People's Democracy

B Prasant

THE minister for industries and commerce in the sixth West Bengal Left Front government, Nirupam Sen made his priorities clear during his first day at the Writers’ Buildings. Revamping of existing capital-intensive industries, setting up of new medium and heavy industries in fields and areas that are fast-acquiring international importance (like IT, for instance), and initiating a push forward in terms of expanding the base of self -employment.

Speaking at some detail to INN, Nirupam Sen said that it was not quite a practical proposition to look towards a state government for resolving the impasse that has overtaken large, capital-intensive industries in the economic and financial climate prevalent today in the country. "And we live in a world marked by a disparate growth of capital but not of jobs."

In the circumstances, the Left Front has, in the past, sought the help of successive regimes in Delhi to tackle the burgeoning issue of closure and sickness. Unfortunately, very little help came its way said Nirupam Sen. He cited the instances of IISCO and the Hindustan Cables as cases where the union government would remain totally silent on extending even a modicum of cooperation to the state Left Front government towards re-opening these viable units of ancient glory.

The recent closure of the Kelvin jute mill in the Barrackpore belt, said Sen, must necessarily be seen in this perspective where "a state government bereft of appropriate financial clout has very little scope of doing anything other than providing ad hoc relief despite having the deepest empathy with the unimagined plight of the mill workers and their families, now thrown into the lap of economic uncertainty."

Speaking of newer industries which the sixth Left Front government would like to set up in a coordinated manner in suitable growth centres of the state, the new industries and commerce minister said that apart from knowledge-based industries, agro-based units, too, provided an additional attraction for a state which had a strong and organized agrarian base and a rapid agricultural growth. INN recalls that the new Left Front government has created separate departments to provide growth-inputs into both horticulture and food processing industries.

Nirupam Sen was quite firm in his mind on doing away with all kinds of procrastination and administrative malaise that might well have discouraged entrepreneurs, big and small, in the past. "If we want to move even slightly away from the disease of jobless growth that marks the present stage of corporate capital worldwide, we have to strive hard. And this is made more emergent in view of the wholesale adoption of the dictates of world monopoly capital by the BJP-run NDA government in Delhi, and Bengal is certainly not outside the purview, willy-nilly, of the national economy."

Describing the meeting held at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan by the chief minister and himself with three representatives of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Sen noted that the Left Front government "believes in maintaining live contact with the industry just as it already has an extensive and overwhelmingly fertile relationship with the trade unions." While there was no question of any "striking of the balance" here, the fact that production and productivity were also linked to the attitude and outlook of the management, the Left front found it necessary to "put the message across" so to speak, to the top echelon of the management representing the CII, said Nirupam Sen.

Concluding, Nirupam Sen who has been involved with the CITU in a fairly intensive manner since his college-leaving days, said that the "heroic struggle put up by the workers-employees of the BALCO has shown how we in the Left are no longer alone in resisting the onslaught of privatisation and contractualisation of production units, policies that are the hallmarks of the mantra of liberalization. We are happy that even trade unions having political tie-ups with those very political parties who cry themselves hoarse over the "good that will flow" from selling off of national assets to private corporate capital, too, have joined in the struggle to try and force the BJP-led NDA government to roll back the entire array of its anti-people, anti-worker, and anti-poor policies."