Action against Marwaris after AMRI tragedy shows changing nature of links between business & politics in Bengal
Kanika Datta / New Delhi Jan 19, 2012, 00:28 IST
The Marwari community has chosen to portray Mamata Banerjee’s patent bias against it after the AMRI Hospital fire as unfair persecution. That is correct, inasmuch as only the Marwari directors of the hospital were arrested and the Bengali ones allowed to remain at large. But though the crudely selective manner of the AMRI-related arrests is certainly reprehensible, it is also interesting in what it says about the changing nature of links between business and politics in Bengal.
One of the abiding ironies of three decades of Left rule in Bengal is that it provided the platform for an unabashedly capitalist community like the Marwaris to flourish. This affinity seems to have covered the entire Left spectrum. Recall, for instance, that no Marwari businessman suffered an attack during the extreme anti-capitalism of the Naxalites in Calcutta (as it was then called) in the sixties. In contrast, Ulfa and Bodo terrorists made no such distinctions in their extortionary demands in Assam, where the community also has a substantial presence.
Thus, as conglomerates like ITC, Bata, Philips and Lipton and Brooke Bond (before they were subsumed into Lever) started moving their headquarters out of the state as a result of union-instigated labour troubles, Marwari businesses seemed to flourish. By the eighties, names like those of the Khaitans, Goenkas, Khemkas, Chitlangias, Kanorias and Kotharis, Lodhas, Ruias and Todis swiftly started building empires. Much of this occurred on the back of acquisitions of British companies, whose promoters departed India once the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act came into effect, requiring foreign companies to reduce their stakes in Indian subsidiaries. Familiar corporate names around the central business district – the Magor tea empire, Dunlop, CESC, MacKinnon Mackenzie, Duncans, India Foils, Warren – acquired ownership with roots closer to a north Calcutta locality than the distant shores of London, Manchester or, say, Dundee.
The remarkable point about this local empire-building was that West Bengal faced a growing number of man-days lost owing to strikes and lockouts, but this community did not appear to suffer a diminution of earning capacity in the same period. The jute industry, for instance, had become overwhelmingly Marwari-owned by the late seventies. Mill workers frequently struck work over wages, mill owners declared lockouts just as often and jute farmers suffered terrible deprivations as a result. This decades-old state of affairs should have attracted the attentions of a party ideologically inclined towards the proletariat, but it never seems to have concerned its representatives in a major way (it is striking that, well into the 21st century, Banerjee is fighting not to have the age-old jute control order diluted to allow industry to use plastic packaging).
It was not as though the Left Front embraced Marwari capitalism wholeheartedly, but it certainly established a realistic equation with the community. These links were exemplified by not just a prominent corporate activity but also stronger cultural presence in a city that had rapidly lost its cosmopolitanism as a result of Indira Gandhi’s licence raj and the political climate the Left created. Though many Left stalwarts chose to play down such associations, then chief minister Jyoti Basu, who built his political career on trade unionism, suffered no such qualms. He openly socialised with them and, in some cases, intervened when labour disputes threatened their businesses. When Mr Basu’s showcase project Haldia Petrochemicals was in trouble in the late eighties, it was to the Grey Eminence of the community, Rama Prasad Goenka, to whom he turned (though Mr Goenka, too, eventually exited a project that has suffered an eternal saga of controversy).
By the early nineties, when the Left painfully concluded that foreign and private investment could stoke growth, the in-joke was that the M in CPI (M) stood for Marwari. This was slightly unfair since the Left Front’s wilfully destructive policies through the eighties prompted younger generations of Marwaris to exit the state as well. The Mittals of Ispat and Kanorias of Kanoria Chemicals and gen-next of the Birla clan all literally took their business elsewhere, even as Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s attempts to fill the gap with foreign investors proved a signal failure.
Ms Banerjee’s entry on the political scene has destabilised the old equations — not least because she won on a staunchly anti-capitalist platform. With Tata’s Nano project relocated to Gujarat, the Nandigram chemical complex a non-starter owing to her strongly organised opposition, several businessmen who had put their faith in the reforming Left – Videocon, JSW among them – are prudently retreating now. Ms Banerjee’s Manichaean brand of politics means that she remains implacably hostile to the Left, so the Marwari community is likely to suffer by association. That’s the essential message from the AMRI tragedy now — and it is worth watching which side draws what lessons from it.
We can all see that law is taking its toll on the AMRI directors. But, why is that no journalists have written such a detailed article on why the 4 Bengali Directors were not arrested- 1 being an executive director- the Managing Director? Doesn't it portray a high biasedness of the current political party towards a certain community? While the link between business and politics may have reduced, isn't it that the link between politics and Bengali community is now being established? Even Ms. Datta has above made a passing comment on the Bengali Directors being not arrested, but why is it that she has happily chosen not to elaborate further?
History of Bengal after independence is divided into two periods period of famine (1947 - 1977) and the period of delayed success (1977 - till date). There was famine in 1959, 1966, and 1974. Famines were mainly due to non-cultivation of land under jotedar ownership. Agriculture is not much profitable for them. After 1977, due to land reform, food production is up and famine problem is solved. There was one potential famine in 1978 (due to big flood), but panchayat and co-ordination committee avoided a famine like situation. So the new period of delayed success started. Haldia is delayed by 12 yrs Bakreswar by 8 yrs. Singur may come one day after some delay like Haldia. Delayed success is better than famine. However now, famine period may come back due to wrong choice of people in the last election. Irrationalism practiced by media and many people is to be paid by famine.
Mamata di does not seem to be willing to transform herself from an opposition leader to a Government head. Her antics remain the same despite becoming the CM of a large state. AMRI is one case in point, there is no incentive for any industry leader to invest in Bengal. Today, she may promise something, and then during the course of investment, would do a volte-face. Run and hide from Bengal, all you industry folks.
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