West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra has switched to dhoti-kurta from the pin-striped suits he wore as Ficci secretary general. But his attire isn’t all that has changed.
About 100 CEOs from across the country were seated in The Oberoi Grand Ballroom in Kolkata earlier last month. The event was the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry’s executive committee meeting. Amit Mitra, having served as the secretary general of the industry association for 17 long years, would have orchestrated the meeting without a drop of sweat on his brow — giving the discourse a helping hand, calling speakers on stage, directing questions from the audience et al. Today, he was the guest speaker. Those who had worked with him shoulder-to-shoulder had come to hear West Bengal’s new finance minister. Mitra didn’t disappoint. “I was amazed at the number of human skulls unearthed in rural (West) Bengal in recent days,” he said about the Left Front’s 34-year rule.
Had the politician in Mitra got the better of the lobbyist? There were no doubts left when Mitra told the CEOs that his leader, Mamata Banerjee, had ruled that there would be no victory celebration and only Rabindrasangeet would be played in the paras after Trinamool Congress’ landslide victory in the state elections. Of course, the political fervour was peppered with figures of the state’s gargantuan debt. The metamorphosis is best depicted by his attire; the pin-striped suits have given way to crisp, white, cotton dhoti and kurta. Ever since campaigning for the elections started, he hasn’t been seen in anything but dhoti and kurta — not even at premieres of movies, though his party colleagues are clad in Hawaiian shirts.
Attire, for Mitra, is a communication tool. “It’s the sociology of symbolism,” he says. The dhoti-kurta combination is not new for him either. “When I used to study in Presidency College, I wore dhoti and kurta. It was a transitional atmosphere at that point in time. I never wore a suit when I used to teach; and while in Ficci, I only wore suits,” he says. Former Ficci president A K Rungta, who was instrumental in roping in Mitra for the top job at the association, thinks it’s the heat that has made Mitra opt for more comfortable clothing options. Indeed, in Mitra’s unenviable position, a suit could make it just a little stifling.
Caught between a populist leader like Banerjee and a Union finance minister at Delhi who doesn’t like to bend rules and release extra funds for West Bengal, Mitra has a tightrope to walk on. Friends had warned him. “Don’t take finance. Take anything, but that. It’s a BIFR (Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction) case,” a friend had warned. But Mitra knew that the choice would be Banerjee’s and not his. He knew that the finance minister’s job would be a tough one. After all, he was a part of the team that worked on the Trinamool Congress’ vision document and had carefully gone through all the graphs that showed West Bengal in the red.
“Not only did I have to study the Constitution, but I even went through Dr (BR) Ambedkar’s speech on vote on accounts. It’s been a great learning experience,” Mitra says. Soon after assuming office, he presented a vote-on-account, and then recently a budget shortened from 25 books (the norm in the days of the Left Front) to nine pages, evoking strong reactions from the opposition.
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It’s not the first time that Mitra has been dished out a near impossible task. “The day I stepped inside Ficci, there was a threat that the electricity connection would be severed and salaries would not be paid for the month,” Mitra says. But Mitra turned around the fortunes of the associations and improved its revenue from Rs 3 crore when he took charge in 1994 to Rs 110 crore in 2011.
Can he do the same with cash-strapped West Bengal, one of the three most indebted states in the country, while following the Ma Mati Manush policies of his government? Mitra is confident it’s possible. He has projected a 31 per cent increase in revenue collection. But that could be difficult because there are no big-ticket investments in sight in the state! “He has good intentions and understands the problems of the industry, but he knows the success of his policies will come once he is able to generate wealth by increasing production. He is getting stuck with taxes,” an industry veteran points out. What deters industry is that the new government has decided to steer clear of any land acquisition for industrial projects.
Friends think Mitra looks a little worried these days. Or, is it a series of ideological contradictions that explain his subdued public persona of late? In 2008, as secretary general of Ficci, Mitra had expressed concerns over the Nano pullout from West Bengal. “The Tata project could have brought about a major change in the industrial scenario in the state. This was not a one-off auto project, but would have given a boost to a host of ancillaries as well,” he had said. Now, his government is entangled in a legal battle with Tata Motors over land issues.
In 2007, Ficci had advocated relaxing the foreign direct investment norms in retail, including grant of industry status to retail and simplification of the tax structure, while the Trinamool Congress government is opposed to it. In 2009, Mitra spoke in favour of special economic zones — in 2011 he is part of a government that vehemently opposes SEZs. Given Mitra’s constraints it’s not surprising that he is hardly available to take questions from journalists. He is either busy in hectic parleys with Pranab Mukherjee or steeped in the files that were gathering dust in his predecessor’s office.
“Files are moving, they never used to in Asim Dasgupta’s (Mitra’s predecessor) office,” says an observer. Mitra was a known workaholic in his Ficci days. But his hours at Writers’ Building are no less gruelling. From 10 in the morning to 10 in the night, Mitra is at the state secretariat, though it might just be a respite from the pre-election days when he would walk 15 km a day in Khardah, his constituency. Weekends are still spent in Khardah where he has opened an MLA office. It’s clear why the Cavalli suits have been neatly tucked away — for now, at least.
