National Interest

Ask around, what happened to the real industry in Bengal, and you hear different explanations. Also some jokes. On the final day of the last electioncampaign, it is said, Jyoti Basu got the runs. So he said he won8217;t be able to go out campaigning.

8220;But that would be disastrous Jyoti Babu,8221; said Buddhadeb Dasgupta, 8220;Mamata is already making too much impact.8221;

8220;How can I go, baba? I8217;ve tried everything 8212; allopathy, homoeopathy, ayurveda, but it doesn8217;t stop,8221; said Jyoti Babu.

The panicky partymen went into a huddle until one emerged with an answer. 8220;Tie this around your waist, Jyoti Babu, it will be okay,8221; he said, handing out a yard of red cloth.

8220;How will this help?8221; Jyoti Babu asked incredulously.

8220;This is a red flag, Sir. This has stopped scores of running factories of Birlas and Goenkas and Tatas and so on. Yours is a small problem,8221; said the partyman.

A nasty little story, you might say. But then turn to the day8217;s front pages in Calcutta. Jyoti Basu has summoned M.D. Shukla, the president of Dunlop, to sort out his problem with CITU the CPM8217;s trade union wing and resolve the strike at his plant. This, the papers suggest, isalready a climbdown from Basu8217;s earlier stand that Dunlop be sued for libel for even suggesting that CITU was responsible for the factory shutdown. The next day, the battlelines are drawn as Shukla refuses to come in. Dunlop hints that it is shifting all business to Tamil Nadu, which would mean leaving behind another shell of a factory, striking workers, red flag and all.

Contrast this with some other states where chief ministers roll out the red carpet for a Bill Gates or a Narayanmurthy. In Karnataka, Andhra, Tamil Nadu and even Orissa, you already see the surge of a new Indian enterprise, generating hope, if not too many jobs or widespread wealth yet. In Left-run West Bengal, on the other hand, the red flag still reigns supreme.

Businessmen only tell tales of how this factory was shutdown, or that company forced to sign a pre-ordained settlement. They talk of executives who get hounded out, or the Bata managing director who got roundly thrashed for annoying his union.

From the world of investment andenterprise, you only hear stories of horror and awe for that Basu8217;s personality. Here is a colossus who has ruled the state for 22 declining years overseeing the decimation of industry and decline in social indicators that have barely kept pace with the BIMARU states. Meanwhile capital has flown out, along with the best of bright young Bengali minds who now seek a fortune elsewhere. This is the better educated, more sophisticated equivalent of the Bihari migratory labour.

You see stagnation and decline on the streets, in the state of the automobiles that belch out the most offensive fumes from ancient diesel engines. While in Mumbai and Delhi environmental NGOs and the PIL busybodies have at least been able to bring some sanity to the pollution situation with the help of the courts, Calcutta can now boast of having the oldest, dirtiest, noisiest automobile engines for any major city. The taxis haven8217;t changed in decades. So if you happen to ride in one, hold on to your knees, the floor may simply not bethere, or may give way under your weight.

You also see the same evidence on people8217;s faces. Do not go by what Dominique Lapierre told you. This ain8217;t no City of Joy. Among the milling crowds at Chowringhee, at bus stands, in cinema queues, you see a certain hopeless purposelessness you won8217;t see in Delhi or Mumbai. True, you will find many harassed, unhappy faces in a rush-hour local shuttle in Mumbai. But there will still be a sense of purpose, an urgency that seems like the quality of another world in Basu8217;s Bengal.

Yet the Calcuttans have a loyalty to their city we rootless Delhiwallas are incapable of appreciating. They talk of the charms and a relatively higher standard of living Calcutta offers its middle class while Delhi and Mumbai push it deeper into the gentrified suburban ghettoes. Bengal, under the Left, may have swung to the other extreme, they point out. But Mumbai too has its problems. For example, the armies of jobless men in their forties or fifties, fighting frustration and despair asthey build new lives after brutal Voluntary Retirement Schemes.

If one system has destroyed all enterprise mindlessly, the other has thrown people on the streets heartlessly. No wonder, prematurely retired factory hands and the new footsoldiers of the mafia in Mumbai8217;s gangland wars. Valid argument, but it misses the big picture. Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Vadodara, Chandigarh all represent a new face of changing India that is by no means perfect but it is not stagnant or sliding downhill.Spirited Bengalis still argue nothing is fundamentally wrong with their state.

It is just that it has been ruled by the Left for too long. They have systematically brought up a whole generation of committed voters indoctrinated in Bengali-medium schools with doctored textbooks and party cadres as teachers. They are unemployable except through the help of the local party dadas who also, expectedly, deliver on the voting day.

The gap between the few who go to English medium schools and theliterate lumpen mass-produced by the CPM8217;s doctrinaire schooling system is enormous. So the best of the lot leave the state. The rest man the pickets, wave the red flag, and keep the comrades in power. These disparities exist elsewhere in the country too. But because investment and enterprise keep growing there even some of us who happen to be the poor HMTs Hindi Medium Types have had a fairer chance to succeed than the average product of the CPM8217;s educational system. The Party knows it. So it lets its cadres join the government and allows even senior officials to participate in its activities while screaming blue murder at the thought of government employees being allowed to join the RSS in Gujarat.

The story can go on and on and how amazing that the enlightened Bengali fails to see the reality. How does he continue voting for the Left, Jyoti Basu and then, even when it comes to an alternative, chooses an even shriller streetside rabble-rouser, namely Mamata Banerjee? But then there is a certaintouching, unquestioning simplicity to this worldview which, after all, still believes in passed-down fiction like what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow8217;; that Calcutta is the City of Joy. That, well, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, is still alive and so on.