Massive demonstrations led by the state's opposition party, the Trinamool Congress, have shut down the Tata plant. After protesters threatened assembly line workers, the automaker suspended production of its history-making Nano, a mini rear-engine car. Last week, two other Indian states -- Karnataka in the south and Uttarakhand in the north -- offered Tata 1,000 acres for its car factory. However, those close to the talks said the automaker still hoped the Singur plant could be reopened, having invested an estimated $350 million in the operation. Many of Gosh's fellow villagers say they were pressured to sell their farms to West Bengal's government at a pittance. The land was then turned over to Tata, leaving about 1,000 farmers in this fertile potato belt along the Ganges River out of work. Now Gosh has found himself out of work, as well -- and at odds with his neighbors, who say they oppose the Tata factory because of what they call the company's predatory land-grabbing practices. 'I thought that if the factory is there, the next generation would have a better future,' said Gosh, sipping tea in a monsoon rain with other jobless men. 'Now my neighbors say: `Go to Tata, you traitor. Let them take care of you.'' Similar face-offs between big business and small farmers loom over dozens of pending land acquisition deals in India, affecting construction of a variety of enterprises, including call centers and condominium complexes. The controversy is one of the starkest symbols of the growing pains in the country's struggle to transform itself into a modern industrialized economy. Nationwide, acquisition bids for about 92,000 acres -- worth an estimated $54 billion -- have been stalled by protests launched mainly by peasant farmers. 'Singur is a test case for all of India,' said Abhirup Sarkar, an economist at the Indian Statistical Institute. 'Because of population pressure in India, people usually own or work tiny plots of land. That makes it really hard for industries to move in and acquire land because they have to negotiate with so many landowners. For an Indian to leave their land requires a leap of faith. For them, land is security.' The Tata crisis is rich with ironies. The world's cheapest car depends on cheap land and cheap labor -- the former apparently harder to come by than the latter. Tata says it needs the entire 957 acres at the Singur site to complete its factory, a one-stop shop where all the Nano's parts would be manufactured and assembled. For now, no one is sure what fresh negotiations with Tata will bring.