Nearly two decades ago, Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee walked, slogged and camped on the fertile farmlands of Singur, just east of the Hooghly River and around 40 kilometres north of Kolkata. In 2008, the street fighter led a fierce agitation against land acquisition for the Tata Nano project there. The movement catapulted her to the centre of Bengal politics and eventually helped her dislodge the CPI(M) government. The Tata Nano plant had to shift out of Singur in West Bengal to Sanand in Gujarat.
Now, nearly 18 years later, and months before the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections, the same fertile land of Singur is back at the heart of a political contest. This time,…