Tata Motors' Singur debacle is not the first of its kind for the $60 billion group that is often referred to as 'nation builders.'
When Tata Motors announced evening that it was suspending work at Singur and looking for alternate locations to make the Nano car, it added one more to a long list of projects suspended mostly due to differences with one government or another.
Though not actually suspended the Rs 2,500 crore (Rs 25 billion) Titanium project in the coastal town of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu hangs in limbo for nearly a year now.
This project that envisages to mine for titanium-di-oxide (pigment from this mineral has a wide range of applications from making aircrafts to toothpastes) is waiting for procuring 10,000 acres of land. Tata Steel has not been unable to do this for want of clear land deeds and the Tamil Nadu government is not budging to acquire land for Tatas.
Text: S Kalyana Ramanathan, Dilip Kumar Satapathy, Shishir Prashant, Business Standard
Image: Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata at the unveiling of the Nano in New Delhi on January 10, 2008. | Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
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