Hooghly/Kolkata: Standing near the national highway in Hooghly’s Singur town, a 45-year-old man points to his three-acre fallow land at a distance. In 2008, the town was at the centre of anti-land acquisition protests that forced Tata Motors to move its proposed Nano factory to Gujarat, and he was among those who vehemently protested it.
Today, he regrets that decision and wishes he was never part of the protest. A marginal farmer and vegetable supplier, he’s finding it difficult to meet his burgeoning household expenses and wishes there was an industry there. He also insists he was never “anti-industry”.
“Had there been an industry, things would have been different. During the Singur movement, we feared that our land would be acquired and we would be left with nothing. But now, when we look at other states, we feel sad,” he says.
In Bajemelia village some 2 km away, a 42-year-old tea seller is educating some customers on how industries generate employment. The men at his kiosk nod their heads in agreement.
He too regrets the Singur movement, which he calls a “blunder” — each night, he watches videos of industrialised states like Gujarat, wishing it was the same here.
“Then I think of Singur and how the Tata plant would have changed our fortunes,” he says.
As the mammoth seven-phase Lok Sabha elections enter its seventh and final phase, the two men underscore the problem in West Bengal — the lack of industries and employment opportunities in the state.
The tea seller from Bajemelia village summarises it thus: “Go to the villages and you’ll find men drinking in the broad daylight because they don’t have any work. There are no jobs.”
Industrialisation of the state is one of the many poll promises made by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In a public meeting in the state on 3 May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he wanted for Durgapur in Bardhaman district, known for its iron and steel plants, to be renowned not only in India but throughout the world.
This isn’t the first time the BJP has spoken about turning the state’s fortunes — its 2021 assembly campaign called “Shonar Bangal” (Golden Bengal) focused on reversing the economic distress in the state once it comes to power.
Nor is it the only one. Rivals like the Congress and the Left Front — whose government was dislodged by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the back of anti-land acquisition protests in Singrur and Nandigram — also appear to be on the same page, blaming the ruling Trinamool Congress for industrial stagnation in the state.
According to the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s state secretary Md Salim, Banerjee took up the wrong issues when she protested land acquisition.
“Industries need land,” he said. “Whether for industries, roads, even schools, and universities, we require land. This issue of land will remain a central issue. In West Bengal, we don’t have vacant land. We need to sort out this issue.”
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Legacy issues, land policy problems
West Bengal was a thriving state for industry and commerce during British rule.
According to academicians and economists, several factors — including the partition of the state and the country, the Government of India’s freight equalisation policy to facilitate the equal growth of industry all over India, the rise of the radical-left trade unions to the Singur-Nandigram movements — have all contributed to slow industralisation, even stagnation, in the state over the years.
“A part of it is a legacy issue,” says economist Indraneel Sengupta. “We are still paying the price of the partition and economic policies that were followed the first 2-3 decades after that which systematically deprived eastern India of its comparative advantage and as well as a fair share of public investment.”
According to him, in absolute terms, the industrial output of West Bengal is increasing every year although it’s slower than many other states.
But today, the major problem appears to be the state’s 2013 land policy of West Bengal under which the state government won’t interfere in land purchases.
Says political analyst Snigdhendu Bhattacharya: “The land policy states that the government won’t help the private entity with the purchase of the land. The industry has to deal with the land owners on its own to buy land.”
This policy could mean roadblocks in land acquisition, as illustrated in the case of the state-owned Damodar Valley Corporation’s proposed coal mine project in Birbhum. In 2019, after encountering many roadblocks, the corporation issued a public statement saying it was facing trouble acquiring land. “The company has to buy land from the land owner through the market mechanisms and the government acts as a facilitator in that. We are facing issues in purchasing a large tract of land from the owners directly,” it had said.
According to Bhattacharya, this policy applies not only to private land but also to government projects.
“Even for government projects like Railways, the Damodar Valley Corporation mines, the Union home ministry’s border fencing project or the state’s own Deucha Pachami coal mine project, the government is reluctant to use the land acquisition act and favours buying from owners based on their consent. ‘No forceful acquisition’ is their policy,” he says.
Extortion by land mafias
Because of this policy, West Bengal can’t depend on big industries and instead must focus on MSMEs and agriculture. Economist Sengupta calls it “lumpen industrialisation”.
“The kind of land policy Mamata Banerjee has locked herself in, she cannot come out. If mid-size businesses need 100 acres of land, they can get it but it results in lumpen industrialisation because it is fragmented and not planned,” he says.
He also believes West Bengal’s industrial parks are “a joke”.
“It’s not like that state has acquired 5,000 acres of land and is setting up industries. These are small tracts of land in the name of industrial parks. Forget large investors, you cannot provide consolidated infrastructure because of the small area,” he says.
Meanwhile, the state’s 37 lakh MSMEs have their own set of challenges. Among them is ‘tollabazi’ (extortion).
One Kolkata businessman who owns a chain of mid-sized hotels in the city says businesses have to pay extortionists at every stage. “It doesn’t stop and for mid-size/ lower mid-size businesses like ours, it’s difficult to make a profit because half of our money goes into tollabazi,” he tells ThePrint.
The problem, according to a jute industrialist, is that the industry doesn’t make for a vote bank.
“To start a factory and get all clearances, the government doesn’t help the industry. The reason is stagnant bureaucracy in Bengal and the politicians who feel that industries are not their vote bank,” he says.
Economist Sengupta believes that for MSMEs, land mafia is a bigger problem than acquisition problems.
“The land mafia has grown massively under the TMC. (This is) because the more the state walks out of the land market, the more the land mafia will come in. And this mafia is everywhere and it’s decentralised. There are factions. One investor has to pay a hefty amount several times because of which they are running into losses and don’t want to expand,” he explains.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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