What is appalling, however, is to see that some forces in our own Bengal seem determined to keep it industrially underdeveloped, economically stagnant and thus incapable of opening new avenues of employment and wealth-creation. Until recently the communists themselves were responsible for Bengal’s de-industrialisation. But now that the CPM has finally realised its mistake, its opponents are using the traditional communist methods to oppose a project that promises to become the harbinger of the state’s re-industrialisation.

How ironic. With due respect to Mamata Banerjee, who is spearheading the opposition to Singur, I have to say that her agitation militates against both West Bengal’s immediate interests and India’s long-term interests. She has many admirable qualities, but if she wants to be taken seriously as the potential successor to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, she has to look beyond her party’s rural base for the next panchayat elections. She must expand her vision to see the big opportunity that India has not only to accelerate economic growth in our eastern and northeastern states, but also to pull our estranged eastern neighbour into a new paradigm of sub-regional cooperation, which alone can make Tagore’s dream of ‘Amaar Shonaar Bangla’ for undivided Bengal come true.

Today, regional and sub-regional cooperation is the axis around which the wheel of economic growth is turning. The nay-sayers to new investments in West Bengal and Bangladesh should glance eastwards to see how this wheel has turned in the direction of poverty alleviation, employment generation and shared prosperity. Not long ago, undivided Bengal was more advanced than several countries in Southeast and Far East Asia. Kolkata itself was ahead of Shanghai. Today, if Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and, lately, even Vietnam, have left West Bengal and Bangladesh far behind, it is primarily because they

... contd.