Perhaps the worst is in Orissa. In the last two decades the Eastern state has lost as many as three Tata Group projects. In 1995 Tata Steel had announced to set up a 10 million tonne steel plant at Gopalpur at an estimated cost of Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion). The project was to be set up in four phases of 2.5 million tonne each over a period of six years.
However, due to stiff resistance by the local people at Gopalpur, which saw death of two people in police firing, the land acquisition process got inordinately delayed.
Though the company was able to acquire 2,800 acres out of its requirement of 3,000 acres by 1999, it still did not go ahead with the project. It finally announced shelving of the project in 2000 citing delay in land acquisition as one of the causes.
The other causes, it attributed for pulling out of the project, included lack of water facility, infrastructure bottlenecks like delay in Gopalpur port construction and railway linkage between the plant and mine site.
The land acquired by the Tata at Gopalpur is lying vacant and the company proposes to set up a multi-product SEZ there. Before the Gopalpur fiasco, Tatas had burnt their finger in the Chilka prawn culture project.
Image: The Tata Steel plant in Jamshedpur. | Photograph: STRDEL/AFP/Getty Imagescom
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