Calcutta, Feb. 3: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Mamata Banerjee have finally spoken the same language at the same time at the same place — well, almost.

“Ami chai kaj, kaj, kaj, kaj aar kaj (I want jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs and more jobs),” the chief minister said this afternoon at Shahid Minar in the heart of Calcutta.

Less than an hour later and 300 metres away in Esplanade, the Trinamul Congress leader told a meeting: “We, too, want employment and industrialisation.”

Stretched out across the stage behind Mamata was a banner that screamed: “Enough is enough. We shall resist.”

Sounds too much like the Mamata Bengal knows? Not if you read the fine print below the bold letters: “In support of development and employment.”

She soon jumped back to the beaten track, calling Bhattacharjee names and rejecting an appeal by him to the Opposition to shun “politics of No”. However, for a fleeting moment, the planks of the two principal opponents in Bengal politics did come close to convergence.

The Trinamul leader’s statement on industrialisation in itself is not new. Mamata had been saying that what she was opposed to was acquisition of farmland for factories but, preoccupied with the Singur and Nandigram protests, she had done little to dispel the perception that she was against Bengal’s industrial revival.

But her speech today and the banner suggest the stirrings of an effort to find a foothold in the development space now occupied almost completely by Bhattacharjee.

Both Mamata and Bhattacharjee were addressing audiences of their youth and student wings, for whom jobs form the most important factor of their lives, against the backdrop of the approaching rural polls.

Mamata then tore into the chief minister’s promises of job creation, calling him “a liar”. “Jyotibabu did not lie so much. This chief minister should be awarded for telling lies.”

Unwittingly lending credence to the chief minister’s urgency to revive industrialisation and generate employment, Mamata said: “If there were jobs, lakhs of educated youths wouldn’t have left Bengal over the decades.”

She asked her supporters to gherao employment exchanges in districts to demand jobs in the run-up to the panchayat elections.

The chief minister underscored that jobs would be the cornerstone of his industrialisation drive.

“Kaj na hole kisher shilpayan (what industrialisation without jobs)?” he said. “There is no meaning to industrialisation if there is no employment. Here lies the difference between us and the Centre,” Bhattacharjee added, answering the criticism that he was aping the UPA government.

The chief minister iterated that he could not afford to choose the colour of capital, though capitalist development involved “blood, sweat and agony”.

“American and other companies have taken interest in our IT sector since we have a good number of educated youths conversant in English. Should we ask them not to come? The Chinese and Japanese are investing in power and chemicals. Do you want me to prevent them? I can’t do that.”

Sunday was a good day for America in Bengal. Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee warned of “isolation” if the nuclear deal fell through.