Some years back Tata Steel ran a creative ad campaign with a cryptic slogan: ‘We also make steel’. It claimed, quite legitimately, that apart from its main business activity, the company also ran the best-managed industrial township in Jamshedpur, encouraged sports and supported other corporate social responsibility initiatives. In other words, steel-making was sought to be projected almost as a byproduct of the company’s larger commitment to the nation.

In the context of the Tata Group’s proposed investments in West Bengal and Bangladesh, I am tempted to speculate: if the road blocks to these investments are cleared, and the Tatas set up the small-car plant in Singur and the steel-power-fertiliser complex in Bangladesh, might these enterprises some day prove to be byproducts of a larger endeavour, namely, economic reintegration of the two divided halves of Bengal?

This possibility is within the grasp of the people and politicians of India, especially of West Bengal, and Bangladesh, to close the chapter of artificial division and open a new one of cooperation and co-prosperity. Yes, it is within our grasp if only we care to listen to the great call of 21st-century Asia and also to the centuries-old music of the spiritual-cultural-social unity of Bengalis on both sides of the border.

It is not difficult to know why some sections of Bangladesh’s political and intellectual establishment — since its creation in 1971, the country has received only $3 billion of FDI — have fiercely opposed the Tatas’ offer to invest nearly $3 billion in the country’s core industrial sectors. The main reason lies in the rise of anti-India sentiments, stoked by the rising power of foreign-funded Islamist forces. These forces are also the principal opponents of India-Bangladesh cooperation to harness the latter’s considerable natural gas reserves. India-locked on three sides, Bangladesh simply cannot use its natural gas except within a framework of cooperation with India. Yet there is an entrenched mindset in Bangladesh that resists such a move.

... contd.