By Sujoy Dhar
KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - Thousands of protesterssurrounded a factory building what is billed as the world'scheapest car, the Nano, in the biggest demonstration yetagainst seizure of farmland for industry in eastern India onSunday.
Enthusiasm for the Tata Motor's $2,380 snub-nosed "people'scar" has been dampened by months of protests by farmersrefusing to give their land for the project, now hobbled bycost overruns. The car's planned October launch is alsothreatened.
Waving flags and shouting slogans, thousands of villagersand activists gathered at the factory site in Singur, an hour'sdrive from Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal.
Many protesters arrived in trucks and rickshaw taxis. Somesat in rows of makeshift stages built along an expresswayleading to Singur, a verdant countryside of paddyfields andsmall houses.
"We have gathered today to get back our land. Money cannotcompensate our loss," said Kajal Das, wife of a farmer who lostland to the project.
Thousands of armed policemen guarded the factory. Watercanons were on standby.
The protests that the Nano factory faces reflect a largerstand-off between industry in India and farmers unwilling topart with land in a country where two-thirds of thebillion-plus population depend on agriculture.
For Tata Motors, India's top vehicle maker, trouble startedafter the state's communist government took over farmland forthe factory. The state offered compensation in return, but somevillagers complained they did not receive their dues.
Others refused to obey the state and are decliningcompensation, many of them farmers with smaller land holdings.
In all, around 400 acres of seized land are still beingfiercely disputed out of about 1,000 acres acquired by thegovernment.
The crisis offered political capital to the state's mainopposition Trinamool Congress which has led the protests, andits chief Mamata Banerjee says she could negotiate if Tatareturned the disputed 400 acres.
Tata Motors head Ratan Tata has threatened to move theplant if violent protests continued, despite having invested$350 million in the project, seen as a test of the communistgovernment's resolve to industrialize.
A desperate West Bengal Chief Minister BuddhadebBhattacharjee said on Saturday they were working on an"alternative rehabilitation package" for those who lost land.
But in Singur, where the communists were routed in villagecouncil polls in May, anger boils over. Protesters occasionallytry to stop work at the factory and fight with workers.
The crisis has drawn leading Indian social activists toSingur who say they want to show solidarity with the villagers.
"The Tatas should bow down before people's power and returnthe land," social activist Medha Patkar told Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Jayanta Shaw; Writing by KrittivasMukherjee; Editing by David Fox)
