FROM THE TELEGRAPH OF 31 DECEMBER 2005
Looking around
and looking forward
Non-Bengali and non-communist
intellectuals long ago wrote off Bengal. The conventional wisdom is that the
communists came to power and scared off capitalists. The aggressive bad manners
of their trade unions made life in West Bengal unpleasant, and not only for
employers. Once industry and services moved away south and west, the distance
was too great for them to come back to West Bengal.
The communists
have come to the same conclusion. The chief minister of West Bengal tirelessly
courts capitalists, tries to sell the virtues of the state, and offers them
favours such as prize land. Jyoti Basu had also started doing this in his old
age; but then he used to spoil it by saying that the communists had no other
choice since they lived in a capitalist country. Buddhadev apparently
recognizes that old-style communism plays havoc with human initiative and
creativity, and that communism has to change if it is to compete with
capitalism. West Bengal is not only located in a capitalist country, but it has
to compete for investment with Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and
Andhra Pradesh. To compete, communists have to do better; and as China has
shown, if they are prepared to change, they can beat anybody. Umbrage, for long
the hallmark of Indian communists, is being contaminated with ambition and
envy. The resulting ferment holds promise; it may lead the communists to ask
the question: what can West Bengal do differently?
What it should
first do is to look around. India’s successful capitalist states are too far
away from West Bengal; it should ask itself how it can find synergy in growth
from its surroundings. Bangladesh may be poor; but it is much larger than West
Bengal in terms of population and total income. It has insatiable hunger for
goods from India; and most of them pass through Petrapole. Unfortunately, the
facilities in Petrapole are execrable; and they are made even worse by two
wings of the Indian government, customs and BSF. West Bengal should invest in
the infrastructure around Petrapole – widen roads, set up truck parks,
construct overnight facilities, plant trees and make the place more hospitable.
More important, it should attack the corruption and dilatoriness of customs and
BSF. It should set up pickets of aggressive party members to ensure that the
two forces do not collect bribes or obstruct traffic. Now that the CPM is a
partner of the central government, it should pressure the latter to discipline
customs and BSF, which are both under central command.
West Bengal
should not only maximize trade with Bangladesh and thereby gain all the transit
services, but it should also capture as much of the trade as possible. It
should satisfy Bangladesh’s hunger for Indian goods. India is Bangladesh’s principal
supplier of yarn for its textile industry. There is no reason why this yarn
should come from far-away Gujarat and Punjab. It is perfectly possible to set
up spinning mills in West Bengal. And if mills are set up, cotton will come to
be produced in the neighbourhood – in Bihar, Orissa and UP.
Conversely, West
Bengal should buy everything it needs from Bangladesh – hilsa, jute, rice –
whatever it finds cheaper. It should make Bangladesh as dependent on itself as
possible. For it needs the leverage the interdependence would provide.
Interdependence
is necessary to change the self-destructive political system of Bangladesh.
Having qualified as a least developed country, Bangladesh has received enormous
foreign aid. All that foreign aid ends up with NGOs run by wives of civil
servants and politicians. Bangladesh also had privileged access to the textile
markets of rich countries till the end of 2004. It provided a home to the
Taiwanese and the Koreans to set up textile mills and garment factories, and to
jump the trade barriers of rich countries. These rackets made it independent of
India, so its elite could cock a snook at India. This was the economic basis of
anti-Indianism in Bangladesh; it must be destroyed if Bangladesh is to develop
natural, healthy, friendly relations with India. And one key to such a
relationship is trade – the more the better.
The other key is
people. Other Indians may treat West Bengal as a poor cousin; but Bangladeshis
love it. They like to come to Calcutta for treatment; they enjoy themselves in
its dens of vice. But above all, they come to work in West Bengal. Arun Shourie
may be a manic depressive Muslim-hater, but he is right – there has been
massive migration from Bangladesh into the neighbouring states of India,
including West Bengal. It is beyond the capacity of the great Indian
government, let alone West Bengal, to stop it. Bangladesh is terribly crowded,
and its people have nowhere to go except to India and into the sea – and they
prefer India. It is in West Bengal’s interest that they should pass on into the
rest of India. Now that its leaders have leverage on Delhi, they should use it
to legitimize immigration from Bangladesh, and to back it up with a proper work
visa system. It would also thereby stop the hooligans of the BJP and Shiv Sena
from branding Muslims in urban areas as Bangladeshis and hounding them.
Growth of trade
and economic relations with Bangladesh could keep up growth in West Bengal for
years, if not decades. If it continues, it will at some point give West Bengal
leverage for the next step: to make Bangladesh allow transit for goods and
people traveling to north-eastern India and Burma. Bangladesh has been avoiding
this issue by asking for transit to Pakistan; and there is no reason to deny
it. Delhi’s paranoia and cussedness have led to an impasse on this question.
West Bengal should use its considerable influence in Delhi to overcome its
inertia and open the doors. That would allow West Bengal to extend its economic
relations with a vast region that was once its hinterland and which was cut off
from it by partition.
Finally,
Bengalis love holidays, and for holiday they go everywhere except to their own
state. A quarter of a million Indians went up to Kashmir last summer; the bulk
of these intrepid fools were Bengalis or Gujaratis. There was a time, before I
was put off by the processions, slogan-shouting and the general bad temper of
Calcutta, when I used to go quite often to West Bengal; and what I remember is,
how beautiful its landscape can be. That was before I went to Kerala, which too
stunned me with its picturesque hills and valleys. Those were the days of
militancy in Kerala as well; I was hounded out and left before long. But then I
went back recently and was surprised by the transformation. Now Kerala has
beautiful hotels, and Malayali staff are perfectly hospitable and helpful. They
have given up lungis and started wearing trousers; and horror of horrors, their
daughters have started wearing Punjabi dresses.
Maybe Bengalis
should try their hand at shocking others. They should turn their charm on, and
make foreigners feel at home. They should clean up their numerous waterbodies
and build airconditioned huts around them. They should surpass the Britons and
the Japanese and become the world’s best gardeners. They will then stop living
in high dudgeon. They will make their country proud, and enjoy the pleasure of
being admired. That is when Bengal will become Sonar Bangla.
