With the Bharatiya Janata Party firmly ensconced in office in Guwahati, Calcutta and Patna and in much of the northeastern states, can the region hope to see a new dawn? Does the developmental sun have a chance to rise rapidly over the eastern horizon? For over a century, the region has consistently slipped and lagged behind the rest of India. Several reasons, ranging from the Union government’s natural resource pricing policies to left-wing politics, have been cited as reasons for the decline of eastern India.
Will the so-called ‘double-engine’ governments now deliver development at a pace that would enable not just the three major eastern economies but the entire eastern and northeastern region to move forward? There is more at stake for the region than a change of functionaries in the Writers’ Buildings. Every now and then, the region has thrown up leadership that has given hope. There was a moment when Jyoti Basu offered hope to Bengal and Nitish Kumar to Bihar.
Such moments passed without any fundamental shift in the region’s developmental trajectory. Much less did West Bengal’s political leadership offer hope to the region as a whole. While an opportunity presents itself for the region, the BJP’s leadership across the three major states — Himanta Biswa Sarma in Assam, Samrat Choudhary in Bihar and Suvendu Adhikari in West Bengal — does not inspire much confidence on this score.
None of the chief ministers has so far been able to demonstrate the imagination required to alter the development dynamics of his state or the region as a whole. Moreover, they have all become identified with highly divisive and disruptive politics that has not offered much hope for a new dawn in the east. Furthermore, New Delhi’s mismanagement of internal divisions within the northeastern region, most starkly and sadly in Manipur, and relations with the most important regional neighbour, Bangladesh, have further contributed to the persistence of social tensions and economic uncertainty across the entire region.
While several hurdles and challenges have derailed development in eastern India, communal politics and polarisation, which have contributed to the ascendance of the BJP, remain an important barrier to business confidence. Will a BJP that is now firmly entrenched in the region liberate itself from its politics of divisiveness and adopt policies aimed at inclusive development? Thus far, there is no evidence to support such a hopeful conclusion.
An initiative is being taken by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry to launch ‘Viksit Bengal’ — a programme aimed at “Rejuvenating West Bengal”. This will not be the first such attempt. Many attempts have been made by successive governments to ‘rejuvenate’ Bengal. The challenge today is bigger. At a time when the private corporate sector is holding back on new investment projects and foreign direct investment has gone into reverse gear, eastern states will have to try that much harder to attract new investment. Moreover, with the Union government consistently promoting the interests of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh — developed states in southern and western India have protested this — it remains to be seen how effective the BJP leadership in eastern India would be in attracting new investment into the state.
There was a moment in the 1990s when West Bengal stood on the cusp of change but little came out of it. After launching India’s ‘Look East Policy’ through an address in Singapore, the former prime minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and Singapore’s then prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, arrived in Calcutta in 1993 to address a major business gathering giving hope of industrial renaissance in the state. The subsequent record under successive governments has not been encouraging.
In fact, eastern India was best situated to draw lessons from the developmental experience of neighbouring Southeast Asia. Attempts to build better connectivity between India and Thailand and Malaysia, it was hoped, would spark change in the region. After all, not too long ago, Singapore was administered from Calcutta!
The region ought to benefit from better connectivity to Southeast Asia and southern China and to Bangladesh. India’s relationship with Bangladesh will be an important factor in the region’s development given the need for better road, air and maritime connectivity. The decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to depute Dinesh Trivedi as India’s high commissioner to Bangladesh was a smart move. A suave and friendly personality, Trivedi has friends across party lines and in the world of politics and business in Calcutta and New Delhi.
His task of rebuilding bridges with Bangladesh will, of course, be made easier by a more tolerant and inclusive politics on both sides of the border. It should be clear to the national and regional political and policy leadership that no one state in eastern India — not even one as big as West Bengal — can prosper without political stability within the region as a whole and good relations with all regional neighbours.
The recent improvement in India’s relations with China and the outreach to the regime in Myanmar should be followed up by stabilising relations with Bangladesh. It is not in the interests of either India or Bangladesh that domestic politics intrudes too much into bilateral relations. In the past, dissonance between New Delhi and Calcutta has had a negative impact on India-Bangladesh relations. With the same political party in power in Delhi and Calcutta for the first time in over half a century, a more holistic approach to relations with Bangladesh, curbing communal instincts, ought to be pursued.
What eastern India needs today is a domestic ‘Look East policy’ and a supportive ‘Look East politics’ that depart from the class, caste and communal prejudices that have defined the region’s politics for over half a century. Perhaps the new finance minister, Swapan Dasgupta, and Ashok Lahiri, a former BJP member of the West Bengal assembly, former chairman of Bandhan Bank and, presently, the head of NITI Aayog, can together take the initiative to develop a region-wide plan for development, drawing in the economies of the smaller states of the Northeast.
The fact is that the eastern and the northeastern states have been able to produce human capital of reasonably good quality. However, due to the lack of employment opportunities at home, most talented young people have migrated to the south and the west. To retain talent at home, each of the state governments must offer hope in the region’s future.
Sanjaya Baru was Editor, Business Standard. His most recent book is Secession of the Successful: The Flight Out of New India
