Editorial: Risking Bengal's future

Ratan Tata’s threat to pull out of Singur, where Tata Motors is setting up a plant to manufacture the Nano, plunges West Bengal’s industrial future into needless uncertainty. If the most visible symbol of the industrial revival of the state is destroyed, then West Bengal will be going back in time by four decades, when the Left first came into the ascendant and espoused a brand of militant trade unionism which prompted industrialists to make a beeline out of the state. The Trinamool Congress leader, Mamata Banerjee, who is spearheading the agitation against the Tata project, appears determined to go down in history as a second Subodh Banerjee, whose espousal of the tactics of “gherao” did so much harm to the state’s economic prospects, and deprived a whole generation of Bengalis of jobs that would otherwise have come their way.

From the late 1970s onwards, West Bengal has made impressive gains in agriculture, in part because of its land reform initiative, but this is no substitute for modern industry. The sad truth is that the state’s industrial output has lagged behind the national growth average, in the absence of fresh investment and a proper work culture. The CPI(M) and the broader Left alliance have belatedly realised the folly of antagonising private investment, and the hallmark of the current government led by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has been its active espousal of industrialisation. If the Singur project gets undone at a time when states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand have been securing one major automobile project after another, there will be a new dark cloud over West Bengal’s industrial future, and a blight on another generation of young Bengalis looking for work in the state.

Mr Tata’s warning should be taken seriously as his track record shows that he means business. The group has in the past walked out of a project (the original Bangalore international airport proposal) when it was stymied by hostile politics. The latest negative development which provoked Mr Tata is the decision by the Trinamool Congress to lay siege to the Singur project (including attacks on people working at the project site) over the issue of 400 acres of land whose owners have refused to accept the compensation offered by the state government. The underlying politics is the good showing of the Trinamool Congress in the recent panchayat elections (the local government at Singur is under its control). The political stock of the ruling Left Front is low, the anti-Left vote in the state is gravitating towards the Trinamool Congress, and Ms Banerjee sees the Singur issue as a springboard for launching her bid for power during the next assembly elections. She has been helped by the severe setback suffered by the Left Front in Nandigram in the state over the same issue of acquiring farming land for industrialisation, and the mood all over the country has tilted in favour of farmers and especially tribals, who stand to lose their habitat and livelihood as a result of an industrialisation process from which they gain little.

The Left Front sees the danger, and is now willing to consider proposals to sort out the issue, including offering alternative land to the farmers concerned, which it was unwilling to do earlier. As for Ms Banerjee, she is in danger of painting herself into a corner as middle-class opinion in the state, a key part of her support base, will get thoroughly alienated if the Tata project is lost to the state. Even decades from now, people in the state will be talking of how a shortsighted politician blighted West Bengal’s industrial future because of a bid for power. Is that what the Trinamool leader wants?