The Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen, can always be trusted to pose important questions, and to hold up a mirror before the people of West Bengal. In an interview published in The Telegraph on New Year’s Day, he asked the people of Bengal “to rethink where they are actually going’’. He has raised this point in the context of the popular slogan that West Bengal is poised for change. The critical questions are what does this change entail, in which direction will the change take West Bengal, and so on. Without clear answers to such questions, the notion of change is meaningless. A change in the political dispensation may not amount to anything in terms of the development of the state and also in terms of the myriad problems that plague the people. Sen is absolutely justified in making this point since there is virtually no discussion, even within the intelligentsia, about the actual content of the change that might occur.

It would be no exaggeration to suggest (it should be made clear that this is not Sen’s suggestion) that the intelligentsia of West Bengal has, in a manner of speaking, abdicated its responsibility regarding its role to give content to the change. The role of members of civil society is to provide social and economic leadership to set the agenda for a transformation within a society and polity. Under 30 years of Left Front rule, a political party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), had usurped this role. The intelligentsia, most of whom, save a few exceptions, were left oriented, had acquiesced to this dominance of the CPI(M). Intellectual discussion and dissent, like investment in industries, had disappeared from the Bengal landscape. In an amazing coincidence, dissent surfaced with the first hint of major investments in the state. Protests organized by members of civil society were not unrelated to what was happening in Singur (over the small car project) and in Nandigram (over a proposed chemical hub). The CPI(M)’s highhandedness and terror provoked the protests but there was also a discernible discomfort over the taking away of agricultural land for industrial development.

This discomfort, in fact, hides a bigger and crucial question: what is the attitude of the people of Bengal to industrial development? It stands to reason that without a change in land-use from agriculture to industry, there cannot be any industrial development and, therefore, no sustainable economic growth. On this question hinges the future of West Bengal. Yet nowhere in the promise of change is there an adequate recognition of this issue. The year that has just begun will pave the way for the assembly elections next year, in which the people of the state might well vote for a decisive political change. But unless they decide on the issue of industrial development, West Bengal will remain where it has been for over three decades: its present will be nondescript.