(Updates with arrest, scene, analyst quote) By Kamil Zaheer KOLKATA, India, March 16 (Reuters) - More than 1,600 people were arrested in India's West Bengal state on Friday as opposition workers and police clashed during a strike to protest the killing of 14 villagers opposed to a planned industrial hub. Scuffles broke out between strikers and police in Kolkata, capital of the communist-ruled eastern state, after around a dozen state-run buses were stoned and a few set alight. A bus driver was critically injured when hit by stones. In Kolkata, teenagers played cricket on empty streets, ignoring passing police jeeps as the day-long strike shut schools, offices, banks and shops. Many strikers blame Wednesday's killings at Nandigram, 150 km (90 miles) southwest of Kolkata, on the state government, which wants to set up a chemical industrial hub on farm land despite opposition from villagers. Police fired on villagers during the clashes as officers tried to enter the land earmarked for development. The killings have become a national controversy with the federal government putting on hold the low-tax Special Economic Zones (SEZs), touted as important for boosting India's industrial growth and closing the manufacturing gap with China. Villagers who fled the violence in Nandigram said they were scared to return home. Others dug up roads to prevent police from entering the area and set fire to a village council office.In Singur, on the outskirts of Kolkata, where land has been marked out for a small-car factory of India's Tata Motors Ltd. <TAMO.BO>, strike supporters tried to set fire to a police watch tower and bring down a fence but they were chased away by police. Protesters also stopped electric trains by shorting out the overhead wires with banana leaves, police said. "We want industrialisation but not at the cost of our farmers' blood," said Biplab Chatterjee, a leader of the Trinamul Congress, the state's main opposition party, which called the strike. Analysts said the strike impact has a wider resonance. "The strike shows that many poor feel development of these industrial hubs are happening at their cost rather than benefitting them," said Ashis Chakravarti, political editor the Kolkata-based Telegraph newspaper. "COMMUNISTS KILL FARMERS" "They called themselves communists but they fire bullets at poor farmers," said Gopi Mondal, a 65-year-old taxi driver, shaking his head. At least eight strikes have been called in West Bengal in the past six months against the government's economic reforms. In recent years, the state's communist rulers, who initiated India's most successful land reforms in the 1970s and 1980s benefitting millions of peasants, have switched from their pro-rural stand and pushed for industrialisation of the state. Many technology firms in Kolkata were operating just vital services on Friday, while manufacturing units were shut. (Additional reporting by Bappa Majumdar in Nandigram and Manas Banerjee in Malda)
