How West Bengal and its political climate are seen by potential investors is crucial for the state's industrial development. A positive evaluation will lead to investments and a negative one to stagnation. The new chief minister of West Bengal, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, has been honest enough to admit that the projection of West Bengal's image in the past has not been too good. He seems to be of the opinion that because of this, capital has been shy of coming to the state. The assumption is that the objective conditions that prevail in West Bengal are conducive to investment, but these conditions are not adequately projected. Thus West Bengal suffers. Not surprisingly, Mr Bhattacharjee is roving in the dodgy world of half-truths. There is no denying that West Bengal does have an image problem. But this does not pertain to the objective conditions which are supposedly suitable for investment. If, indeed, the objective conditions are favourable, investment would be forthcoming, since investors are not fools and are as capable as West Bengal's economist finance minister of reading and interpreting economic indicators and then taking investment decisions. The fact of the matter is that politicians and their attitudes and utterances also influence investment decisions and cannot be divorced from the so-called objective conditions. Thus, businessmen listen very carefully to what leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) say in Parliament and in other fora about liberalization, labour laws and so on. The speeches and the rhetoric of the comrades are enough to convince anybody that the CPI(M) has not changed and remains as anti-capitalist as it ever was. Thus a state ruled by the CPI(M) cannot bolster investor confidence. This is how the image of West Bengal takes a beating. The rhetoric of CPI(M) legislators and spokesmen display a strange paradox: foreign investment, privatization, new labour laws and other features of liberalization are disastrous for India, but they are welcome in West Bengal. There is no reason why investors should waste their time unravelling the meaning of such a contradiction. They would rather see the attempt to woo capital back to West Bengal as an act of bad faith and put their money elsewhere. If Mr Bhattacharjee is sincere about improving West Bengal's image, he should try and stop his comrades both in Alimuddin Street and in A.K. Gopalan Bhavan in New Delhi from spouting a brand of rhetoric that went out with the communist tide. Mr Bhattacharjee himself is not entirely free from this malady of anachronism. Immediately after assuming office, Mr Bhattacharjee attacked Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government for proposing to close down sick units in the state and for suggesting that the public distribution system should be withdrawn. In other words, Mr Bhattacharjee, in the euphoria of a massive election victory, peddled the left's stock-in-trade: attack on the economic reform agenda. This was in sharp contrast to the Mr Bhattacharjee who is vocal and passionate about fashioning a new and resurgent West Bengal. Schizophrenia can inspire pity and concern, but not faith. Investors will continue to shy away from a state whose chief minister is a communist one day and capital-friendly the next. Mr Bhattacharjee cannot forget, so far dealing with industrialists are concerned, he is saddled with an initial handicap: the very name of his party. He has to work overtime to establish an image that overrides the impression created by that name and the rhetoric associated with it.