The Nano Factory

Recently, Ratan Tata had decided to shift the Nano factroy from West Bengal due to dispute over Singur land. Soon after he made this decision, a lot of states saw an opportunity to attract Nano to their state. As a part of these efforts, one of the present members of the government of Uttar Pradesh decided to write a letter to Ratan Tata, requesting him to consider Uttar Pradesh as one of his options. He also issued a copy of this letter to the press. Here, is a copy of the letter.


Dear Ratan ji,

I feel deep grief over the recent row on Singur land which forced you to pull out of the state of West Bengal. Being an industralist myself, I realize how much effort and money it takes to shift an entire factory from one place to another and that too under a time constraint. Under such circumstances, we the state of Uttar Pradesh will be more than happy to accommodate your Nano plant in our state.

We believe that Uttar Pradesh should be your first preferance because of the number of advantages this state provides. The political will of the state is with you. We have criticized Mamata Banerjee more times than we have supported her. Although in the starting, we used to call her “A Freedom Fighter against an Opressive Regime”, once the rumours of a third front with the help of Communists started floating, we were also the first party to shun her. Recently, after our fallout with Congress and then the fallout of the Congress with Left, we had made some statements in her favour. But if you decide to set up your plant in our state, you can be rest assured that we will waste no time in criticizing her openly. We are a party which strictly supports or opposes people (except one) on the basis of issues. But, there is a slight catch associated with this also. For the continuance of your plant, you will have to make sure that we win in the next general assembly elections. If the opposing party comes in power, then the electricity and other basic amenities of your plant will be cut down since your plant had been built in our rule. Although strange, there is an unwritten law of our state which says that any infrastructure built under one party will be not allowed to function with the help of the state’s resources under the rule of another party. Some of the parks in the state capital are a big example of the implementation of this law. We all know that you have had a good experience of working in different political enviroments and hence, we hope this won’t be a big problem for you.

This state will also help in serving your political ambitions. We will offer you a seat in the Rajya Sabha in the next elections. In the past, we have been responsible for sending some of the top notch industralists and film stars into the Rajya Sabha and these people have had nothing to do with Uttar Pradesh. Some of the prominent names among them include Anil Ambani, Jaya Bacchan etc. We promise to do the same for you also.

There must be some concern in your mind about the poor facilities which the government provides in our state. Please, do not let that concern you. I know that half of our state faces huge power cuts in a day but for your plant, we will ensure 24 hour electricity. We have already ensured 24 hour electricity in our offices and you can ask anybody about how fine it is working. Our electricity bill for a month comes in crores. In fact, the cost of snacks in our offices for a month had also come somewhere close to 8 lakhs. Therefore, money is not a problem from our side. The labour present in the state will also flock to your plant. They all have no trust left in the government plants after seeing various sick PSUs being shut down one after the other. In fact, you must have heard about the famous suicides by the sugar farmers some years back. Many of them have not been paid till now. This has assured them that the government has no money left in its coffers. However, you might be right in being worried about the law and order situation prevailing in some parts of the state.There is some problem with the terrorism which is brewing in Eastern UP but apart from that side, all the other troublemakers in the state are our people only. We can assure you that they will create no problems for you. We want to do something about the Eastern UP situation also but Shabana Azmi and Javed sir are not allowing us to do anything. They are sensible people and can be trusted not to cause any obstruction in matters which might harm your factory.

All in all, I believe that if you do decide to bring Nano to our state, it will be a win-win situation for all of us. You will get a Rajya Sabha seat along with a nice home for your factory while we will get funding for our next elections. This mutually beneficial start will also help us later in discovering many other avenues of cooperation.So, please consider our proposal seriously. I shall be waiting for your reply.

Yours sincerely
A…r S….h