WEST BENGAL INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT
SNIPPING OFF THE
Illustration By: Sanjay Dalvi
SHACKLES
There is a notion that West Bengal is a difficult place to invest because of scarcity of available land, militant trade union and infrastructural bottlenecks. However, the Marxist government in the state has taken some ideological and neo-liberal measures for making it a preferred investment destination.
SANDEEP PAI arxism began essentially as a reaction to the industrial revolution. According to Karl Marx, industrialisation polarised society into the bourgeoisie (those who own the means of production, the factories and the land) and the much larger proletariat (the working class who actually perform the labour necessary to extract something valuable from the means of production). He saw the industrialisation process as the logical dialectical progression of feudal economic modes, necessary for the full development of capitalism, which in itself is a necessary precursor to the development
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of socialism and eventually communism. Knowingly or unknowingly, the Marxists in West Bengal are showing allegiance to their esteemed mentor. Marxists would be generally expected to agitate in favour of state monopoly, but West Bengal seems to be an exception. Paradoxically, they are going all out in advocating for private industries in the state. Ideologues attribute this change of guard to three reasons – ideological, country set-up and statecentric. Ideologically, comrades in West Bengal believe that the rise of capitalism is central for the eventual rise of communism. For them, this epoch will see unprecedented
rise of capitalism, with the fall of it in the same way. This has made them to not only support private capital but also endorse it. Secondly, West Bengal being part of India cannot have a different form of economic system than that of the country. Bansa Gopal Chowdhury, Chairman, Asansol-Durgapur Development Authority & Lok Sabha MP from Asansol, says, “Our country’s economy is mixed and as a state works closely with the Centre, it ought to have a mixed economy as well. Thus, we have to accept the system that is prevalent in the country and invite private capital. Otherwise, our state will lose out, which we cannot afford.”
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