Author: Chaitanya Kalbag
Publication: Hindustan Times
Date: July 19, 2007
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=dc9ce285-f04f-46f5-a4fa-4a3c52e9e45f
It is like being thrown about in an ideological
cocktail shaker. You get off a gleaming passenger jet and drive over a soaring
expressway to the 227-year-old Writers' Buildings in Kolkata to meet a very
capitalist communist politician.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
says there is no place for jobless growth, and now that the communists' radical
land reform, which broke up large zamindar land-holdings among small and marginal
share-croppers, has nearly run its course, the logical next step is industrialisation.
This is not music to the ears of the CPI(M)'s allies in the Left Front coalition
that has ruled the state, unchallenged, for the past 30 years.
"I am very clear in my mind. This is
capitalism. I just cannot build socialism in one part of the country. They
(leftist critics) theoretically cannot accept this position. Academically
they cannot accept this position. I cannot build socialism in one state of
India. I have to follow capitalism. But we have to protect against the negative
effects of a capitalist society," Bhattacharjee told the Hindustan Times
in an exclusive two-hour interview.
"The world is changing, Communists are
also changing. We can't stick to our old dogmas. Deng Xiaoping used to say
'Learn truth from the facts, not from dogmas'."
The Left Front won power for the seventh straight
time in the May 2006 state elections, with 235 seats in the 294-seat legislature.
The CPI(M), riding on the slogan of industrialisation, won a crushing majority
on its own with 176 seats. But the euphoria of that victory has dimmed sharply
in the ferocious confrontation between the government and protesters in Nandigram,
where a chemical hub was sought to be set up, and in Singur, where the Tatas
plan to build a small-car plant. Fourteen people died in police firing at
Nandigram on March 14, and six more in subsequent group clashes.
"What we learnt from Nandigram is that
we should move fast, but cautiously
I admit that we failed to reach the
masses. Before we explained what it was all about, what the chemical hub was,
what benefits they would get, the opposition successfully misled the people,"
Bhattacharjee said. He said Nandigram would not go ahead, but a chemical hub
was essential "in or around" the port city of Haldia. "If I
fail, then it will go to Gujarat," he added.
Bhattacharjee made clear competition for investment
was intense. West Bengal beat out seven other states to win the huge chemical
hub project, whose anchor investor is Indian Oil Corporation. The project
would also spawn downstream industries like polymers and rubber.
"We should speed up the process of industrialisation
because new proposals are coming. We cannot just wait," Bhattacharjee
said. "If I miss the trend, I will miss the bus. Because (investors)
cannot wait for West Bengal for months together. They will just move to another
state. There is keen competition between states like Gujarat, Maharashtra
and West Bengal. Therefore time is a factor."
He admitted that there has been opposition
from the CPI(M)'s Left Front partners. "We are still debating among ourselves
the need for manufacturing investment in West Bengal. If we sit content with
what we have done in agriculture, it will not help us. We have to move from
agriculture to industry."
He said the "traditional left is a little
confused", and the Trinamool Congress, the largest opposition party with
30 seats, was taking advantage of the situation.
"Without industry how do you progress?
This is the general trend of all civilisation - from village to city, from
agriculture to industry. You cannot stop it, you should not stop it. And for
that you need private industry, private capital, you need big business. We
need multinationals - the only reservation is that we won't let them enter
the retail sector."
"We need big investment, we need manufacturing
industries. At the same time, we just cannot say we do not want FDI (foreign
direct investment). We have discussed all these things in our party - FDI,
SEZs (special economic zones), taking loans from the World Bank. But our Left
partners are still vacillating."
Bhattacharjee described his vision of replicating
the miracle of Haldia, which was a sleepy fishing village on the Haldi river
30 years ago and is now a thriving industrial town with 106 factories, on
the opposite bank in Nandigram. "We thought we would build a bridge over
the river and create another Haldia," he said a trifle wistfully.
But now that Nandigram will not happen, Bhattacharjee
is determined to push ahead with Singur, where the Tatas are trying to buy
land from 12,000 farmers. The Singur car factory would create 4,000 jobs and
spawn a host of ancillary industries. "It will change the entire economy
of that area. It will change the quality of life in that area
Therefore
Singur is very important for us." He said the Tatas, and the government,
would do all they could do to train the "land-losers" to take up
other occupations.
"Only a small number still oppose it,
and they are being patronised by the opposition. But this is not the whole
story. I think Singur is now a closed chapter. They have got the message that
I just cannot roll back."
The chief minister said he has tried very
hard to reason with Mamata Banerjee, who mounted a 26-day hunger strike over
Singur and has said she will never allow the plant to come up. "I am
trying again and again to talk to the opposition. I have written at least
six letters to Mamata Banerjee, to discuss and try a dialogue," said
Bhattacharjee wryly. "I have not written six letters to any of my friends,
boy or girl friends, in my college days."
Bhattacharjee said he was keenly aware that
West Bengal received little or no major manufacturing investment after the
Durgapur steel plant. Now, investors are flocking to the state, drawn by its
political stability, law and order, and communal harmony.
So what differentiates Bhattacharjee from
Gujarat's Narendra Modi? He says the "Left alternative" means supplying
free books and mid-day meals in the state's 68,000 primary schools, covering
72% of the population in state-run hospitals and clinics, and setting up 600,000
self-help groups for 5.6 million women.
"Some economists think that the market
economy is omnipotent. We don't think so. We live in a market economy, but
it marginalises a section of the people. Who will take care of them?"
asks Bhattacharjee.
As an example, he said of the 38,700 villages
in West Bengal, the government has identified 4,612 that are the "poorest
of the poor." "We have to take care of them. This is the Left alternative,"
he said. "We have to protect people against the negative effects of a
capitalist society
We have enrolled more than one million workers in
the unorganised sector for provident fund."
Bhattacharjee told the Hindustan Times there
were three major projects in the pipeline. The first was a seaport, the largest
in India, on the Bay of Bengal, to take advantage of India's "Look East"
policy and be the entrepot for trade with Southeast and East Asia. The second,
an elevated mass-transit system in Kolkata using Czech technology, would cover
a 46-km route from Joka to Sodepur. And finally, a new east-west corridor
for the Metro, from Salt Lake to Howrah station.
The chief minister is also excited about horticulture
and agricultural exports, and setting up cold storage and cold chains for
vegetables - West Bengal produced 11.6 million tonnes last year, the most
in the country. Flowers from the Kolkata market are now flown to the Netherlands.
The 63-year-old Bhattacharjee, a poet and
playwright who has translated two Gabriel Garcia Marquez books, said he had
no time now to write. He is currently reading Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning
Turkish novelist.
(With Rajiv Bagchi and Anirban Choudhury)