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Nano
Project: From Singur to Sanand
By Indra
Oct. 13, 2008 |
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Tata Motors
has really moved fast. It has not only dropped
the Singur as the mother plant for manufacturing
its prestigious Nano cars, but also quickly
taken the decision to shift to Gujarat and
signed the Memorandum of Understanding with
Gujarat government too.
Modi has given Tatas 1,000 acres of land in
Sanand, 30 kms from Ahmedabad. It’s a land of
Anand Agriculture University. Uttarkhand has
also given the land of GB Pant Agricultural
University to Tata Motors and other automakers
in Rudrapur. Naturally, one can have few
questions. Why was the university allotted so
big land initially? Was it not for
experimentation of agricultural innovations
originating from the researchers at the
universities? Why has it gone access? Was it
access without any proper planning initially
itself? Have the universities become complacent
rather ineffective in its task of researches for
the Indian farmers who feed the nation or
export? Or do the political leaders, be it
Tiwari or Modi force the universities to spare
the fertile land of agricultural experimentation
to attract the big businesses? Unfortunately, I
don’t have answers for these questions and those
who can provide will not do that at least in the
interest of the nation.
Let me confess that I am pretty happy with Tata
Motors' choice for Gujarat (Sanand). I consider
myself one of the first to perhaps suggest
Gujarat as possible location in one of my
writings, when the dispute at Singur started
troubling Tata Motors’ dream project. There are
some more reasons for my happiness. I was one of
the key players for an automobile plant near
Vadodara that Hindustan Motors set up to produce
trucks in collaboration with Isuzu Motors of
Japan. I cherish many good memories of those
days when I used to visit the place quite often
with Japanese technical staffs, executives and
bankers. Hindustan Motors failed to produce
Isuzu trucks from Vadodara plant as it took a
lot of time and in the process yen appreciated
high enough to make the project unviable. The
untimely death of Mr. NK Birla, an aggressive
executor and mishandling of the project
implementation by the executives hired by the
management from TELCO (present Tata Motors) were
also the reason to suspend the project after
producing few hundreds from the CKDs.
Ultimately, Hindustan Motors handed over the
plant to General Motors when it entered India to
produce cars. I still wonder why GM selected
Vadodara as location for manufacturing cars.
Vadodara didn’t have any infrastructure in those
days required for car industry. GM has gone for
its second plant that it is setting up in
Maharashtra.
Interestingly, Hindustan Motors had initially
started automobile assembly operation near Okha
Port in Gujarat in early 40s. In late 40s, it
got shifted at Hind Motor near Calcutta. Some
one has called Tata Motors’ selection of Gujarat
for location of Nano mother plant after driving
out of Singur that is so near to Hind Motor as a
sweet revenge for Gujarat. However, I don’t
agree to that.
I still repeat my appeal to the plant engineers
and industrial engineers as well as senior
executives to innovate on the concept of the
buildings for a car manufacturing and go up in
height with multi-floors or with any other
concept that minimizes the land requirement.
Land resources of the country are limited. Can
they educate the country with some benchmark
figures from auto plants of similar scale of
production in Japan and South Korea? I remember
my recommending Buddha Babu to request Birlas to
give its 743-acre plant at Hind Motor that is
almost dead and most of its land has now been
sold to some realtor. I don’t know if Birlas
paid for the land to the then West Bengal
government, and if at all it did how much.
However, West Bengal must create a condition so
that Tata Motors can have an assembly plant in
the buildings already constructed at Singur. For
cars planned at extra low cost, East India that
will have to grow fast will be the best market.
And the 1- million or more volume projected for
Nano and various models based on its platform
may require a number of assembly plants, perhaps
one in each zone.
I wish Tata Motors could do a faster work at
Sanand with neither monsoon nor Mamta to
trouble. Let Bengalis for the time being be
happy with the outsized model of Nano, the
ultra-cheap car from Tata Motors at the Durga
Puja festival in Kolkata this year. Let Modi win
over Mamta and her rival Buddha, more so over
Bengal.
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Comments: |
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When will we have some big projects
like this in Bihar? Right now it is
only in dream. Modi has done it real
quick. - Bhaskar Anand - Oct. 15,
2008 |
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Discussion on this topic is now
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