwilling farmers.

What followed reshaped Bengal politics.

When Ratan Tata announced in October 2008 that the Nano project would be shifted to Gujarat's Sanand, it was not merely the exit of a factory. It marked the beginning of the end of the Left's 34-year rule.

Banerjee entered the Writers' Buildings, the state's seat of power, after winning the 2011 Assembly polls on the back of her leadership in the intense anti-land acquisition movements in Singur and Nandigram.

But in Singur itself, triumph has slowly turned into regret.

The Supreme Court's 2016 order returning land to "unwilling" farmers was celebrated by the TMC as vindication. On paper, the land came back. On the ground, much of it did not.

Large stretches remain pockmarked by concrete, buried iron and weeds. In some places, the topsoil removed for the factory never returned.

"I spent Rs 1.5 lakh just to clear my three bighas. Before this, we grew paddy, jute, potatoes and vegetables. The land was rich. Now it barely grows anything," said Ashish Bera, a farmer.

The irony is particularly sharp in a constituency lying in the Hooghly river basin, flanked by the Damodar and Saraswati rivers, where the soil once supported intensive farming of paddy, vegetables and flowers.

For many families, the land came back more as memory than livelihood.

Mahadev Das, once among the best-known faces of the anti-land agitation, now sits at a tea stall overlooking the barren tract.

"I had 12 bighas, tractors, power tillers and pumps. I had built a whole business around that land. Now I have nothing. We did not fight for this concrete-infested land," he said.

The most striking political shift in Singur is that many who once opposed the Nano plant now openly say they were wrong.

Bikas Das, now a car driver, was once a frontline activist.

"We were told industry must not come up on multi-crop land. We believed it. Today, we are deprived of everything. Had the factory stayed, I would have had a job," he repents.

That regret runs deepest among the young.

Sathi Das, a postgraduate who now works at a call centre in Kolkata, says her father was among the unwilling farmers. "My father got the land back, but it is not fit for cultivation. Had the factory stayed there, we would not have to leave Singur," she said.

Many of the youths who trained for jobs at the Nano plant now drive app-based cabs, work in imitation jewellery units or have migrated outside Bengal.

As the second-phase election of April 29 approaches, Singur has again become a political battlefield.

The constituency has 2,42,087 voters for these polls, down from 2,51,585 in 2024. Scheduled Castes account for over 15 per cent of the electorate, Muslims around 11.5 per cent. Nearly two-thirds of the voters live in rural areas.

Despite the anger, Singur remains one of the TMC's safest seats. The party has won here five times in a row. In 2021, sitting MLA Becharam Manna defeated Bhattacharya, then with the BJP, by 25,923 votes. The TMC also led in the constituency in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

"The people of Singur know who stood beside them when their land was being taken away. Some problems remain, but roads, social schemes and compensation have reached every family," TMC candidate and minister Becharam Manna said.

The BJP believes the mood is changing.

"Singur once voted to save land. Now people will vote for jobs. The TMC used Singur to come to power and then abandoned the people,” a local BJP leader said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose Singur for a rally in February, accusing the TMC of driving industry out of Bengal. Days later, Mamata Banerjee held her own rally here.

"The PM came and left. The CM also came and left. Neither said anything about what will happen to this land," says Bhattacharya.

That brings to the fore the political trap of Singur.

For the TMC, openly speaking of industry risks reopening the contradiction at the heart of its rise. For the BJP, demanding fresh investment means confronting the same land question that once destroyed the Left.

Political observers say Singur’s mood is now split three ways: older farmers still fear acquisition, the middle-aged feel betrayed by both politics and the movement, while the young ask who will bring jobs back? For now, at the old Nano car factory site, weeds grow taller, iron disappears in the scrap market piece by piece, and the ghost of the factory still votes in every election.