The place called Lalgarh is situated near Jhargram on the northwestern side of the west Medinipur district of West Bengal. It is not very far from Salboni area located in the same district. Around 5000 acres of land have been acquired for the Salboni project, of which 4,500 acres have been handed over by the government and 500 acres have been purchased directly by Jindal from the landowners. According to newspaper reports, a large portion of this land was vested with the government for distribution among landless tribal people as part of the much-publicised land reform programme and also included forests tracts. Moreover, although the land was originally acquired for a usual steel plant, in September 2007, Jindal got SEZ status for the project, with active backing from the state government, which, as always, dispensed with the requirements for following most regulations for building and running the plant, including such crucial requirements as doing an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). A government that has in reality sold itself out to big capitalboth domestic and foreignis not at all bothered about the setting up of an SEZ having a polluting steel plant in the middle of a forested area, brutally displacing tribals from their land and endangering their means of survival. It is, thus, quite understandable that there could be major grievances among the tribals against this, although the mainstream media, as one of the spokespersons of the State policy, had constantly portrayed a very rosy picture of the entire project.
After the faltering industrialization and development bid of the left front government in Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal, Salboni in West Medinipur district was the next on the list in the so-called industrialisation process under the imperialist globalization in Bengal. Left front went a step ahead after Singur and N a n d i g r a m s forcible land a c q u i s i t i o n episodes and handed over 4,500 acres of governments vested land and forest area to the Jindal Group. Taking en-route of deception another 500 acres of land were bought from the tribals by the Jindals for their upcoming 35,000 crore rupees mega steel factory (JSW Bengal Steel Limited) on 5,000 acres of land in total. Here a relevant matter that comes up is that tribal land is not transferable legally and transfer of right of the forest area is unlawful as well. But to the utter amazement of the people of Bengal, the whole process took place and the tribal welfare department and the forest department maintained a studied silence. And the most amazing fact is that in 32 years of so-called left front rule in Bengal. This vested land remained vested and instead of distributing the land to the poor landless tribals it was handed over to the steel tycoon. Jindals had their foundation stone laying ceremony of the project on 2nd November, 2008. The ceremony wore the look of a CPI (M) party Congress or partys state conference as the entire ceremony was organised by the CPI (M).The red scaffold at the entrance of the venue bore the word of CITU written in the middle with Silpa chai (we need industrialisation) slogans inscribed on both flanks. DYFI flags were fluttering all over with unplugged enthusiasm of the party leaders and cadres taking care of every tit-bit, even of the invitee list for the programme. Nothing was amiss as in a CPI (M) partys conference with placards, posters, festoons, banners flags all over. Central minister of Steel, Fertilizer and Chemicals, Ram Vilas Paswan attended with the West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjees, Trade & Industry minister Nirupam Sen and other left front and Congress ministers. In a difficult situation of global meltdown when the crisis in the capitalist system is being felt all over the globe and international steel market is at its new low, Sajjan Jindal, owner of Jindal Steel Works, Bengal made pious platitudes to the poor tribals and people of Bengal. His 35,000 crore steel factory with a capacity of producing 1 crore tonnes of steel annually will come up in three stages. According to him, as published in the CPI (M) mouth piece (Bengali daily, Ganasakti, 3-11-08), within the year 2012 the plant would produce 30 lakh metric tonnes of steel and it will be gradually doubled to 60 lakh metric tonnes by the year 2015. It claimed they will reach one crore metric tonnes per annum by 2020, rendering direct employment to 5,000, 12,000, and 20,000 respectively and will create double the number of indirect employment. Henceforth, in an attempt to clarify his fake transparency on buying the land from the tribals and rehabilitation issue, he said, they were cautious ...read more on http://jharkhand.ning.com/forum/topics/singur-to-lalgarh-via
