At 84, Jyoti Basu can still spring surprises. His latest salvo: Bengali youths should get into business instead of hankering after secure jobs. And cpi(m) ideologue and minister Suryakanta Mishra has called for the formation of a new progressive bourgeoisie.
These days, Basu the administrator takes precedence over Basu the Communist. He's being honest when he says that chasing jobs is of little use. After 22 years of uninterrupted Left rule, as one cpi(m-l) organ put it, 'the very concept of jobs at any level has become a mirage'. There has been no major investment in decades. The number of registered jobless is 5.5 million against 1.3 million in 1977, when Basu took oath; the number of industrial units closed to date is 61,000, with 500,000 workers on the streets. Six public sector units and 50 coal mines are also about to shut shop. 'Jyotibabu is saying this when the only growth activity in the state is politicised encroachment on official land, petty street hawking or crime,' says an intuc leader.
But there is no guarantee that people will survive if they start small-scale industries. Many of the closed and sick units are in the small sector. Some years ago, labour minister Subodh Banerjee had told young local entrepreneurs who faced labour problems: 'We can help only workers, not owners.' The results have come home to roost, although a new generation of jobless is paying the price and not Banerjee, who has passed on.
On the huge casualty list is that usual suspect: the educated urban middle class. Economically deprived, cowed down by a brutal regime, this class can't even protest effectively, but suffers in silence. It is not for nothing that Mishra has called for the emergence of a new bourgeoisie (bourgeois, after all, means the middle class). After two decades of Left rule, the articulate Bengali middle class is finished, economically and intellectually.
Sudip Roy (not his real name), a young entrepreneur, tried to set up a small unit in north Bengal two years ago. His brother opted for Gujarat. Both state governments helped. The unit in Gujarat has been on-stream for 16 months now, whereas Sudip's unit is still waiting for clearances. The story is fairly common. Another young man who tried to enroll in a self-employment scheme gave up after several visits to government offices. 'Partymen ask for cuts in advance and there are too many formalities - it would not be worth it,' he says. Point out intuc sources: 'In order to create jobs, Basu had better first fight his own bureaucracy and lower-level party apparatchiks, who are sworn to turn this state into a desert. The Centre, the vhp, the bjp, the rss, American hegemonism and imf domination can all wait.'
Even so, it is possible to sympathise with men like Basu, Somnath Chatterjee or Subhas Chakravarty, who stand for development and are desperate for investments. But their net effect on the administration and different political tiers has been negligible so far. 'There are any number of cases where the Kisan Sabha has held up land transfers for years even after the government has approved of an industry,' says an official.
The problem for Basu & Co is that their swansong comes too late and off-key. The old-style capitalism they fought and killed in West Bengal stood for economic expansion and job opportunities. Today, industry is capital-intensive, labour-constrictive and industrial growth a value-neutral activity that puts its premium on efficiency alone, not bleeding-heart liberalism. Basu is begging this new-style capitalism to come and save West Bengal, but without ensuring infrastructure, higher education, labour discipline, minimum productivity in government.Periodic industrialists' jamborees serve only a cosmetic purpose in the absence of real work on the ground.
Much as one may admire Basu or Chatterjee for their honesty and efforts to reinstate Bengal on the country's industrial map, they need to first persuade their own partymen to put development at a premium. At the highest level, state party secretary Anil Biswas fully supports Basu's vision: 'We do not oppose small business and would certainly strengthen the self-employment scheme. Basu has said nothing wrong.' True, but unless the message percolates to the panchayat level, there can be no progress. As for youths setting up businesses, the only option is to grab a plot of land, preferably one belonging to the railways, under the citu banner - or pound the pavements hawking cosmetics. That is the best the Left Front can offer.
