The Tatas have an assembly plant in Uttarakhand (See the news in red below)
As curtain goes up on the small car, Singur plant is racing against time
DEVADEEP PUROHIT IN SINGUR
A part of the Tata factory taking shape in Singur. Picture by Amit Datta
The “Rs 1-lakh car” will preen before the world on Thursday but not the mother plant that will eventually deliver the Tata dream-child to Indian roads.
In Singur, over 3,500 people are racing against time behind human — and brick — walls to meet two deadlines: chisel the car plant to shape by June and prime it for production by the year-end.
Around 1,500 men in uniform — khaki, green and blue — are guarding the 935-acre plot, around 40km from Calcutta. The Telegraph had a close look at the preparations inside an eight-foot boundary wall.
If blanket security — over 700 policemen, around 730 civilians and around 100 guards of the company — is a striking feature, so is the clockwork precision with which people and payloaders are moving about.
“Bahut zabardast kaam chal raha hai (work is going on in full steam),” says Sawan Ram, a semi-skilled worker from Rajasthan, while entering the giant “Paint Shop” — a pre-fabricated structure.
Ram, working for Delhi-based contractors Interarch Building, is not aware the project has become the face of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s Bengal’s re-industrialisation drive but he knows the clock is ticking.
“Gari pe rang charega yahan, (Cars will be painted here),” he explains, putting on his blue helmet and rushing to a shed where around 60 to 80 men are at work.
Similar scenes of activity are playing out in nearby sheds — cavernous structures that look like skeletal creatures because of a profusion of metallic beams topped up with flat roofs. All have names that announce their purpose: Weld Shop, Press Shop and Trim Chassis Fitment Shop.
The sheds house the cogs in automobile manufacturing — once all are up and running, the final product will be rolled out by marrying the engine with the painted chassis.
It has not yet been formally announced from where the small car — which will be unveiled in Delhi tomorrow but mass-produced later — will first enter the market. The Tatas have an assembly plant in Uttarakhand but the model that will be unwrapped in the capital was probably made in Pune.
From wherever the car is launched, full-fledged production will be from the Singur facility, which will act more or less like the mother plant, ringed by ancillary units.
But a few sheds do not make a car plant. A full-fledged facility will need roads, buildings, electricity, water supply, sewage systems and countless similar infrastructure features.
Traces of work on each of these are visible — engineers from ABB are busy setting up a 220/33-kv switcher for power supply while state irrigation department officials are monitoring drainage facilities.
The tight schedule has drawn in its sweep many living in the vicinity. “I am part of a syndicate supplying material for construction on land that my family tilled for generations,” says a young man, sitting on a new Bajaj Pulsar motorbike outside the main gate.
“Delivery schedules are very tight here and that’s a big challenge,” he says before placing an order for bricks and stone chips over his cellphone.
With the government keen to ensure that benefits trickle down, Shapoorji Pallonji — the main contractor — and others can source brick, sand and stone chips only from the 14 local “syndicates”.
As the young man is a syndicate member, which entitles him to a gate pass from Shapoorji Pallonji, he is allowed inside the fortress. At the main gate, he flashes the pass and the wooden beam goes up, letting him proceed to a two-storey house 50 meters from the gate.
Shapoorji Pallonji has an office at the ground floor of the building, which used to be a rubber factory. Tata Motors officials operate from the first floor, above which sticks out a dish that helps them confer with colleagues elsewhere over video.
The neighbouring building, once a condom factory, is used to put up people working at the site. Most people — like Suresh Chandra Tripathi from Delhi, camping at the site for two months — involved in erecting the pre-fabricated structures are from outside Bengal.
It is not that people from the area have been shut out. Several can be seen inside, engaged as civilian guards, supervisors and labourers. “I am involved in loading and unloading job,” says Sushanto Sahana of Gopalnagar, one of the five mouzas acquired for the project.
Sahana, a land-loser, is hopeful that once the plant is ready, it will more than compensate for the loss of their agricultural income. “We have heard that the plant will change our lives… Let’s see what happens,” says Sahana, stepping aside to let a payloader pass.
Four months to go before the June deadline, hundreds of earthmovers are humming relentlessly to level the bumpy field and make it suitable for construction.
But the pace of work at the adjoining 290-acre plot — where 55 vendors will set up shop to feed the Tata Motors plant with ancillaries — has yet to slip into high gear.
“We have started piling work here… It will take us another three to four months,” says S.M. Rehman, a Delhi contractor looking after the work on a plot designated for Sona Koyo Steering Systems.
According to state government sources, land has been distributed among all the vendors and they are at various stages of construction.
“The deadline for the completion of construction is June. No doubt that there is deadline pressure, but it seems the timing target will be met,” says a government official who drops in once in a while to see if any help is needed.
“Two shifts are on now, and work is going on till midnight. If needed, the work can be made round the clock by adding another shift,” he adds.
