Today is an important day for India's West Bengal state and for the country's reputation as a place to invest. West Bengal's Communist government and the main opposition party, the Trinamool Congress, are to try to settle a dispute over a plan by the Tata group to make the world's cheapest car, the Nano, in the state.

The government wants the project to become the flagship of industrial resurgence in the state. But the opposition is demanding that Tata returns some of the land for the project to farmers that it claims were forcibly evicted. Tata, for its part, has threatened to shift the plant to another state. For Tata, relocating the plant would be calamitous.