It's Singur, once again

The recent gyrations focussing on the “Land Development Ordinance” – which fulfilled the promise made by Ms Mamata Banerjee to the disgruntled landlosers in Singur that she would return their land if she came to power – suggests strongly that the Chief Minister will stop at nothing literally to keep her word.

This, certainly, is a favourable trait of any Government, but then there is a way in which such things are usually done – which may entail some delay, established procedures which will have to be followed.

After all, Ms Banerjee herself set the best example in this direction when she exhorted the new Speaker, at the time of his election, to give proportionately more importance to the Opposition in the Assembly if the drawbacks in the State Government's handling of issues were to be highlighted properly.

Unseemly haste

Clearly, the Ordinance flipflop was the direct result of unseemly haste in getting the land-promise fulfilled, especially in view of the fact that the Singur land campaign was the initial spark for the Trinamool riding to power.

Ms Banerjee wanted to let the Singur land-campaigners to know that she had not forgotten them after coming to power, which led her to rush headlong into getting the Ordinance out, under which around 400 acres of the 997 acres set aside for the proposed Tata Nano plant would be returned to their owners. But in doing so, a number of settled conventions involving the issuing of Ordinances were flouted, which led the Government to revise its stand and wait for the Assembly session to get under way for passage of a Bill .

The new legislation principally will amend the old Land Act so that land once acquired can be “returned” to their original owners.

The other, and more important, aspect of the land being actually returned to the people concerned will be the next step, and it is here that a number of implementation-problems are bound to crop up. One hopes that Ms Banerjee's Government is able to tackle the hurdles effectively because if it fails to do so, it will be extremely unfortunate in that her most important promise to those who enabled her to dislodge the Left Front regime will remain unfulfilled.

Investor summit

The long and the short of it is that this is not the time to look back and get bogged down in controversies which will get West Bengal nowhere. The time has come to break with the past and set the ball rolling so that the children of the State can look forward to a better standard of life.

The proposed June 18 investor summit which is to be held in Kolkata should be treated as nothing short of a milestone in this new journey. Admittedly, the prevailing work-culture is not of the very best vintage, but this should not deter Ms Banerjee in her economic task because, among other things, she has an able economic and finance ministerial team by her side to help her forge a new path.

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