Kolkata's missing millionaires and Lalgarh

(On an interview board, i was once asked the reason of West Bengal's fall from position of emminence. As a native Bong, i accept the feeling of dissapointment when Kolkata/West Bengal feature low in industry/infrastructure/investment indexes in India. Having spent some time in Kolkata, i realise that the historical city is now one in obsolesence. An interesting article summing up this situation by Anand Soondas: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/onefortheroad/entry/kolkata-s-missing-millionaires-and)

Apart from the blood and blotch of Nandigram, and the nightmare that Lalgarh is turning out to be, there was one more, very telling, bad news that came from Bengal in recent times – that Kolkata, its capital city, could only notch up an abysmal number 26 on the list of India's rich cities. Anger has a deep connection with economics and politics. Lalgarh was waiting to happen.
Of course, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and his comrade-in-arms would dismiss with practiced disdain the fact that Kolkata isn’t rich enough, but there's more to it that what the ruling Marxists would like us to believe. Bengal is just not creating any wealth, opportunity or even employment for its people.
For a city Kolkata's size, with an un-updated population of 15 million, drumming up a mere 15,853 millionaires hides a nightmarish horror tale. A comparison with the other three metros makes the city's tragedy quite clear. Comparable to Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore in both size and number of people – even modern history one would say, which has not been as violent and marginalizing as that of, perhaps, the North-East states – Kolkata figures nowhere even remotely near the 137,992, 100,039 and 104,852 millionaires that India's other main cities have to show for themselves. If the pathos has to be rubbed in just take a look at what Chandigarh, a city with a population 15 times less, has achieved. The rich list shows Le Corbusier's masterpiece showing off an applause-worthy 33,962 millionaires, twice that of Kolkata!
So what is the problem with the state that was one of the first ones to pick up the Queen's English, don the suit-and-tie and use fork and spoon to pick on eileesh. Anyone watching Bengal's steady decline will lay the blame squarely on the politics the state has come to understand and the ideology it has grown to adopt. It is something that fosters sloth, decay and, if truth be told, degeneration.
Some time ago, as I was sitting in one of Bandra's popular pubs, an ad-executive friend of mine recounted with shock how on visit to Kolkata a few years back he was stuck in the middle of Esplanade for a full 20 minutes in a tram that stopped because of a power cut. ``The crazy part was that no one was in a hurry to go anywhere,'' he said. ``In Bombay, people would have fidgeted after five minutes, crossed the tracks and moved on with their lives.''
True, that's probably what would have happened. But Kolkata isn't Mumbai. The politics won't let it be. In a May 2005 report titled `A tale of two states: Maharashtra and West Bengal', prepared by University of British Columbia professor Amartya Lahiri and economist Kei-Mu Yi, there is a clear link between economic evolution and political environment. Spanning the years between 1961 and 1991, the duo says that ``Bengal, which was one of the two richest states in India in 1960 has gone from a relative per capita income of about 105% of Maharashtra to a relative income of around 69%''. One of the important factors responsible for its woes, the economists say, is ``political development…namely the increasing vote share of the Leftist parties''.
No wonder then that the per capita income (2003-04 figures) of West Bengal in the 30 years since the state got its first Marxist chief minister stands at just Rs 20,896, much below those of Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Sikkim, Chandigarh, Delhi, Puducherry.
Nandigram and the millionaires' list, at two ends of the spectrum, should come as a deep pointer to the politics in comrade country. Large parts of Bengal are not even on the fringes of the IT revolution or the economic boom and brim with people who resemble those angry coalminers in Yash Chopra's 1979 classic Kaala Patthar – desperate, hungry, shorn of comforts and hanging on to whatever there is to be had from Party and profession. And the lorai, lorai korte hobe (fight, fight, we must fight) battle cry of the Left parties only serves as a trigger to a fury ready to be unleashed by the mostly-poor cadres. The Frankenstein’s monster that Lalgarh is had to come to life.
It serves perfectly fine for the ideology-spewing bhadralok neta swearing by everybody from Marx to Stalin, Lenin to Castro, Che to Chavez – and even Prachanda – to ``keep `em poor and burning''. That is why the Communists have through the years protested, often scuttled, everything needed for upliftment of people, from introduction of English in junior classes to multinationals setting up businesses. Because money brings comfort and comfort has an intrinsic liking for capitalism.
It isn't any surprise, therefore, that industrialization continues to be a taboo word in this part of the world. Just try investing some money in Purulia or the Parganas. It isn't easy. What is easy, though, is calling bandhs and blocking people from reaching offices, schools, factories.
Lalgarh has just emphasized how hard change is come by in Bengal. But until that happens, Kolkata will not be able to show up its millionaires and Bengal its progress. A mighty tragedy for a mighty state