Singur and West Bengal, are you listening
Some years back Tata Steel ran a creative ad campaign with a cryptic slogan: ‘We also make steel’. It claimed, quite legitimately, that apart from its main business activity, the company also ran the best-managed industrial township in Jamshedpur, encouraged sports and supported other corporate social responsibility initiatives. In other words, steel-making was sought to be projected almost as a byproduct of the company’s larger commitment to the nation.
In the context of the Tata Group’s proposed investments in West Bengal and Bangladesh, I am tempted to speculate: if the road blocks to these investments are cleared, and the Tatas set up the small-car plant in Singur and the steel-power-fertiliser complex in Bangladesh, might these enterprises some day prove to be byproducts of a larger endeavour, namely, economic reintegration of the two divided halves of Bengal?
This possibility is within the grasp of the people and politicians of India, especially of West Bengal, and Bangladesh, to close the chapter of artificial division and open a new one of cooperation and co-prosperity. Yes, it is within our grasp if only we care to listen to the great call of 21st-century Asia and also to the centuries-old music of the spiritual-cultural-social unity of Bengalis on both sides of the border.
It is not difficult to know why some sections of Bangladesh’s political and intellectual establishment — since its creation in 1971, the country has received only $3 billion of FDI — have fiercely opposed the Tatas’ offer to invest nearly $3 billion in the country’s core industrial sectors. The main reason lies in the rise of anti-India sentiments, stoked by the rising power of foreign-funded Islamist forces. These forces are also the principal opponents of India-Bangladesh cooperation to harness the latter’s considerable natural gas reserves. India-locked on three sides, Bangladesh simply cannot use its natural gas except within a framework of cooperation with India. Yet there is an entrenched mindset in Bangladesh that resists such a move.
What is appalling, however, is to see that some forces in our own Bengal seem determined to keep it industrially underdeveloped, economically stagnant and thus incapable of opening new avenues of employment and wealth-creation. Until recently the communists themselves were responsible for Bengal’s de-industrialisation. But now that the CPM has finally realised its mistake, its opponents are using the traditional communist methods to oppose a project that promises to become the harbinger of the state’s re-industrialisation.
How ironic. With due respect to Mamata Banerjee, who is spearheading the opposition to Singur, I have to say that her agitation militates against both West Bengal’s immediate interests and India’s long-term interests. She has many admirable qualities, but if she wants to be taken seriously as the potential successor to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, she has to look beyond her party’s rural base for the next panchayat elections. She must expand her vision to see the big opportunity that India has not only to accelerate economic growth in our eastern and northeastern states, but also to pull our estranged eastern neighbour into a new paradigm of sub-regional cooperation, which alone can make Tagore’s dream of ‘Amaar Shonaar Bangla’ for undivided Bengal come true.
Today, regional and sub-regional cooperation is the axis around which the wheel of economic growth is turning. The nay-sayers to new investments in West Bengal and Bangladesh should glance eastwards to see how this wheel has turned in the direction of poverty alleviation, employment generation and shared prosperity. Not long ago, undivided Bengal was more advanced than several countries in Southeast and Far East Asia. Kolkata itself was ahead of Shanghai. Today, if Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and, lately, even Vietnam, have left West Bengal and Bangladesh far behind, it is primarily because they
realised the virtue of economic cooperation. Fifty-five per cent of Asia\\'s trade is now within the region, and this figure is rapidly rising. No wonder, America and Europe have had to confront the truth, which was unimaginable earlier: their domination of the world’s economy, and hence politics, is nearing an end.
Every vibrant centre of enterprise has a demonstration effect on the neighbourhood, eventually leading to a symbiotic way of collective growth. Thus, Singapore spurred Malaysia’s success. Japan’s miracle influenced China, and today China’s growth sustains the Japanese economy. In spite of the political problems between the two neighbours, today there are 35,000 Japanese companies operating in China, employing 10 million Chinese. There are also 100,000 Japanese working in China. Goods and capital are moving almost freely here. The Asean and East Asian region have been transformed into an integrated manufacturing plant, in which some components are made in one country, others in another country and the final product is assembled in and exported from a third country. Can we not envision a similar transformation in our eastern region? Is it impossible that an economically vibrant West Bengal will not open the eyes of Bangladeshis, just as the success of Narendra Modi’s ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ initiatives have opened the eyes of many communists, whether they admit it or not?
What India and Bangladesh need are visionary leaders in politics, business and public life. Leaders who refuse to live in the past and are determined enough to script a new future for our children whose grandparents were, after all, once part of the single family of undivided India. In this endeavour to re-integrate our two countries economically and socially, we should learn from the EU. Last week some Auroville-based European devotees of Maharshi Aurobindo organised a seminar in honour of Jean Monnet, a French statesman regarded as the architect of European unity. From the ashes of World War II, he extricated the golden idea of economic cooperation. He began with something as mundane as establishing the European Coal and Steel Community with Germany and France, bitter rivals in the war, as its core members. The idea evolved and engendered the EU. It now has 27 member-countries, which have broken down walls that divided them in the 20th century. Shouldn’t India and Bangladesh pull down the ‘narrow domestic walls’ keeping them apart to the detriment of both?
In the context of the Tata Group’s proposed investments in West Bengal and Bangladesh, I am tempted to speculate: if the road blocks to these investments are cleared, and the Tatas set up the small-car plant in Singur and the steel-power-fertiliser complex in Bangladesh, might these enterprises some day prove to be byproducts of a larger endeavour, namely, economic reintegration of the two divided halves of Bengal?
This possibility is within the grasp of the people and politicians of India, especially of West Bengal, and Bangladesh, to close the chapter of artificial division and open a new one of cooperation and co-prosperity. Yes, it is within our grasp if only we care to listen to the great call of 21st-century Asia and also to the centuries-old music of the spiritual-cultural-social unity of Bengalis on both sides of the border.
It is not difficult to know why some sections of Bangladesh’s political and intellectual establishment — since its creation in 1971, the country has received only $3 billion of FDI — have fiercely opposed the Tatas’ offer to invest nearly $3 billion in the country’s core industrial sectors. The main reason lies in the rise of anti-India sentiments, stoked by the rising power of foreign-funded Islamist forces. These forces are also the principal opponents of India-Bangladesh cooperation to harness the latter’s considerable natural gas reserves. India-locked on three sides, Bangladesh simply cannot use its natural gas except within a framework of cooperation with India. Yet there is an entrenched mindset in Bangladesh that resists such a move.
What is appalling, however, is to see that some forces in our own Bengal seem determined to keep it industrially underdeveloped, economically stagnant and thus incapable of opening new avenues of employment and wealth-creation. Until recently the communists themselves were responsible for Bengal’s de-industrialisation. But now that the CPM has finally realised its mistake, its opponents are using the traditional communist methods to oppose a project that promises to become the harbinger of the state’s re-industrialisation.
How ironic. With due respect to Mamata Banerjee, who is spearheading the opposition to Singur, I have to say that her agitation militates against both West Bengal’s immediate interests and India’s long-term interests. She has many admirable qualities, but if she wants to be taken seriously as the potential successor to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, she has to look beyond her party’s rural base for the next panchayat elections. She must expand her vision to see the big opportunity that India has not only to accelerate economic growth in our eastern and northeastern states, but also to pull our estranged eastern neighbour into a new paradigm of sub-regional cooperation, which alone can make Tagore’s dream of ‘Amaar Shonaar Bangla’ for undivided Bengal come true.
Today, regional and sub-regional cooperation is the axis around which the wheel of economic growth is turning. The nay-sayers to new investments in West Bengal and Bangladesh should glance eastwards to see how this wheel has turned in the direction of poverty alleviation, employment generation and shared prosperity. Not long ago, undivided Bengal was more advanced than several countries in Southeast and Far East Asia. Kolkata itself was ahead of Shanghai. Today, if Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and, lately, even Vietnam, have left West Bengal and Bangladesh far behind, it is primarily because they
realised the virtue of economic cooperation. Fifty-five per cent of Asia\\'s trade is now within the region, and this figure is rapidly rising. No wonder, America and Europe have had to confront the truth, which was unimaginable earlier: their domination of the world’s economy, and hence politics, is nearing an end.
Every vibrant centre of enterprise has a demonstration effect on the neighbourhood, eventually leading to a symbiotic way of collective growth. Thus, Singapore spurred Malaysia’s success. Japan’s miracle influenced China, and today China’s growth sustains the Japanese economy. In spite of the political problems between the two neighbours, today there are 35,000 Japanese companies operating in China, employing 10 million Chinese. There are also 100,000 Japanese working in China. Goods and capital are moving almost freely here. The Asean and East Asian region have been transformed into an integrated manufacturing plant, in which some components are made in one country, others in another country and the final product is assembled in and exported from a third country. Can we not envision a similar transformation in our eastern region? Is it impossible that an economically vibrant West Bengal will not open the eyes of Bangladeshis, just as the success of Narendra Modi’s ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ initiatives have opened the eyes of many communists, whether they admit it or not?
What India and Bangladesh need are visionary leaders in politics, business and public life. Leaders who refuse to live in the past and are determined enough to script a new future for our children whose grandparents were, after all, once part of the single family of undivided India. In this endeavour to re-integrate our two countries economically and socially, we should learn from the EU. Last week some Auroville-based European devotees of Maharshi Aurobindo organised a seminar in honour of Jean Monnet, a French statesman regarded as the architect of European unity. From the ashes of World War II, he extricated the golden idea of economic cooperation. He began with something as mundane as establishing the European Coal and Steel Community with Germany and France, bitter rivals in the war, as its core members. The idea evolved and engendered the EU. It now has 27 member-countries, which have broken down walls that divided them in the 20th century. Shouldn’t India and Bangladesh pull down the ‘narrow domestic walls’ keeping them apart to the detriment of both?
2 comments:
way of protest od Ms. Banerjee can never be acceptable. We people of Bengal should be united against her way of protest
Whatever Mamata is doing in Singur is disgusting and completely detremental to the developement of Bengal. Her actions show that the she is trying to do partisan politics and not in the interest of the farmers. She does not want to a solution to the issue but wants to drag it on to get electoral mileage. If she was serious she would not have claimed the return of the land as the land is now useless for farming after the construction activities. This is not with standing the fact that it is questionable that whether the land was very fertile in the first place itself. For Tatas it is impossible to return the land as it destroys their supply chain economics which is the corner stone for producing the cheapest car in the world. probably Mamata needs one more "Phd" to comprehend such business economics. Interestingly she has dropped the Dr as a prefix to her name after she could establish her Phd credentials. Such is the integrity of our leaders who fight for the right causes. Yesterday Mamata has questioned Saurav whether he is aware where is Singur. May I ask our didi whether she was aware where is singur before Tatas brought Singur to the world map. Let me also ask her how much does she know about the contribution of Tatas in the the nation building. Apart from the industrial revolution in India they are a glaobal bench mark in Corporate Social Responsibility. How many people know that they were the first company to introduce 8 hr working for laboureres, Provident fund, maternity leave, medical benefits. All these became law much after Tatas introduced them in their own companies out of their own initiatives. Today she is trying to point fingers at such a company which is golbally known not for its business profits but for its humane face. Mamata should think she has achieved miracle if she can contribute even 1/1000 th of what Tatas have contributed to India.
With her histronics, melodrama & gimmicks she may win the next bengal election but she is going to lose the next bengal generation if Tatas move out of Bengal
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