At a recent event, organised by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, state industry minister Nirupam Sen said the government was talking to two international players to invest in the renewable energy sector. He said the government was in possession of enough land for the venture?1,000 acres?at Panagarh in Burdwan district, which also happens to be his home turf. He said that even though one of the biggest fears for investors in Bengal is that the physical possession of land is difficult, Bengal has been successful in providing land to Telcon, paper equipment manufacturer GapCon and to Tractors India. ?The government has created a land bank and believes there is enough scope for investment,? he said. But elsewhere, especially in the Left’s showcase satellite township?New Town, Rajarhat?a land bank is stirring up angry emotions in both ruler and the ruled. While the CPM faces the prospect of another of its pro-development programs, after Nandigram and Singur, being jeopardised in the run-up to the 2011 assembly elections, the Trinamool Congress is upping the ante against the land acquisition process at Rajarhat, putting the Left in a spot.
Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee has alleged that 25,000 acres have been forcibly acquired at Rajarhat for the construction of ‘New Town’, a business and residential hub, and that she will not rest till justice is done. Her party is demanding a CBI probe into the land acquisition deals in the area, saying the state bought land from farmers cheaply and sold it off at a premium. A defiant housing minister has denied allegations of a land grab, saying that Hidco has possession of 6,280 acres of the project area of 8,773 acres.
Given that the state government has just signed an MoU with IT major Infosys to set up a software global delivery centre in New Town, Mamata’s outbursts (already the housing development office has been gheraoed and there have been two rallies) do not augur well. When Infosys CEO and managing director S Gopalakrishnan dropped in at Writer’s Buildings to meet chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee earlier this month, he said he did not foresee any opposition to the IT project because it will generate hundreds of jobs. But he did set a rider: Infosys will start work on the project in six months, once the state government has set up the basic infrastructure and thereby hangs a sordid tale. As of now, there are no roads, power, water or telecom connections at the 50-acre plot, which resembles wasteland. These are basic requirements for any investor, especially an IT investor. Wipro also has a 50-acre plot there but hasn’t begun work, even a year after the MoU was signed. The road to the IT hub was supposed to have been six lanes wide. It?s barely four and only up to a particular point; there?s no road leading up to the Infosys plot. And Trinamool supporters are resisting construction?Nirupam Sen and other Left leaders have constantly harped on the resistance to development by the Opposition at various forums. In fact, the state administration has tried to set up power towers for two years now but in vain.
There are pockets in the area where land-losers are resisting laying power, water and sewer lines. So despite state housing minister Gautam Deb’s bold claims that infrastructure will be ready in two months, it’s unlikely that this is going to work out as planned. Privately, industrialists say the infrastructure should have been in place before the government pleaded with Infosys and Wipro to invest in the state.
After the Vedic Village land scam, the Left should have learnt some lessons on how to handle land-losers. Even at Rajarhat, only after Mamata raised the land scam angle to the state government’s development plans, did the state government rush to announce a special eight-point package, which includes jobs, construction permits, loans for businesses, a provident fund scheme and so forth to land losers, even to those who had accepted compensation. The state government had done the same during Singur, raising the compensation package after Opposition protests.
As both political parties battle it out over another piece of land, Bengal appears to live up to its perception, that it is a state where ?physical possession of land is difficult?, if not impossible. A recent Assocham study said, despite obvious land acquisition problems, Bengal continues to be a lucrative destination for investment. Till September, it had attracted proposals worth Rs 5 lakh crore?all the states put together had investment proposals of Rs 104 lakh crore. The study said Bengal was a matured, established economy and that it had the potential to achieve double digit growth by exploiting complementaries between its social and economic strengths. ?Bengal envisages a balanced development of all three sectors of the economy. It aims at harmonising traditional and sunrise sectors, indigenous and modern technology and labour-intensive and knowledge-based industries. This strategy is expected to help the state reduce dependency on agriculture, add value to primary sector products and augment sources of revenue for the state,? it pointed out. But first the infrastructure has to be in place and a mindset change on work ethic. The housing minister may rue that the Opposition is holding up a bridge here, a flyover there, but the point is that the Left has been in power for three decades and has really no one else to blame for not planning its sadak, bijli, pani strategy better.