The ruling Left Front in West Bengal could not have asked for a worse year than the current one. The drubbing it received in the Lok Sabha polls has been repeated in civic and by-elections and there is clear evidence of an anti-Left momentum building up. The Assembly election of 2011 is widely expected to be a watershed like Japan?s recent polls, finally unseating the Left after 34 long years! But two years is an eternity in politics, so it is puzzling that the Left itself seems to have already lost its will to fight and has almost conceded defeat. Buddhababu?s health is making news surprisingly often and there are speculations afoot on his replacement?only everyone else seems to have more muck.
The latest mess the Left Front finds itself in concerns, yet again, land acquisition methods. A chance encounter of villagers with anti-socials about a football match has interestingly snowballed into a crisis revealing links between politicians, goons, promoters and land-sharks at Vedic Village, a newly developed high-end residential complex near Kolkata. There is clear evidence of large-scale land grab and coercion of villagers. As state ministers try to wrangle out of an ever-expanding mess and blame one another, the fallout has claimed a proposed IT park nearby with Infosys and Wipro already signed up, deflating whatever was left of the Left Front?s industrialisation agenda after the Tata exit from Singur.
All this points to the risks associated with business group based industrialisation programmes of which West Bengal is not, by far, the only guilty state. The title of a relatively recent international bestseller?Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists?comes to mind. The comrades have probably forgotten the distinction in their decades of exhortation against both, but the wooing of the latter to bring prosperity is hardly restricted to West Bengal. Politicians have always favoured lumpy, visible, large projects?often termed ?ribbon-cutting investments??over widespread flourishing of small and medium enterprises. In this age of public-private partnership and competition among states to industrialise, this has meant wooing established corporate names at any cost, on the promise that though the initial outlay may be restricted in scope of employment and output, some vaguely indicated ?ancillary and downstream? investments will alter the industrial situation fundamentally. It is a throwback to the old government-led industrialisation model with favoured private players instead of PSUs.
This is flawed thinking for several reasons. For one, this means the big business groups get favoured deals, particularly land, from governments and politicians creating yet another obstacle to competition. SMEs, known for their employment opportunities and local effects, on the other hand get elbowed out because of, among other things, land scarcity worsened by such deals. Therefore, such large-business-centric industrialisation agenda not just ignores SMEs, it works to their disadvantage. States should focus more on the aam entrepreneur than sell their souls to get the large business groups to come in. Ultimately the role of the state in promoting business is to provide a good?read prompt, effective and fair?regulatory and bureaucratic environment for business to flourish.
In Bengal, of course, this approach has backfired completely because the marquee projects have themselves stalled. It is also difficult to ignore the irony of the Left Front?s relationship with land in the state. Land reforms are generally hailed to be its greatest contribution that cemented its rule. Yet today, land deals and agitating farmers appear to spell its doom. In a sense, they are repeating history?comrade Lenin had a similar experience with the ?land for farmers? issue and had to use the Red Army as a solution. But there are other ironies too. Ratan Tata has no intention of giving back the land at Singur to the state for other industry since he has reportedly invested Rs 500 crore in it. Can the state now use the same arguments against Tata that it applied to the original owners of the land to acquire it? Or does the land acquisition act have teeth only against farmers, not industrialists?
Naturally all this is a godsend to Mamata. The Leftists are now already hoping that her seemingly inevitable victory in 2011 will end up looking like the first non-Congress government at the Centre, for surely the agitator par excellence cannot measure up as an administrator. Here, they are likely to be underestimating her yet again. All long-standing regimes spawn a ?no-alternative? myth and, as in Japan, there is little in terms of policy that distinguishes Trinamool from the Left. But still, like there, a shaking off of the entrenched rulers can only be for the good of Bengal. Let us just hope the transition spills as little blood as possible.
The author teaches finance at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad