With the Singur blockade going into its 6th day, it is only seemed a matter of time before Ratan Tata pulled out of West Bengal. We cannot blame him for it actually. The TMC workers have constantly threatened and physicaly abused the workers who had shown up at the factory and forced them to stay indoors. The entire Durgapur highway was blockaded and temporary structures erected along the road which created more congestion.

Apart from this an entire convoy of in excess of 50 vehicles, carrying employees of the Nano factory were not allowed to leave the workshop premises for over an hour. Among those present in the convoy were engineers from Japan providing technical support to the project.

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Between the political tussle between the CPM and Trinomool Congress, Ratan Tata’s dream car faces a bleak future, at least in West Bengal. The disputed land in Singur has managed to attract enough global attention thanks to Mamata Banerjee and her histrionics.

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Is the question being asked in Wired. We had earlier profiled the world’s cheapest car by Indian conglomerate Tata’s, and had raised some questions initially about the veracity of claims made the company about Nano being Euro compliant and how the car will fare in crash testing, support beams, seat belts etc.

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Tata’s Nano has created a lot of buzz in the international media. Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata delivered what he had promised – a car for the people at the bottom of the pyramid. Here is what BusinessWeek is saying about the car and its surrounding hoopla.

“If you follow the auto business, the place to be today is New Delhi, where Tata Motors has unveiled its long-awaited $2500 car, the Nano. No doubt the folks at Tata are enjoying their moment in the spotlight, and deservedly so. When Ratan Tata first started talking about the company’s plans to develop an ultra-cheap car, lots of people said there was no way Tata could do it. Today, of course, there’s a huge amount of buzz around the car and the many creative ways Tata engineers found to cut costs. And many other, more established automakers are rushing to come out with inexpensive cars of their own for the developing world.”

Some of the claims made by the company regarding the facts about the car sound dubious. For instance, the company said “Nano passes European emssion standards and is designed to pass international crash test standard”.

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