So Who's The Better Man?

A curious byproduct of the recently ended Indo-US summit has been a public comparison, taken up vociferously by the local press, of the effectiveness of two chief ministers: West Bengal's Jyoti Basu and Orissa's J.B. Patnaik. As things stand, Patnaik is tops. Typically, he skipped the ritual address, opting for meaningful one-on-ones with US officials and businessmen. And who could dispute these basic facts: Orissa in '97 alone attracted investment proposals totalling Rs 30,000-odd crore, against West Bengal's Rs 11,000 crore since '91 (admitted by state finance minister Ashim Dasgupta)!

In his speech, octogenarian Basu referred to Nepal's foreign minister as "chief minister" and forgot to take note of leading US businessman Howard Clark. He trotted out details of—believe it or not—land reforms in Bengal, and his government's concern for "workers' rights". He picked out, out of a voluminous UNDP report on development, only a few negative lines about liberalisation.

For a while it seemed the host was opposing the summit's basic objectives, which was all about expanding trade, lowered tariffs, melting frontiers, the refreshing winds of change that liberalisation brings. But no, he was also appealing for US business to invest in West Bengal, after all! Patnaik played the press better and was described by US commerce secretary William Daley "as an aggressive man eager for foreign investments". This, while Basu, ill-served by hack speech writers, droned on and on.

Writers' Building doesn't normally deign to join issue with the press, but officials reacted this time to reports about Basu being outsmarted. Five new MOUs were signed, they pointed out, involving proposed investments of Rs 11,300 crore. These were for expressways linking Calcutta with Siliguri and Haldia, US oil giant Unocal setting up a fertiliser unit and a gas-based power unit in Haldia, a new financial institution, a new polymer park at Haldia and a pact between the RPG group and Enron regarding gas import from Bangladesh.

Here too, West Bengal ended up with egg on its face the very next day. To begin with, the expressways are old hat, while one new FI is not much to talk about. The biggest faux pas was perhaps the Enron-RPG MOU.Bangladesh foreign minister Tofail Ahmed went livid: "The gas is ours, we haven't yet decided anything at all, Enron is one of 21 parties answering our tender call, and how are MOUs being signed in India?" Ask Jyotibabu, whose regime treats the RPG group as its holy cow.