Singur: it makes sense for Tatas to return the land

Today, the Supreme Court of India asked Tatas Motors - one of the largest industrial groups in India to consider returning the land to farmers in Singur.This isn't a verdict; the Company gets the time to tell the court what it intends to do with the land acquired years ago for setting up a car factory, until of course all hell broke loose.
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The news took me back years ago, bringing alive so many memories! I was at my first job in this TV station - a fresh face in journalism, itching to report . One day I  found in my email an e-petition that said, the government of West Bengal had taken from farmers a very large stretch of very fertile land and leased it to the Tatas for setting up a car factory. The total land was 997 acres. Put together, that is 2 square km of high-yielding rice producing land.

Sundarbans Solar Express Gets Derailed

Bad news for those who love  nature, tigers and believe in sustainable development: Sundarban  - world's largest delta, a UNESCO world heritage site and  home to the Royal Bengal Tigers - has just chosen thermal power over renewable energy.

Early this month,  Manish Gupta, the power minister of West Bengal - the state where Sundarban is - inaugurated the supply of grid power. Later, the minister said that  this is 'just the beginning', that the government had decided to extend grid energy throughout Sunderban. 

And this is happening when Rio 20+ or the Earth Summit - where the world is gearing up to adopt green economy and sustainable development  - is just a few weeks away. 

 I am finding the news too hard to digest. And I have reasons: for nearly a decade, Sundarban has been seen and talked about as the biggest hub of solar energy in India. Way back, in 2001, the delta became famous for having India's largest solar power station that provided electricity to 400 houses. Around that time, the government actually announced that  grid power would not be extended to Sundarban.

Salman Rushdie vs Sohagi Let: Wrong Reported vs Wrong Unreported

On January 23rd, as India was busy celebrating the birth anniversary of freedom fighter  Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, in Jaipur, the government was busy curtailing the freedom of speech of Salman Rushdie and four other writers who read out of his (banned) book the Satanic Verses. And lost between these two incidents was the voice of a frail woman called Sohagi Let - who was paraded, half naked,  around two villages in Rampurhat, West Bengal - the state that now has a woman as its Chief Minister.

Does the name Rampurhat ring a bell? It should. After all this is the same place where, in Aug 2010 (not so long ago, isn't it?) Sumita Murmu - a young tribal woman - was paraded naked around 6 villages. Later, Sumita was honored with a bravery award by the government in New Delhi. (Happy ending for Sumita, but obviously not the end of the sickening act of criminal treatment of women, which seems to have become a trend).