Tata Motors designed the Nano, the cheapest car in the world, and needed a site to build their manufacturing plant. The Indian state of West Bengal, to encourage Tata to build in their state, acquired the land from numerous small-holding farmer landowners at Singur, and Tata built their plant. Then the farmers began prominently protesting against the “forced acquisition” of their land by the government. Tata first delayed the Nano launch and later decided to build the car in a different state, Gujarat, instead. They had to build a new plant and pay their many local suppliers to also move with them.

Tata was no doubt originally pleased that the farmer stakeholders were being completely handled by West Bengal state. In other words, they were assumed to be stakeholders of low interest and zero power, in the power/interest model of stakeholder analysis. But this shows that sometimes stakeholders of apparently low interest and power may change into stakeholders of enormous interest and power.