Bengal can’t go slow

The unease in sections of industry with the West Bengal government’s go-slow on land acquisition for industrial projects is becoming visible. A report in this paper framed the predicament as two of India’s largest companies waiting for smaller land parcels get restive about the delay. They have suggested that offers to host them by other states are beginning to look attractive. This must be cause for concern for all those who have a stake in West Bengal’s future.

At first glance, the post-Nandigram tentativeness of the Buddhadeb government seems understandable. The political repercussions are still not entirely clear and the controversy could even become a turning point in the career of the Left in West Bengal and in India. But the message from Nandigram must be decoded with care. As it turned out in the end, the fracas was not about the industrialisation policy — the government had already agreed to relocate the planned chemical hub elsewhere. It was about the government refusing to control its cadres who took the law into their own hands. It was about the blurring of the lines in West Bengal between party and government. It was also about an irresponsible opposition importing unrelated agendas into the controversy. Of course, some larger lessons must be drawn by the government if crises such as this one are to be prevented from taking place or then billowing into what they are not. At the macro level, the process of hastening the pace of industrialisation in West Bengal has irrefutable benefits for the state. It will create jobs, and take the pressure off the land. But at the micro level, this project will demand more persuasive politics than the Left Front government has shown so far, apart of course from innovative and responsive strategies of compensation and rehabilitation.

Its missteps in Nandigram must not obscure the fact that the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government has offered a vision of West Bengal that — given the opposition it was sure to provoke even within the Left front and the CPM itself — required courage. The CM must now ensure that there is no rolling back of that vision.