As India celebrates Netaji Subhas Bose, let West Bengal also tide over its trials and tribulations and go back to being the golden land it was
Dear Prof Sugata Bose, Give West Bengal a chance, especially when a glorious honour is being bestowed upon it. The 74 years since Partition have been years of trial and tribulation. When, in September 1945, our train streamed across the borders of United Bengal, we had arrived in Sonar Bangla. The streets of Calcutta, now Kolkata, were washed with piped water twice a day. Park Street could be mistaken for a pathway in London. Then the Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946 showed how much blood could be spilled in the golden land first on its western side and, come 1948, also in the east. I was told that people were Bengalis first and religion took a backseat, but this was not so. Over the years, three-fourths of the minority in the east has had to come away to West Bengal. From being India’s premier industrial State, Bengal today gropes for the wheels of production to turn.
You have said in His Majesty’s Opponent (page 324) that Habibur Rahman, Netaji’s companion on his final journey, fought for Pakistan in the Kashmir war. The Prime Minister then was Netaji’s chosen elder brother and a Left liberal, Jawaharlal Nehru. Should you not cancel your disapproval about the Right honouring Subhas Babu? If we do not confuse the future of 10 crore people with ideology, a lot of India will come to support Bengal to rebuild its economy. A great many people, even of West Bengal, believe that it was the Left which converted its garden of industry to a graveyard. I have been an active witness to this conversion. It can revive to its pristine glory; I will hasten to claim that the people of Bengal are as skilful as any.
Even at Independence, Bengal was more an agrarian economy than an industrial one. Nearly all the industries had been set up either by the British or a few Indian entrepreneurs, but all from outside the province. Bengalis were either saints like Sri Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, Vivekananda or intellectual reformers like Vidyasagar, Michael Madhusudan or leaders like Banerjee or Surendra Nath Pal, or excellent clerks or farmers. They were not entrepreneurs or even traders. Even sons of zamindars would rather choose trade unionism than buy out going concerns sold by departing industrialists. Yes, Bengalis are also excellent lawyers and doctors, like the genius Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy who could predict from a distance that a person had jaundice coming or bad kidneys. When it came to business, they felt it was the function of baniks like the Sahas, Lahas, Dahas et al, who are OBCs in the caste hierarchy. This was unlike northern and western India, where banias are considered twice-born and wear the sacred thread.
The Congress did produce upright and competent Chief Ministers, Dr Bidhan Roy (same as the doctor), Prafulla Sen, Siddhartha Shankar Ray but economic development was more saintly than political. One CM was so fed up of his United Front Ministry that he sat on a dharna opposite the Writers Building, the Secretariat. Upon a journalist asking him, he retorted, “I am neither a mukhya mantri nor a murkha (foolish) mantri; I am only a thutho Jagannath (of Puri).” Jyoti Basu was a gentleman, like any Marxist anti-capitalist but once confessed to me that the State cannot manage industries.
Yet his Finance Minister was Ashok Mitra, a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist, who displayed a portrait of Marx larger than I have seen anywhere. Mitra was recommended to Basu on the plea that he had been the chief economic advisor to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Jyotida’s successor was Buddhababu, a refined, educated gentleman who visited China while being Chief Minister; he came back mightily impressed. He tried to copy China, rather Sinofy Bengal without understanding. He overlooked the fact that his was a province of India and not an independent country. He shouldn’t have used sale proceeds of land to partly revive the loss-making PSUs. But he is an upright gentleman of a high order, nevertheless.
In the light of these circumstances, the State Government should opt to be normal and civil in its behaviour with the Centre. Lately, the policy has been the reverse whether to win elections, score brownie points or regain popularity with people. However, times are not the same as in Gopalkrishna Gokhale’s days when what Bengal thought today, India would think tomorrow. Today, Bengal has a huge debt, its people need to earn more and the State has to develop rapidly.
For it to develop rapidly, a committee of, say, five persons should be appointed, of whom at least three should be with industrial experience. If a few of these members are from outside the State, so be it. So long as they have imaginative minds which understand Bengal from all viewpoints, it should be fine. Remember, entrepreneurs from outside, whether Indian or foreign, would come to invest in Bengal because they see prospects of profit and not because they are invited. West Bengal has the potential to bloom as brightly as any flower can. Just quarrel less and smile more, certainly for the supreme honour done to its greatest political son, Subhas.
(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal.)
