WEST BENGAL

Industrial Growth To Be Based On Rural Development

MEETING at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan late in the morning of September 9, the Bengal Left Front listened to chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s report on the recent visit to Singapore and Indonesia, and observed that rural and agricultural development must be further strengthened and the industrial scene developed.  There was no issue of a ‘town versus country’ poser anywhere.

Attending the meeting, among others, were veteran Polit Bureau member of the CPI (M), Jyoti Basu, and the state industries minister, Nirupam Sen.

The Bengal Left Front concurred with chief minister Buddhadeb that the agrarian sector needed to be augmented further, and on that base the industrial growth would be worked out in the state. Bengal possesses a rich resource of agrarian produce, putting out prodigious amounts of rice, vegetables, fish, fruits, in particular. Rural agrarian development itself has potential for the growth of industries as the purchasing power of the rural populace increased.

Briefing the media later in the afternoon, Left Front chairman and CPI(M) Polit Bureau member, Biman Basu noted that during his visit abroad, chief minister Buddhadeb had signed one agreement; the rest of the understandings arrived at were in the nature of MoU’s or memoranda of understanding.

According to the agreement signed, a two-wheeler factory would come up at Uluberia in Howrah.  A land plot of 65 acres has already been earmarked for the project, which as chief minister Buddhadeb revealed earlier would see an investment of Rs 225 crore, creating a potential for the generation of employment for 2500 workers.  The MoU for this project had been signed on July 29 this year at the Writers’ Buildings.

About the land parcels required for the projected industrial centres based on MoU’s, Biman Basu said the preliminary probes could be started only recently.  The specificities of earmarking land plots and the choice of the location have not been worked out at this stage.

Biman Basu commented to say primarily, fallow land plots, and land parcels with high salinity (thus making them unfit for cultivation) would be used for setting up industrial projects.  CPI(M) state secretary Anil Biswas has already pointed out that fallow land would be identified for industrial projects, and efforts would be made to ensure that only a modicum of land under cropping would be taken over.

Biman Basu pointed out that the only project, and the project had nothing to do with the Bengal chief minister’s visits abroad, for which specific parcels of land could be marked was the projected steel pant in the red clay districts of western Bengal, in the stretch between Jhargram and Kharagpur.

The issue of land identification is yet to get off the ground for the projected 85-kilometre-long Barasat-Kukrahati-Raichak super expressway which would virtually be a mountain-to-sea project what with Barasat having already been connected with Siliguri. 

Identified as a less-developed district South 24 Parganas would see industrial projects set up there in due course of time, Biman Basu said.  He also noted that the projected health city and knowledge city schemes would be set up in the Rajarhat area, a short distance away from Kolkata in the north 24 Parganas district.

PRO-PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT

The Bengal opposition political parties and groups are quite keen to try to undo the land reforms programme of the Left Front government. They are also bent on inciting the jotdars to go on rampage for this purpose. Anil Biswas said this while addressing two large meetings in south 24 Parganas on successive days, September 9 and 10, in Jadavpore and Kakdwip.  The latter meeting was held to condole the passing away of the CPI(M) leader and Tebhaga movement activist, Hrishikesh Maity.  Jyoti Basu was the other speaker at the September 9 meeting.  In the two meetings, Anil Biswas dwelled at some length on the industrial development in Bengal and its prospects in the days to come.

Anil Biswas declared addressing the general body meeting of CPI (M) workers at the Jadavpore stadium and the memorial that no amount of conspiratorial acts would be able to prevent the rise of Bengal as an industrialised state after it had already established itself in the forefront of agriculturally developed states in the country.

Exposing the opportunistic role of the opposition, Anil Biswas pointed out that earlier when during the chief ministership of Jyoti Basu, attempt was made to go in for investment in the industrial sector, the refrain of the opposition worthies was that ‘political unrest’ in Bengal would surely prevent investment from flowing in.  The concern then was why the CPI (M) and the Left Front were ‘reluctant to go in for inviting investment in the industrial sector.’

Now when a principled stand, as usual, has been taken by the CPI(M), and concrete steps are engaged in to ensure that under certain conditionalities, and without upsetting the pro-people and pro-poor developmental priorities of the CPI(M), industrial investment is brought in, the sing-song complaint of the opposition is that the ‘agricultural sector,’ and the ‘land reforms process,’ is going to be affected.

It was comical, commented Anil Biswas, that in the lusting urge to darken the pro-people image of the CPI(M) and the Left Front, the opposition that was loathe to recognise the validity of land reforms, are themselves shouting hoarse about ‘industrialisation ruining the progress made in land management and redistributive land reform programmes’ of Bengal under Left Front governance.

Anil Biswas noted that the opposition was making a ruckus about land being taken away from the tiller of the soil. In doing this, they would acknowledge, albeit unwittingly, that it was the Left Front which gave that land to the tiller of the soil. Asking CPI(M) workers to be on the alert, Anil Biswas said that the opposition was bent on fulfilling the expectation that the jotdars-zamindars reposed in them as their class representatives, to go on the rampage against the land reforms programme itself.  The mass of the people will spoil their dream, assured Biswas to a roar of approval from the assemblage at Kakdwip.

Jyoti Basu narrated for the education of the Party workers the struggle the CPI(M) and the Left Front had to put up to ensure that industrial centres like Haldia Petro-Chem could be set up in Bengal.  Using the pre-emptive initiative contained in the license raj the successive union governments would prevent industrial capital from coming to Bengal.

The rehabilitation and economic refocusing of the families who belonged to the villages on the land of the petro-chem complex has been a viable and welcome proposition.  Why, pray, asked Jyoti Basu, the sons and daughters of a kisan should be kisans alone and nothing else?  Why could not they be afforded the opportunity to emerge as a part of the industrial work force in Bengal?

Anil Biswas went into some details over the question of land take-over and compensation.  However, his principal thrust was on the point of development.  The recent trip to Southeast Asia by chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, said the CPI(M) leader, produced two sets of investments as forthcoming.

First, on a lot of contiguous plots of 2500 acres, manufacturing industrial units would be set up.  In the next phase, on another contiguous lot of 2500 acres of land health cities, knowledge cities, satellite townships, and housing estates would be built. Besides generating employment locally, the two sets of industrial investment would produce a four-lane highway between Raichak and Kukrahati, effectively conjoining the southern tip of Bengal with the central part.

The land that would be taken over for the purpose would be fallow, rocky, and red clay land mass.  Whenever a slice of agricultural land would get affected, the concerned persons would get compensation, and the work of take over would start only when 50 per cent advance on the price of the land was deposited with the state government. Such developmental efforts would enhance the rate of development of infrastructure and this could not but help the kisan of the districts where the projects would be set up.

Lashing out at the opposition Pradesh Congress and Trinamul Congress for criticising the CPI(M) and the Left Front for inviting foreign investment, Anil Biswas said that no industrial house could be expected to be revolutionaries and not to have contact with repressive political elements, given half a chance.

If the industrial group from Indonesia with whom MoU’s have been signed are said to be associated with the anti-Communist Suharto, how would the Pradesh Congress explain away the fact that it organised the killing of over a thousand workers of the CPI (M) in the 1970s and yet it is with the help of the Left from outside that the UPA is able to run the union government?

Anil Biswas pointed out that the principled stand that the CPI(M) had taken on inviting industrial investments was in accordance with the line adopted at the 18th congress of the CPI(M). It is based on those postulates that the Bengal chief minister could go ahead and sign an agreement and a few MoU’s in Indonesia and Singapore. The CPI(M) remains cautious and conscious about inviting foreign investment in Bengal.

Pointing to the concept of a better Left Front, Anil Biswas said that while industrialisation was an index of progress, in the concrete situation of Bengal such a process must inevitably be based and coordinated with agrarian development.  A land use plan was useful for agriculture as for industry.  He also iterated that there was no Chinese wall existing between pro-people development and class struggle.  Those who would see such a divide would do so with the 2006 elections in Bengal in mind. The task would be to isolate these elements and their camp followers further from the people.