Author: Bureau
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: January 13, 2009
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090113/jsp/frontpage/story_10382686.jsp
Tata leads the charge in showering praise
Breathe easy, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Forget
Nandigram, forget toxic air, forget the roasting your government gets in court
every now and then. All will be forgiven if you can give land in two days.
Narendra Modi has done that and put behind
him what was once seen as an indelible blot: the riots of 2002.
Ratan Tata today drenched the chief minister
in praise at an investor meet, holding Modi and his state up as a model for
the rest of the country. By the time Tata was through, the industrialist found
himself locked in a hug with Modi who strode across the podium with open arms.
"I have to say that today there is no
state like Gujarat. Under Modi's leadership, Gujarat is head and shoulders
above any state," Tata, who last year moved his small-car project from
Bengal to Gujarat, told the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit in Ahmedabad.
Tata said a state would normally take 90 to
180 days to clear a new plant "but in the Nano case, we had our land
and approval in just two days". In his "humble experience, it had
never happened before", Tata added, seizing another opportunity to extol
the "speed and transparency" with which Modi worked.
The Bengal CPM, still hurting from the Nano's
shift to the turf of its bete noire, tried to shrug off "the humble experience".
"We are not dear to Tata or near to him as Modi is," party state
secretariat member Benoy Konar said in Calcutta. "They share the same
class of politics. Tata came here in his own interest."
He added: "When Tata came to Bengal with
the Nano project, he praised our government too. But that hardly matters to
us. What hurts us is that industry could not come up here."
Others at the two-day summit that teemed with
the A-listers of Indian industry were equally effusive as Tata. "To become
an economic superpower," Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumarmangalam Birla
said, "India needs many Narendra Modis."
It all sounded a far cry from 2002, when industry
bosses had wondered if the Gujarat riots would hurt India's global image as
an investment destination. In April that year, at a Confederation of Indian
Industry meet in Delhi, then Thermax chairperson Anu Aga had confronted Modi
with the accounts of rape and murder she had heard from inmates at a Gujarat
relief camp.
Today, business leaders tripped over each
other to commit their money to Gujarat as the summit saw MoUs worth Rs 382,675
crore signed on its first day.
Among those that signed deals were two investors
with ties to Bengal: Prasoon Mukherjee's Universal Success Ltd and Mahendra
K. Jalan's Keventer Agro.
Mukherjee has promised to pump Rs 87,000 crore
over the next 10 years into a 10,000MW power plant, a commercial port and
an industrial cluster. Jalan plans to invest Rs 115 crore in three agro-processing
projects.
"Gujarat has shown how to bring investment
during an economic slowdown. The government has taken an equity in our project,
deferred payment of land price to reduce the burden on the promoter, apart
from providing tax sops and full infrastructure support," Jalan said.
Mukherjee praised the "excellent response"
from Gujarat and said "the encouraging investment climate in the state"
had emboldened him to commit the big bucks.
Mukesh Ambani said the investment rush showed
how much "approval" Modi enjoyed in India and abroad, from where
37 countries sent 500-odd delegates.
Even some from the western world appeared
eager to be impressed by a riot-tainted politician whom the US had denied
a visa. British MP Barry Gardiner, going a step ahead of Tata, said: "Gujarat
can lead the world."
There seemed a glint in Modi's eyes as he
claimed that Gujaratis have an inborn ability to turn adversity into opportunity.
He gave his own formula for success: RACE -- R for low risk, A for alertness
of the people, C for low cost and E for efficiency.
