Commerce missing in action

NTPC Chairman Arup Roy Choudhury was recently in Kolkata to attend a seminar organised by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. "When I told people in Delhi that I am coming to Kolkata for this event, I was asked, 'Is there a chamber of commerce in Bengal?'," he said in his speech. Ironically, the Bengal Chamber of Commerce is one of the country's oldest industry chambers.

Since NTPC faces major hurdles to its project in Katwa in west-central Bengal owing to problems with land acquisition, no doubt Choudhury made it a point to share this comment with the assembled dignitaries to emphasise Bengal's poor image with the national business community.