A Visit from Reuters, Shantipara, 26 February 2008

‘What kind of magazine is Reuters?’, Bhavna asked me. ‘What country do they belong to?’ Bhavna was married to Kartik, Prasanta's elder brother. In her younger years, Bhavna had had a career as a dancer in a troupe, but after she had married Kartik and moved to Beraberi, she had concentrated on her duties as housewife and mother of the couple's only child, a son now aged eight. It was early in the evening, and Bhavna informed me that Prasanta had just received a call from somebody in Kolkata, who would be coming to Singur tomorrow in the company of a reporter from Reuters. The reporter wanted to talk to some of the unwilling farmers about their opposition to the land acquisition and the increasingly critical conditions they now lived under. He had asked Prasanta to be available to receive the reporter and assist him in Singur.

The reporter and his photographer arrive the next morning in the company of Madhu, a full- time activist of the PBKMS, a Kolkata- based trade union promoting the rights of agricultural labourers to decent wages, work and food. The PBKMS and Madhu had engaged with the protests in Singur from early on, and Madhu is well known to Prasanta. The reporter begins by interviewing Bhavna, who provides detailed and concrete answers to his questions in a calm voice. She explains that she is part of a family of 15 and that they used to own four or five bighas, which they lost when the land was acquired for the Tata factory. In addition they owned a mini- deep tube well, which is now also gone since it is located behind the factory walls. She explains that they have so far been able to live off their stock of paddy from 2006, but that when this runs out they will certainly begin to feel the pressure: ‘We will suffer,’ she explains. ‘But those families who suffer the most are those with no other sources of income outside of agriculture,’ she adds. ‘So your family has additional sources of income outside of agriculture?’ the reporter asks. Bhavna confirms this, explaining that one of her brothersin- law works as a carpenter, while her husband works as a primary school teacher in a nearby village.