The reindustrialisation of West Bengal

 THERE WAS ACUTE disappointment in some circles that Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn’t use his public meeting in Hooghly district’s Singur to announce BJP’s commitment to reviving the automobile manufacturing plant.

Singur, just in case some readers are unaware of the background, was the site of the Tata Motors plant to manufacture the Nano car. The land had been acquired—in the face of some determined local opposition—by the West Bengal government, then headed by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and the factory had been made production-worthy. That was way back in 2008 when the Left Front reversed Jyoti Basu’s disastrous policy of letting the state’s once-vibrant industrial sector go to seed.

But Mamata Banerjee, who was then the main opposition to the Left Front, was having none of it. Backed by a vocal section of the Bengali intelligentsia and the far-Left, she mounted a fierce agitation in Singur demanding the fertile farmland be returned to the original owners. In terms of pure theatrics, Mamata’s approach was very effective. The Left went on the backfoot, not least among its own supporters who were uneasy with this new courtship of big business. The matter was finally settled when an exasperated Ratan Tata announced that rather than live in a climate of tension and hostility, he was relocating the Nano plant to Sanand in Gujarat.

The exit of the Tatas from Singur had a profound effect on the economy of West Bengal. The departure to Gujarat wasn’t merely a business decision. In choosing to cut its losses and flee from West Bengal, the Tata Group reinforced India Inc’s contention that the state still wasn’t ready for largescale investment. The closure of factories and the flight of capital that began after 1967 had witnessed the deindustrialisation of a region that was once second only to Maharashtra in terms of modern industry. The exit of the Tatas from Singur reinforced the conviction that nothing had really changed from the days of labour militancy and industrial strife. In the post-socialist era, business had multiple options, and Bengal certainly wasn’t one of them.

In the past 15 years as chief minister, Mamata has often tried to convey the impression that what happened in Singur was history and that Bengal now means business. There have been annual business summits, and the stalwarts of the corporate world have announced their willingness to sink hundreds of crores into Bengal. Predictably, these have not materialised and in the absence of investments, Mamata has taken to building grand replicas of existing Hindu shrines. For the people, opportunities now mean buying a one-way ticket out of Bengal and relocating to Bengaluru, Delhi, Pune, etc. Bengalis now rival Biharis as the biggest source of migrant labour. Kolkata, once the second city of the British Empire, is now both a carnival venue and an enormous retirement home. In the housing colonies of Greater Kolkata, young people are becoming a complete rarity.

BJP has emerged as the alternative to Mamata. It is approaching this year’s Assembly election with the promise of ushering in a regeneration of Bengal through the proverbial double-engine sarkar. The choice of Singur as the venue of the prime minister’s public meeting was driven by this symbolism.

However, Modi didn’t promise that Singur would now realise its unfulfilled potential. He merely said that good politics would lead to a healthy economy. To many, including BJP supporters, Modi had an empty goal before him but failed to score.

The problem is that for many intellectuals who have emerged from the Left ecosystem, the state still occupies the commanding heights of the economy. They are still living in the pre-1991 India when prime ministers could announce the establishment of largescale industrial units. Today, investments are the subject of competitive bidding by the state governments. Each of them woos Indian and foreign business with incentives and, most important, the assurance of a wholesome business environment. A new government in Kolkata can bring a bagful of sops to the table. However, unless it can complement incentives with the reality of a business-friendly society, investors are likely to look elsewhere.

The reindustrialisation of West Bengal won’t happen because Modi desires it. Any government in the state will have to work patiently to improve law and order, end extortion, improve infrastructure and enhance the quality of life for a sustained period—say, three to four years— before the state’s claims are taken seriously. Above all, investors will need to be persuaded that the Bengalis have finally turned their backs on violent politics and embraced the new world of self-improvement. To my mind, that is the biggest challenge of politics.