Business meet was momentous

What was the implication of chief minister Mamata Banerjee's meeting with business leaders in Mumbai this past week?

Apart from being the most successful interaction between a chief minister from Kolkata and a top-flight representation of corporate India in living memory, what did it suggest?

As somebody who has watched and worked with Mamatadi for over a decade now, the event was momentous. It marked the inauguration of phase two of her public career and commitment to West Bengal.

Phase one had begun on January 1, 1998, when Mamatadi founded the Trinamool Congress.
History was not on her side. Her viability as an independent politician as well as her ability to unseat the CPI(M) were mocked.

Twice previously, Congress politicians from West Bengal had broken away.
Ajoy Mukherjee did it in the 1960s and became a short-lived chief minister but then went into oblivion.
Pranab Mukherjee founded a regional party in the 1980s. It contested all 294 assembly seats but won zero. Soon afterwards, Mukherjee returned to his parent party.

Congress rebels elsewhere had mixed success.
In 1996, G K Moopanar and P Chidambaram founded the Tamil Maanila Congress but were back in the Congress in a few years.
Sharad Pawar's NCP has sustained itself for 15 years but still has to share power in Maharashtra.

Mamatadi has outdone all of them.
She triumphed in the 2009 Lok Sabha election and, two years later, won an absolute majority in the state assembly.
From September 2012 she has ruled West Bengal on her own, unencumbered by the Congress alliance.
On July 29, 2013, she took her 40-year struggle to a closure by sweeping the panchayat elections and establishing Trinamool's grip in rural Bengal.

No breakaway leader from the Congress has achieved so much in eastern India since Biju Patnaik.


II


From political activism, Mamatadi has subtly shifted gears to governance and economic development.

A telling example of this was her visit to Mumbai.
Hitherto the business capital of India had been a transit point; for the first time, it became a destination. Business leaders seemed to recognise this. Trinamool's repeated electoral successes had established it as unchallenged in West Bengal, helming a stable government.

Mamatadi herself was seen as a transparent and well-meaning problem-solver, heading a flat structure in government and willing to help.

It caused Chanda Kochhar, chief of ICICI Bank, to say, "We have seen your passion on television; today we felt it in person."
Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries is rolling out his 4G telecom venture in West Bengal ahead of most of the rest of India. As he put it in Mumbai, "Forty-eight hours after a big election victory you are here in the business capital. That means you mean business."

This prompted ITC's Yogi Deveshwar, a fellow Calcuttan whose stake in West Bengal's economic revival is second to none, to quip: "Chief Minister, you have won the day... Mukesh has committed, so now many more will follow."

ITC has invested Rs 3,000 crore in a food processing facility in Uluberia.
This project was stuck for 10 years because of land issues.
Mamatadi called for the papers and said, "Let's sort it out."
Without fanfare, she cut the red tape and released the 26 acres to ITC.


III


West Bengal's economy is looking up. Statistics bear this out.
The state GDP grew 7.6 per cent in 2012-13, as opposed to the national figure of 4.96 per cent.
Growth in industry, agriculture and services all outpaced national growth rates.
According to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, between January and July 2013, West Bengal attracted investment worth Rs 1,331 crore.
Investment for the entire year was Rs 632 crore in 2009, Rs 1,163 crore in 2010, Rs 325 crore in 2011 and Rs 962 crore in 2012.

There are still five months to go in 2013. Forty-one investment proposals worth Rs 1,744 crore are pending. This year will break records.

So much is happening:

• The Sajjan Jindal Group's steel plant - even though confused policies by the central government have caused an iron ore shortage

• Anil Ambani's Rs 600 crore cement venture in Raghunathpur (Purulia)

• The JV between Singapore's Changi Airport and Bengal Aerotropolis for a new airport in Andal (near Durgapur) is to get its final clearances in a few weeks

The big story in the coming months will be the disinvestment in Haldia Petrochemicals.
Six bidders - three from the public sector and three from the private sector - are participating in an auction conducted by Deloitte.

It is a thoroughly professional arrangement. The politicians are not interfering. The chief minister is not showing undue interest. There is not even a hint of cronyism.

This is what business wants. This is what business is getting in West Bengal. This is what business is coming to appreciate about the Trinamool government.

The reception Mamatadi got in Mumbai was evidence.

The Kamduni Tragedy: Every such case is a crime too many

For the past 10 days, I have maintained a silence on the horrific rape and murder of a 20-year-old student in Kamduni, Barasat, North 24 Parganas, just outside Calcutta and not far from where I live and work. In these loud, media-driven times, silence is construed as weakness and defensiveness. This is unfortunate because it is not that I had nothing to say but it is just that I had nothing to contribute that had not already been said. More so, the incident troubled me at a personal level. As the father of a 17-year-old young woman who will probably spend the rest of her life in West Bengal, I couldn’t help but feel disturbed.

A rape is not a statistic; it is a brutal assault, a crime, a violent act, a forceful reminder of skewed gender relations and power equations. Every such case is a crime too many. There are no ifs and buts here, no question of which party the rapists and murderers may or may not belong to. That essential verity cannot be obliterated.

Eight persons have been arrested for the crime in Kamduni. The chargesheet in regard to the rape and murder of the college student will be filed within 15 days and the accused bought to trial before a fast-track court. In a month hopefully the culprits will be convicted.

Additionally, the state government has announced the setting up of four new police stations in the area. Currently, Kamduni and its neighbouring areas come under the jurisdiction of the Barasat police station. The CID, West Bengal Police, has been told to keep an eye on Barasat, and deal with local goons and prevent harassment of and crimes against citizens, especially women.

This is a case of rape and murder. As Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said, the prosecution will seek the death penalty for the accused. Indeed, as a party Trinamool Congress will push for the death penalty in cases of rape. Despite the recent anti-rape legislation, that debate – related to the death penalty – has not been settled yet.

My personal view is for those charge-sheeted and brought to trial in a rape case, state governments should refuse police clearances for, say, passports, government jobs and such facilities. These are small steps and may not apply to all culprits, but they are of symbolic value and suggest that the government takes such crimes seriously, with a zero-tolerance approach.

The government can do its bit, but there is a larger social obligation as well. Other than punishment that acts as deterrence, sensitisation is also called for. It has to start at home, by telling our sons to treat our daughters as equals. Sensitisation and civil-society monitoring have to begin in the bus and the Metro compartment which ordinary young women use to travel to study or to work or to meet their friends.

The other day, a man tried to harass a girl in a Metro train in Calcutta. She raised an alarm, and with help from co-passengers apprehended him and handed him over to the police. This is heart-warming. We cannot stay bystanders as our daughters and sisters suffer – not as government, not as citizens.

I would also urge the media to interrogate itself about the appropriate manner in which to cover such crimes. No doubt they have to be reported and should be reported. If the authorities have erred or if there are gaps that need to be filled, these should be explained and criticised, as necessary. Yet, the temptation to resort to grisly, basal instincts, whip up hysteria and enter a mad TRP war needs to be checked. In this context, I would like to single out two local news channels. In their race for ratings, have they reported the problem or added to it? Do they want to be part of the solution or part of the problem?

So many of the challenges we face in West Bengal – including under-policed regions in the periphery of Calcutta – are legacy issues that it is always going to be easy for me to blame the previous government and the 34-year nightmare of Left rule. Indeed, if one were to write an account of crimes against women in the Communist era and the then government’s egregious responses, it would fill a book, not merely a newspaper article. Yet, I will resist all that here.

I will only point to one episode and a chief ministerial contrast. On May 30, 1990, a government car coming to Calcutta from Gosaba-Ragabelia was ferrying three ladies: Renu Ghosh - an officer from UNICEF, New Delhi, and Anita Dewan and Uma Ghosh - both officers of the Family Welfare Wing, Department of Health, government of West Bengal.

As the car was about to pass the CPI(M) office on Bantala Road, four or five youth stopped the car. Another 10-12 youth joined them. The gang began abusing the women, and pulled them out of the car. Five hours later, dead bodies were wheeled into a hospital. The victims had been brutalised, subjected to unimaginable sexual crimes and then killed.

This happened right outside Calcutta. Such was the fear psychosis, no newspaper reported the crime the next morning. No arrests were made. When asked about the incident, the then chief minister was quoted as saying, “Anti-social acts like rowdyism, beating, dacoity happen everywhere. This [does] not mean that the situation of law and order in Bengal is poor.”

Our state has come a long distance from that cynical era. As the tragedy of the college girl in Kamduni reminds us, we still have a long, long way to go. Her memory must serve as our inspiration.