Green leaves in Bengal

The long-delayed privatisation of the Great Eastern Hotel and the takeover of Dunlop, creating hopes for its revival, have strong symbolic significance for West Bengal. Symbolic because the developments mark a change, even if they themselves are unlikely to attract big-ticket investment. Both Lalit Suri, whose Bharat Hotels has taken over Kolkata's colonial landmark, and Pawan Ruia, who has acquired the closed tyre pioneer, are businessmen on the go. Mr Suri has made substantial acquisitions through the disinvestment of ITDC properties and Mr Ruia has had a positive experience with his earlier takeover of Jessop, another former state blue chip. When businessmen in a mood to invest take over closed businesses in such traditional areas as hospitality and engineering, it means they have faith in their ability to do business in the chosen geography. These deals will do much to dissipate the image of West Bengal as a state plagued by trade union militancy and poor governance. Several rankings of states in recent years have found the state doing quite well in terms of infrastructure and skills but scoring very poorly on business perception. The image makeover, along with active courting of investment, has the potential to reverse the fortunes of the state, which since the early sixties had managed to travel from the top of the league to its very middle. Industry associations in the state affirm that the most recent developments are indeed representative of a change in investors' mood, reflected in buoyant overall business confidence sending property prices skyhigh.

The current developments have been gathering momentum for several years now. Political veteran Jyoti Basu's successor Buddhadev Bhattacharya, who was able to retain power for the Left in the state by sidestepping the anti-incumbency factor with his newcomer's plea to be given a chance, has not looked back since then. He has aggressively courted investment at both home and abroad and earned the image of an Indian Deng Xiaoping who has refused to look at the colour of money so long as it holds the prospects of creating jobs. Slowly, this has moved in tandem with a change in the attitude of the state's trade union leadership, whose current message to their members is: don't expect our support if you are in the wrong (in your particular dispute). The state is still plagued by bandhs but their frequency is declining and Mr Bhattacharya has promised that henceforth no one willing to go to work during a bandh will be prevented by others. All this has led to a rise in investment in the state, with more in the pipeline. While a good part of the investment is in iron and steel, in which the state has a natural advantage, Mr Bhattacharya has chosen to go all out to court investment in information technology. Currently, most of the major IT companies in the country (TCS, Wipro, IBM, Cognizant, Genpact, Satyam) have either set up or decided to set up their development centres in the state. There should be no doubt that historical legacies are not turned around in a hurry and what is happening are first signs of change, albeit real and promising. What is instructive is that it is governance which takes a state down and only a turnaround in the minds of rulers can change things again on the ground.