Face I

Face II

• Bandh-eve The TVS group announces contract manufacturing deal for two-wheelers at an initial investment of Rs 430 crore • Bandh Day I Clearance of a Rs 5300-crore Metro link between Salt Lake and Howrah • Bandh Day II Salim says he is ready to wait, shows interest in food processing and healthcare

Anthony Salim on Friday. (Amit Datta)

Calcutta, June 6: Over the past two days, Bengal has been showing to the world its bandh-blemished face, which has overshadowed the faces that have come visiting like Anthony Salim today or Venu Sreenivasan of TVS earlier in the week.

In between, news arrived from Delhi about clearance of the largest project — the East-West corridor — Calcutta has seen since the Metro.

The Salim group’s chief executive officer arrived on his first visit to Calcutta — in a strange coincidence on Trinamul’s bandh day — to express interest in food processing and healthcare at a meeting with chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

“He said how he had initiated business in these areas in China, Indonesia and the Philippines. It was a courtesy call as the chief minister had visited Jakarta in 2005,” industries secretary Sabyasachi Sen said.

There was no firm investment proposal but it broke the thread of despondence running through some of the group’s ambitious plans since the panchayat poll results.

After the results, industries minister Nirupam Sen had said the government would acquire land with the agreement of Opposition-run zilla parishads, which meant the Salim plans for South 24 Parganas, which Trinamul won, were as good as buried.

Although this was not a Salim venture, urban development minister Asok Bhattacharya announced that the DLF township project at Dankuni might have to be put on hold, adding to the ebbing confidence in the government’s industrialisation drive.

Salim, however, told Bhattacharjee he found the government’s approach of seeking the people’s opinion “normal, positive and healthy” and said he was prepared to wait, an official in the chief minister’s secretariat said.

“Salim was in agreement with the government’s initiative that people will have to be taken into confidence,” the industries secretary added.

Salim said about his meeting: “I thanked the chief minister for co-operating with my ventures.”

Buoyed by her party’s performance in the polls, Mamata Banerjee had declared she would not allow farmland to be taken over for industry by force.

After that the two bandhs on consecutive days deepened the pall of gloom over the state.

The day the back-to-back bandhs were announced, Sreenivisan was in town to formally unveil the TVS group’s plan to make its two-wheelers in the factory for which land was given to the Salim group.

On the following day, when the CPM shut down the state, Delhi greenlighted the Rs 5,300-crore East-West Metro, which was topped by news of a Rs 700-crore proposal to extend the link to the airport.

“All these indicate that there is hope for Bengal and that the political turmoil over land acquisition wouldn’t affect the flow of capital,” the official in the chief minister’s secretariat said.

Partha Chatterjee, the leader of the Opposition, saw no significance in Salim’s visit. “Does he have the capability to take away agricultural land for his projects? People don’t want industry at the cost of their land and livelihood.”

A question of sustenance was also on Mamata Banerjee’s plate today as she marched down bandh-bound roads: “Eto dam, khabo ki? (So expensive, what shall we eat?).”

It’s a face Salim did not see. And he wasn’t around yesterday to see the face Mamata’s CPM counterpart Biman Bose presented of partymen throttling life.

But he liked what he did see — the empty streets probably. Or else why would he say, “it was nice to be in Calcutta for the first time”?

Maybe, he was just being polite.