Newly elected West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is set to make the information technology (IT) sector her new mantra for ridding the state of unemployment and growth.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader made it clear on the day she met industry chieftans that she plans to focus on IT, given the land constraints as the new growth engine for debt ridden Bengal.
“IT and tourism have a lot of potential in the state. We can create IT hubs in every district to give employment to the youth that has been forced to move out because of absence of work,” she said. IT was, incidentally, the mantra for former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for the first five years of his tenure when he focused on setting up the fledgling industry in the state by creating the IT hub at Sector V in Salt Lake.
Experts however opine that no matter how labour intensive the IT industry might be, it requires skilled workers and over the past decade barely a few lakhs have been employed through the sector in Bengal, where the unemployment figures have recently touched 6.4 million.
Bhattacharjee realised on the back of the fact that between 2003-04 and 2005-06 the average state domestic product (SDP) growth was docked at 7.29 per cent, whereas the national average had breached nine per cent.
This was when he started focusing on the manufacturing sector by bringing in Sajjan Jindal to set up the Rs 35,000 crore Salboni project, and the Tata Motors’ Nano project which ultimately had a catastrophic effect.
“We do not have unlimited land, so we will make do with available resources and industries like IT and tourism. No huge land is required for this and can be developed through hubs. Industry, if it wants to acquire land, can do it on its own,” Banerjee said.
West Bengal commerce and industries minister Partha Chatterjee, however said that given the issue of land shortage, IT companies will not be given land for campuses, but will have to work within built-in office spaces.
“IT is a labour, not capital intensive industry. Why will they be given huge portions of land? Land is a problem. We cannot tolerate, two buildings in 100 acres and the rest left idle,” he explained the government’s policy.
Chatterjee said that the government was currently in the process of examining proposals from ITC Infotech and the Purnendu Chatterjee-led TCG group, declining to divulge further details.
