Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, whose party has become the largest ally of the Congress in Parliament with 19 seats, will have to convince industry that she would like new investments to flow into West Bengal. At the same time, she needs to stick to her stand that it should not be at the cost of agriculture or at locations where large plots of fertile land would have to be acquired.
One factor that would work to her advantage was the favourable opinion voiced by some of the biggest industry names in her home state.
They did not feel Banerjee was against development or industrialisation, but held a clearly stated position that sought to balance industrial growth with robust agricultural output and growth.
Banerjee had sent alarm bells ringing through industry when her agitation demanding the return of 400 acres at the Tata Motors Nano car factory site in Singur to “unwilling farmers whose land had been forcibly acquired by the government”. Following this, Tata Motors shifting its project to Sanand in Gujarat.
At the same time, Banerjee backed the 10-million-tonne steel plant proposed to be set up by Jindal Steel at Salboni, a semi-arid region 160 km west of Kolkata, confounding those who sought to project her as a politician opposed to development.
Industry sources said Banerjee was committed to manufacturing and services sector development alike, pointing out that she was the first to exempt the information technology sector from the purview of strikes while the Left Front-backed CITU trade union enforced strikes on the sector.
The CEO of one education and IT consortium said Banerjee should aim for a ministerial berth in the human resource development (HRD) ministry as the education sector was one of the ideal fits in her formula of backing development with a human face that created value rather than mere wealth.
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S B Ganguly, chairman emeritus of Exide Industries and one of the most influential voices in the state, backed Banerjee saying, “she is not anti-industry or anti-development. She has a clear position and does not want anybody taking fertile land away from farmers on unfair terms or unless absolutely necessary. Besides, she has supported industry in specific cases in the past with a forward-looking approach.”
Karan Paul of the Kolkata-based Apeejay Group with interests in tea, shipping, retail and hospitality, said Banerjee was clearly pro-development and followed a line that that fitted into the ‘inclusive growth’ agenda of the Congress.
“Mamata Banerjee has made it clear that development should fulfil the aspirations of communities and should minimise the pain caused by acquisition of large areas of land. She has followed a pro-development line within this position and there are many businessmen who agree with this,” said Paul.
Pawan Kumar Ruia, promoter of Dunlop and Jessop that employ nearly 4,000 people in Bengal, was more enthusiastic: “I met her very recently when the Dunlop Sahagunj factory was closed. She wanted the factory to reopen and thereafter, on the basis of the briefing given by us, really helped in the reopening of the Sahagunj factory.”
There were some dissenting voices too. “She was rigid in her demand and refused to recognise the impossibility to returning farmland inside a project site to farmers”, complained a senior member of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry (BCCI), which had hosted the only industry-Mamata meeting in a failed attempt to make her change her mind before the Nano project moved out.