Raman Roy

Calcutta, Aug. 6: Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee may have promised Bengal’s educated jobless youths “many Singurs”, but the state needs more Calcuttas, too.

Raman Roy, considered the pioneer of business process outsourcing in India, has been waiting for more than a year and a half to hear from the state government on a project the administration itself had sounded him on.

Today, Roy said, state information technology minister Debesh Das told him: “We will get back to you.”

Not that Das isn’t trying hard. His department has been scouting for land for the project — details of which are yet to crystallise — but the plots he could find are all outside Calcutta. Das said one site in Siliguri was shown to Roy’s representatives but they did not like that.

“The infrastructure outside the city is yet to come up to the mark. Why should I come to Bengal?” asked Roy, comparing the incentives on offer in the state and elsewhere.

“Mumbai has one of the lowest connectivity charges because of a cable landing station. In Chennai, it is much cheaper to employ quality engineers. This is just the national scenario, the incentives offered in many international markets are even more mind-boggling,” said Roy, now the chairman and managing director of Quatrro BPO Solutions Pvt Ltd.

In Shanghai, Quatrro was given 2 lakh sqft space free of rent for five years, Roy said, adding that the BPO employs 400 people there.

Roy said that when his company was urged to look at locations in emerging townships like Siliguri, Durgapur, Haldia and Kharagpur, he had submitted a list of recommendations.

“There needs to be a good package of fiscal and non-fiscal incentives for companies to invest and set up shop in any city. We had submitted a list of recommendations on what needs to be done in this sector more than a year and a half ago. We are yet to receive any feedback.”

Minister Das said the situation in Siliguri had changed in the past one and a half years and IT units would find the environment more suitable for operations now.

Das might think so but not many in the industry are aware of the changes. A Nasscom-AT Kearney report had said Bengal had only one IT location in the category of “leaders” — Calcutta. Durgapur and Siliguri fall in the last category of “aspirant” cities that need significant infrastructure development.

“We need to initiate discussions between the industry and the government to enable focus on areas like education and infrastructure which require urgent attention,” Roy said on the sidelines of a CII meeting in Calcutta.

Big IT companies have so far shown a preference for sites in or on the outskirts of Calcutta. Infosys and Wipro are expected to be given initial allotments near Vedic Village in the next two to three months. ITC Infotech and the back-end operations of ICICI Bank are also expected to be given land in the same area.