Protests delay world’s cheapest car

Tata Motors will move production of the world's cheapest car from a new factory in India's West Bengal state if violent protests by local farmers - forced to sell their land for the site - continue, its chairman warned today.

Ratan Tata told a press conference that demonstrations over the acquisition of farmland threatened to delay the launch of the Nano, scheduled for October..

‘What has concerned us is the violence, the disruptions, that has led us to be concerned about the safety of our employees, our equipment and investment, and of the viability of the process,’ he said in the state capital, Kolkata, today.

‘We need to protect our people. How would we (be able to) bring our managers and their families if they are going to get beaten? If anybody is under the impression that, because we have made a large investment of 15 billion rupees (£184m), we would not move, then they are wrong, because we would move to protect our people.’

The Nano, which will be sold at 100,000 rupees (£1,230), was designed to bring motoring to the country's billion-strong masses.

Although hailed by the world's press this year, the Nano factory has become a symbol of the simmering confrontation between industry and farmers who are unwilling to part with land in a nation where two-thirds of the population depends on agriculture.

In the case of Tata's new car, more than 1,000 acres of fertile fields in West Bengal's Singur district were acquired by the state government to set up the Nano plant. The factory will be able to churn out 250,000 cars a year. Thousands of farmers who once raised four crops a year have been evicted.

Source: Guardian

Credits: Jarvis