Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday used two different platforms in two different ways to remind the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) of its responsibilities towards the people who voted in great numbers to bring the Mamata Banerjee’s party to power in 2011. He also accused the TMC of stalling the Rajya Sabha because of the CBI action against its MPs in the Saradha chit fund scam.
Even as the Finance Minister promised all cooperation to a cash-starved State, he rued the investment climate of the State where business houses were fleeing in great numbers. “Bengal needed investors but unfortunately many of them have shifted out,” he told the much-hyped two-day Bengal Global Business Summit attended by some top business concerns like Godrej, ITC etc.
“Now our biggest challenge is how to set Bengal on the path of industrial development again” he said while asking Mamata to deliver on her promises. “You have a mandate to rule the State and therefore you have the responsibility to deliver what was promised” Jaitley said before assuring “all cooperation.”
“As India should be a strong federation of States in all areas where the States want to prosper, we are here to fully support you,” he said, reminding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that the eastern part of the country should grow faster than its western parts. Jaitley’s speech also tended to throw out State Finance Minister Amit Mitra’s official line on Bengal’s “healthy growth pattern being much higher than the national average.”
While Mitra claimed that the State’s growth rate was on a higher trajectory, Jaitley refuted it saying the State must not lose sight of the reality which showed little growth in the manufacturing sector. He said without the manufacturing sector there could be no employment generation. While the summit itself is an effort by the Chief Minister to suppress criticism on fleeing capital and inviting investment, Jaitley circuitously pointed at the poor investment climate of the State saying the States had to “improve the ease of doing business.”
In the past few years, a host of industries have either left the State owing to political and land problems or have not been allowed to open shop. And yet others like Hind Motors, Dunlop and Shalimar Paints have shut shop. Others, like the Tata Group and Jindals backed out of their proposed investment plans.
“Investors can choose which State to invest in. They also have a choice of which country to invest in, and therefore we have to narrow down their choice so that they focus on India as a particular State” Jaitley said, adding the investors would choose a region which was investor and industry-friendly. On Goods Service Tax the Finance Minister said States like Bengal would benefit from the new scheme. On auction of coal blocks, he dispelled the State’s fears by saying that “a large part of the money which we are going to get through auction of coal blocks will go to coal-producing States and Bengal will be one of the four States which are going to be major benefactors of that.”
At the same time, from a political platform in Howrah the Finance Minister slammed the TMC for harbouring corrupt politicians and politicizing the issue by blaming the CBI for arresting them. Jaitley said that the TMC was livid with the BJP because it was fighting corruption. “They have harboured all kinds of corrupt men in the party. Had the names of BJP men been linked with any corrupt practices we would have asked them to go back and get their names cleared before rejoining the party. But here the TMC is harbouring the corrupt and instead of taking action against them they are politicizing the issue and stalling the Rajya Sabha because the CBI is exposing the corrupt men. But they must be told that the Government will still function even if they stall the House,” he asserted.
The summit also brought some good news for the Mamata Government. Despite complains of deprivation from the Chief Minister, the Centre announced projects worth several thousands of crores for the State. The State would receive a whopping Rs 17,700 crore for development of Sagar Islands at the confluence of the Ganga and the Bay of Bengal, Haldia Dock Complex and Kolkata-Siliguri Highway, Union Minister for Road Transport, Shipping and Highways, Nitin Gadkari announced at the Business Summit.
While the Sagar project would require Rs 12,000 crore, the Kolkata-Siliguri road project would need Rs 4,500 crores. For Haldia the Centre would invest Rs 1,200 crore. The Minister also said that the floating storage and regasification unit worth about Rs 1,200 crore had been sanctioned. Besides, the Kolkata Port Trust also signed an Rs 300-crore deal with the KMDA to construct Mamata’s dream project, the Kolkata Eye much along the lines of the london Eye.
On the stalled projects and the new ones to come up at Haldia, Gadkari said steps were being taken and all would return to the port city. Concerns like ABJ had left Haldia in the wake of serious differences with a local business group and some politicians. On alleged corruption in the Port, he said investigations were on and actions were being taken.