Kalipur and Kadampur, the two villages selected for my ethnographic research, are located in two blocks of the Hooghly district, Dhaniakhali and Singur respectively. The Hooghly district, lying on the western side of the river Ganges, has been prosperous in manufacturing, trading activities and agriculture and therefore, it has attracted a number of colonial powers since the sixteenth century. Due to its proximity to Kolkata, the district saw considerable development of modern industry during the British colonial period. In fact, a number of industries were set up during the colonial period on both sides of the Ganges stretching south to north of Kolkata, with the Hooghly industrial belt lying in the northern part. Both the blocks, Singur and Dhaniakhali, in the Hooghly district are separate assembly constituencies; the Dhaniakhali constituency has been reserved for the SC candidates since 1952. In the Singur block, out of the total population numbering 260,827, urban population is 30,391 as per 2001 census. In the Dhaniakhali block, the total population of 293,345 lives in rural areas; there is no urban population (GoWB, 2004a: 14–17). The high percentage of agricultural labourers (48 per cent) in Dhaniakhali block provides a sharp contrast to the situation in Singur block where the category ‘other workers’ (58.1 per cent) constitutes the biggest section among the working population, probably denoting the high recurrence of non-farm works available there due to its more urbanized character and proximity to the industrial areas of Hooghly.