How was once India's prosperous state West Bengal turned into a cesspool of corruption by communists and their disciple Mamata's Trinamool?

Kumardhubi, a small industrial town on Bengal-Jharkhand border, hosted some leading engineering companies, including McNally Bharat, a foundry that was then India’s largest and most specialized, and a fire-brick plant that was a frontrunner in its field. The ancient national highway that connected India’s capital, Delhi, to its industrial powerhouse, Calcutta, meandered through the towns of Kulti and Asansol with large manufacturing firms such as Indian Iron, British Oxygen, Carew’s Gin, Chittaranjan Locomotives, Bengal Coal, Pilkington Glass, Martin Burn, Sen Raleigh Cycles, amongst hundreds of smaller ancillary units employing millions of people.

As you drove eastwards, you crossed the towns of Raniganj with its huge collieries, previously privately owned and managed by erstwhile giants such as Bird & Company, Thapars, and the Tatas, IISCO steel at Burnpur. The highway cut through Durgapur, which had a massive steel plant, a fertilizer factory, and dozens of smaller engineering and chemical plants.

The journey continued through Burdwan, the then district headquarters, and you ultimately reached Uttarpara on the outskirts of Calcutta. This was a giant industrial hub with hundreds of factories, including Hindustan Motors (Ambassador cars).

Calcutta (now Kolkata), historically, an imperial city with deep water ports like Kidderpore Docks and a navigable river, was the industrial and business capital of the Asia Pacific region, several times the size of Hong Kong and Singapore. Asia’s largest companies and banks were headquartered here. For instance, the Chartered Bank Building existed even before the merger of Standard and Chartered banks. Lyons Range hosted the stock exchange and the offices of leading insurance companies. In fact, the entire area of Dalhousie and Fairley Place contained the stalwarts of Indian business with names like Martin Burn, Andrew Yule, Bird & Company, Garden Reach, Jessops, Murphy Radio and several businesses across the spectrum from shipbuilding to mining.

Calcutta was a truly global city with a highly diversified demography that included Iraqi Jews, Armenians, Persians, Chinese, and others who chose to make it their home. Commercial opportunities were considerable and so was the need for expertise. In Calcutta, there was serious money to be made. Industries in Bengal extended north-eastwards into the tea gardens of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri. These produced the finest tea in the world with auction prices that exceeded those of other products from across the world.

The tragedy is not that all of this was subsequently destroyed; the tragedy is that it can never be rebuilt. And that is what happened to Calcutta and the entire industrial manufacturing of Bengal since the 1970s. Left Front governments, particularly under the leadership of Jyoti Basu, Bengal’s erstwhile Chief Minister, cracked down on the industry and empowered unions to such an extent that factory after factory began to shut permanently.

The red flags of the Communist Party unions fluttered across the state, creating a condition that made it literally impossible for business to function. Most shut shop, some were nationalized and the wiser ones quickly relocated their offices and plants to other locations. The only significant company that retains its head office in Calcutta today, at Virginia House, and continues to flourish, is ITC. Most of its operations, however, are now spread across other parts of India. None of the other giants exist anymore and if they do, they are a tiny fraction of their original size.

Jyoti Basu graduated from University College, London, and was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple. He was an activist in his student days and remained one for his entire political career which was propped by labor unions. He depended on them, as they did on him. Consequently, strikes and unrest became the order of the day, and companies began to suffer. Many businessmen tried to hang on but, in the end, simply gave up. Bengal had become intolerable to function in. Law and order were replaced by anarchy and goons of the communist party routinely harassed business managers and owners. Millions of workers were laid off as business enterprises either shut down or fled the tyranny of the communists. Bengal had not just lost its edge; it had simply lost everything.

Leading brands like Dunlops, Guest Keen Williams, Braithwaite, Burn & Company (after whom the town of Burnpur carries its name), and Metal Box were either nationalized or ceased to exist. Indian business families like the Birlas and Singhanias shifted to Bombay and other parts of India, closing factories and leading to economic ruin. This created massive unemployment.

The Communist government added fuel to the fire when it prevented the police from interfering in labor disputes even when business managers were manhandled and beaten up by union goons. In 1984, as a young project engineer responsible for a project site in Durgapur, where an employer was contracted to build a material handling plant for Hindustan Fertiliser, a person was made to stand on an oil barrel for four hours in the mid-afternoon sun, with the labor unions shouting threatening slogans. The odd part was, that he had no clue as to what he had done wrong or indeed what their demands were. Strikes and violence in those years were as common as reporting to work.

Tragically, Bengal, a leader in industry and technology, reduced itself to a laggard state which no sensible businessmen would want to be associated with. Its unions had sent investors scampering away, never to return. The Communist Party and its leadership had ensured this fate. The great companies of Calcutta had closed shop forever.

Subsequently, a reverse migration began to happen and educated Bengalis left their homes for better opportunities elsewhere. Ironically, six decades ago – all roads led to Calcutta; now they all lead away from it. The great industrial hub from Kumardhubi, across Asansol, Raniganj, and Durgapur is now a rust belt. In Calcutta, factories that once produced products that were best in class have been replaced by retail showrooms.

Dum Dum airport, once India’s busiest, with direct links to most European and Asian cities, is now a shadow if its former self. Most global airlines have pulled out. From a world-class metropolis that boasted the finest Christmas decorations along Chowringhee and Park Street, Calcutta stands reduced to a status of an over-crowded and wretched city.

The communists did realize their folly when Buddhadeb Bhattacharya became Chief Minister, but by then it was too late. Mr. Bhattacharya’s plans to revive Bengal, beginning with a chemical manufacturing hub in Nandigram, fell into political controversy. Thereafter, the5 failed Tata Motors plant in Singur sealed the fate of any meaningful revival of investment in the state.

Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress, whose anti-capitalist antics were responsible for the cultivated collapse of these projects, subsequently replaced Mr. Bhattacharya. Last month, she assumed her second consecutive term in office, a telling reflection of the sort of interest groups from which she derives her political legitimacy.

Mamata Banerjee feeding anti-national jeh@di goons for political survival

Calcutta, upon which an empire had once been built, now lies reduced to just another fallen star. It has no credible prospect of returning to its former glory, at least in my lifetime. For me and an entire generation of Indians who remember that city for what it once was, that is a dreadful tragedy. Its demise, and indeed that of Bengal, is a clear example of the consequences of disrespect for wealth and those who create it.

It is an important lesson for politicians (especially like Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal who gives freebies on tax payers money). When governments create hurdles for businesses, it undermines their growth and productivity. When they ill-treat them, it leads to a flight of capital and cessation of economic activity; unemployment and unrest inevitably follow. That, in a nutshell, is Bengal’s history over the last 40 years. Oddly, many policy planners still don’t get it.

Picture source: Google