Left Front sees Kolkata as infotech hub

With Left Front-ruled West Bengal government's ambitions of offering Kolkata as an alternative infotech hub to both Hyderabad and Bangalore, Left politics is set to change in the next 10 years with a shrinking catchment area for recruitment of political talent.

There was a time when investment in West Bengal had nearly dried up because trade unions, strikes, the absence of power and other infrastructure facilities were serious deterrence.

The CPI(M) affiliated Students Federation of India (SFI) and its trade union arm, the Centre for Indian Trade Unions (Citu) could call for industrial strikes at will paralysing the state in a matter of hours.

No longer, says Manabendra Mukherjee, West Bengal IT minister. While he proudly says Citu is still the "best" union in the country and the SFI the "best" student body, the CPI(M), he says, will continue to derive its strength from rural areas.

In a bid to turn West Bengal into an alternative infotech capital of India, significant changes to accommodate specific needs of the IT industry have been made. Therefore, organisations like Citu, which got its strength from organising industrial workers, is now looking elsewhere to augment its cadre.

Currently, West Bengal's share in the national revenue from IT is just 5.1 per cent. But Mukherjee says the state's vision is to contribute 15 per cent revenue to the national IT earnings and 20 per cent to the national revenue in IT-enabled services (ITES) by 2010.

To achieve this, the state has provided IT the status of a public utility service. This means like services governing the supply of essential commodities and transport, infotech industries are exempt from strikes under the Industrial Disputes Act 1947. West Bengal is the only state in India to have taken this step.

Over the last two years, the state has also exempted infotech units from laws that specify opening and closing hours, prevent women from working at night, prevent working on national holidays and prevent working on a 24X7 and 365 days a year.

Mukherjee also said infotech firms could use the services of women employees after 8 pm. Permission has been given for self-certification on the Shops and Establishments Act, the Contract Labour (regulation and Abolition) Act, the ESI Act, the EPF and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, the Maternity Benefit Act, the Payment of Wages Act and a slew of others.

Mukherjee said West Bengal was targetting the employment of 175,000 people in the IT sector and 230,000 in the ITES by 2010. The current strength of IT professionals working in West Bengal - mostly in and around Kolkata - is 21,000, although around 4 times this number has got employment in the secondary and tertiary sectors generated by the IT industry.

However, Mukherjee says unions are "not really" opposed to the concessions offered to owners of IT companies even if they are multinationals.

He attributes this to the fact that the present IT entrepreneurs, like the present crop of Left politicians, are children of the post-1977 political generation, which shares a similar world view.

Mukherjee said there were no unions in the IT sector in West Bengal and if the state contributes only 5. 1 per cent to the national IT revenue currently, this is a function of a 'perception' that Bengal is what it was more than 20 years ago.

The reality, he says, is that private sector developers are being invited to the state without reservations, their applications quickly cleared and their problems solved, so that more and more IT entrepreneurs have a chance opening shop in West Bengal.

Yogesh Verma, chief executive of DLF Universal Ltd, echoed Mukherjee. DLF, which has a Rs 280 crore project on the anvil to develop the DLF IT Park by the second quarter of next year, will provide 1.3 million sq feet of office space for IT companies.

Verma said the difference between West Bengal and other states was that here, the "ministers walk the marketplace".

"We have relations with many states, but the energetic collaboration we have got from west Bengal is quite remarkable" he said. The DLF project is going to provide retail, recreation and all the facilities that 'the young generation expects" from life, he said.