Takeover politics, ‘tollabazi’ and vote bank – why Bengal is stuck in the mud of ‘lumpen industrialisation’

“If there was an industry, the situation would be different. During the Singur movement, we were afraid that our land would be taken over and we would be left with nothing. But now when we look at other states, we feel sad,” he says.

In the village of Bajemelia, about 2 km away, a 42-year-old tea seller is teaching some customers how the industry generates jobs. The men at his kiosk nod in agreement.

He also regrets the Singur move, which he calls a “mistake” – every night he watches films from industrialized countries like Gujarat, wishing it was the same here.

“Then I think about Singur and how the Tata factory would have changed our fate,” he says.

As the mammoth seven-phase Lok Sabha elections enter their seventh and final phase, both men are highlighting West Bengal’s problem – the lack of industry and employment opportunities in the state.

A tea seller from the village of Bajemelia sums it up this way: ‘Go to the village and you will see men drinking in broad daylight because they have no work. There is no work.”

Industrialization of the state is one of the many election promises of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). At a public meeting in the state on May 3, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he wanted Durgapur in Bardhaman district, known for its iron and steel plants, to be famous not only in India but across the world.

This is not the first time the BJP has talked about turning around the state’s fortunes – its 2021 assembly campaign titled ‘Shonara Bangala” (Golden Bengal) focused on reversing the economic woes in the state after coming to power.

He’s not the only one either. Rivals like the Congress and the Left Front – whose government was toppled by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over protests against land acquisition in Singrur and Nandigram – also seem to be on the same side, blaming the ruling Trinamool Congress for the industrial stagnation in the state.

According to Communist Party of India (Marxist) state secretary Md Salim, Banerjee raised inappropriate issues while protesting against land acquisition.

“Industry needs land,” he said. “Whether it is industry, roads or even schools and universities, we need land. The land issue will remain a central issue. We have no available land in West Bengal. We need to resolve this issue.”

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Cultural heritage issues, land policy problems

West Bengal was a thriving state of industry and commerce during British rule.

According to scientists and economists, several factors – including the partition of the state and country, the Indian government’s freight equalization policy aimed at facilitating even industrial development across India, the rise to power of radical left trade unions in Singur – All of the Nandigram movements contributed to the slow industrialization and even stagnation in the country over the years.

“Some of this problem is hereditary,” says economist Indraneel Sengupta. “We are still paying the price for partition and the economic policies pursued in the first 2-3 decades after that, which systematically deprived eastern India of its comparative advantage as well as its fair share of public investment.”

According to him, in absolute terms, West Bengal’s industrial production is growing year by year, though at a slower pace than in many other states.

However, the main issue today seems to be the West Bengal State Land Policy 2013, which stipulates that the state government will not interfere in land acquisition.

Policy analyst Snigdhendu Bhattacharya says, “The land policy states that the government will not assist a private entity in purchasing land. To buy land, the industry itself has to contact landowners.”

These policies can mean roadblocks in land acquisition, as the case of the Birbhum coal mine project proposed by the state-owned Damodar Valley Corporation illustrates. In 2019, after facing many hurdles, the corporation issued a public statement stating that it was having problems with land acquisition. “The company has to buy land from the landowner through market mechanisms and the government helps with this. We have problems with purchasing a large area of land directly from the owners,” it was stated.

According to Bhattacharya, this policy applies not only to private land but also to government projects.

“Even in the case of government projects like the Railways, Damodar Valley Corporation mines, the Union Home Ministry’s border fencing project and the state-owned Deucha Pachami coal mine project, the government is reluctant to use the Land Acquisition Act and prefers to buy from owners based on their consent. Their policy is “no forceful takeovers,” he says.

Extortion by land mafias

With this policy, West Bengal cannot rely on large industries and must instead focus on small and medium enterprises and agriculture. Economist Sengupta calls this the “industrialization of lumps.”

“Mamata Banerjee has locked herself in such land policy that she cannot come out. If medium-sized enterprises need 100 acres of land, they can get it, but it results in lumpy industrialization because it is fragmented and unplanned,” he says.

He also believes that industrial parks in West Bengal are a “joke”.

“It is not like the state has acquired 5,000 acres of land and is setting up an industry. These are small tracts of land called industrial parks. Forget about large investors, it is impossible to provide consolidated infrastructure due to the small area,” he says.

Meanwhile, the state’s 37 lakh small and medium enterprises face their own set of challenges. Among them is ‘tollabazi‘ (extortion).

One businessman from Kolkata, who owns a chain of medium-sized hotels in the city, claims that companies have to pay blackmailers at every stage. “It doesn’t end there, and it’s hard for mid- and lower-mid-sized companies like ours to make a profit because half of our money goes to tollabazi– says ThePrint.

According to one jute industrialist, the problem is that the industry does not create a vote bank.

“To run the factory and get all the permits, the government is not helping the industry. The reason is the stagnation of bureaucracy in Bengal and politicians who believe that industry is not their vote bank,” he says.

Economist Sengupta believes that for small and medium-sized enterprises, the land mafia is a bigger problem than takeover problems.

“The land mafia has grown enormously under the TMC rule. (It’s like this) because the more the state withdraws from the land market, the more the land mafia appears. And this mafia is everywhere and decentralized. There are factions. One investor has to pay a huge amount several times, which is why he suffers losses and does not want to develop,” he explains.

(edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)

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