Singur: Mamata Banerjee has returned their land but some of Singur's farmers have banded together in an attempt to sell it to industry again, this time merging their plots to tempt buyers with larger parcels of contiguous land. The idea is to get around one of the hurdles to industry in the state - small landholdings that make purchase a nightmare of negotiations with numerous sellers. The small holdings are also the bane of agriculture in Bengal, reducing incomes and persuading those like lifelong farmer Bifol Bangal, 65, of Singur that selling their land is the best option. Bifol is among 18 to 20 farmers who have come together under the banner of the Singur Shilpo Bikash Samity (Singur Industrial Development Society) to offer their adjoining plots to potential buyers. They all live in and around Gopalnagar, one of the five blocks from where the then Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government had acquired land for Tata Motors' Nano project in Singur a decade ago. Bifol's only son, Monimohon, had undergone training for a job with the Tatas and earned a monthly stipend of Rs 1,800 for a while. But there was eventually no job as Mamata's land movement drove the Tatas out of Singur. Bifol was a "willing" land-loser but the family's small landholdings meant the Rs 21 lakh compensation had to be split among four brothers. The elderly farmer now wants to sell the eight bighas again if they fetch good returns. "I don't want to farm any more," he said. Land prices have risen in Singur, with a bigha selling at Rs 6-7 lakh against Rs 2.45 lakh a decade ago. The farmers are trying to take advantage, in the process forming what can be loosely called cooperatives to keep the touts at bay. The Trinamul leadership in Singur played the development down, dismissing the Samity as a platform of a small group of Left sympathisers that didn't count for much. The remaining hundreds "are dying to return to tilling their land", they said. "None of these (Samity) people ever tilled their land with their own hands. They lack the emotions that come with producing crop on your own land," said Mainak Das, a member of the Trinamul-backed Krishi Jami Raksha Committee, which had spearheaded the agitation against the land acquisition in Singur. But several others echoed Bifol across parts of Gopalnagar, Beraberi and Khasherberi in Singur, their sentiments mirroring the agrarian distress in Bengal that seems deeper than in most other parts of the country. An average farming family's monthly income from cultivation is the lowest in Bengal among the states: it's a tenth of Punjab's figure and a third of Gujarat's. When it comes to the value of assets of rural households - an indicator of their wealth - Bengal just pips Odisha to finish second from bottom. "You spend around Rs 20,000 to Rs 22,000 to produce potatoes on a bigha of land. The yield is around 80 packets of 50kg each, and each packet sells for Rs 400. That's just about an income of Rs 10,000," said Pravat Shi, a farmer in Gopalnagar. "Subtract the labour cost and see how much remains. So, most farmers end up thinking, 'What's the point in farming?'" Shi said that persuading the younger generation to take up farming is a huge challenge anyway: "They don't want soil on their hands." Monimohon, for instance, has set up a grocery shop in Gopalnagar's Sahanapara area: that is the only option when jobs are hard to come by. "So, those who realise that farming would become increasingly more difficult are coming together. Some 18-20 farmers are already talking among themselves; within no time this number will rise to 70," said Deboprasad Das, a farmer and a member of the Singur Shilpo Bikash Samity. Such a reaction from the ground might tempt Alimuddin Street to claim that this was the reason its erstwhile government had tried to bring in industry. But an economist, Subhanil Chowdhury, said the key issue was that both the previous and current governments had left the farmers in the lurch. "The attempt to amalgamate land parcels is an indication that the farmers are desperate for a better livelihood, which neither of the governments could provide them with," Chowdhury, assistant professor of economics at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata, said. "The Left Front government coerced the farmers and acquired their land while the new government is asking them to turn the wheels of history back and continue to suffer in a situation of stagnant agriculture." Chowdhury believes that several reasons, from the rising costs of inputs to lower price realisation, are threatening to make agriculture an unviable livelihood. "The farmers are applying the best strategy to survive under a market economy," he said. Some potential land buyers have already begun making enquiries. Sailen Sahana said he wanted to open a factory for producing rubber tubes in Singur. "I had bought land beside a condom factory here in 2005. All my taxes have been paid but I need some more land," Sahana said. "The owners of some 13 other small to medium local factories are also in touch. All of them want some extra land.