Their obvious political differences apart, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma shares with his Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee a remarkable gift of making stunning public claims of administrative achievements and success that are not always factually correct. For all Sarma’s talk of transforming Assam into a dynamic economy in the Northeast region through unprecedented levels of infrastructural investments, courtesy the BJP-led NDA Government, the state has failed to secure even 1% of recent investments in India!

As for Mamata Banerjee’s similar claims about unorthodox job creation as a ‘major administrative achievement of the Bengal TMC Government,’ Kolkata-based media channels reported that last week alone, from Mizoram to Delhi, at least 30 people — all jobless youths from Bengal — had been killed in industrial ‘accidents’!

Almost to the last man, the victims hailed mostly from Murshidabad, Malda and Nadia districts. The exact number of migrant workers from Bengal working in other states, beginning from a trickle in the80s and swelling to a mighty torrent by the 2020s, has never been officially registered. The reason for not keeping an official record was political: Left or non-Left, no ruling dispensation wished to advertise its failure in reducing domestic unemployment.

As for the districts themselves, Murshidabad (a former capital of undivided Bengal during the Mughal rule) and Malda are Muslim-majority areas, with significantly poor indices of human resource development in recent times. The decline of Murshidabad from the capital of a once flourishing region to Bengal’s present-day crime capital, not to mention its present tag as India’s poorest district, has been very pathetic indeed. The transition also attests to the abysmal failure of Bengal’s political/cultural establishment in the post-Independence period to provide any leadership in crisis management.

A current estimate provides an indication of the extent of the present economic crisis plaguing especially rural Bengal: the Left-affiliated Centre of Indian trade Unions (CITU) has launched a detailed study of the problem of domestic joblessness. Its most crucial finding so far: between 4 million and 5 million jobless youths, mostly from rural Bengal, are currently working in the road building or real estate sector projects in other States.

Most are barely literate, unskilled and school dropouts, but the exodus also includes hundreds of graduates. From power projects in Kochi to Jammu to working for the Railways in the remotest areas of the NE, their chief objective is to earn Rs 400 to Rs 750 daily, so that they can send some money back to dependent relatives at home!

It needs stressing that the going daily wage rate for workers in Bengal has remained stagnant in the Rs 250/350 range for over a decade, according to TU circles. At present most workers are engaged in real estate-related work. Further, mafia-type of labour leaders, mostly enjoying TMC support, collect a daily cut of Rs 30/40 from each worker!

‘This never happens in Odisha or Kerala’, says Sudeep Mandal (25), who has worked in both States and is currently visiting his home at Dankuni, Hooghly.

Both Chief Minister Banerjee and her Chief Adviser former Finance Minister Dr Amit Mitra proudly claim that during the TMC’s 12-year long tenure, there has occurred no industrial strike in Bengal.

‘It would be nearer the truth to say that there is hardly any industry left here — the reduction in the number of industrial workers by several lakhs during the past decade in Bengal is a fact confirmed by numerous surveys conducted by the labour department itself, NGOs and researchers’, says an INTUC leader.

Dr. Mitra’s recent claims made in Mumbai about Bengal’s immense potential as Eastern India’s emerging economic powerhouse, has evoked little interest though considerable local merriment in West Bengal.

‘People in Bengal have been hearing of lakhs of new jobs in these projects for over a decade, from the Chief Minister herself. Very little has changed at the ground level. There has been no land acquisition for years, and hardly any organised upskilling of young unemployed youths. At this rate, the state Government will make such claims for another30years if things continue like this,’ said Sanatan Nandi, a jobless youth of Howrah.

For Assam, according to recent Reserve Bank of India figures, official efforts to attract major investments in the 2020s have failed miserably. Just as West Bengal’s much vaunted but mostly ineffective annual jamborees, inviting industrialists to work in the state, had flopped, Assam’s ambitious ‘Advantage Assam’ programme and similar moves have also come a cropper.

From 2016onwards, apart from leading Indian industrialists, many foreign delegates and dignitaries had been invited to consider setting up projects in the NE region — to little apparent effect. All over India, according to RBI and other stats, altogether Rs 1,41,000 crore had been invested in 401 projects in 2021-22.Assam-based media further reported that in 2022-23, the figures respectively rose to Rs 2,66,000 crore for 547 projects.

Uttar Pradesh bagged the highest share of these investments, at 16% of the total, in 2022-23. It was followed by other well-performing states like Karnataka, Odisha and Maharashtra. As for Assam, it secured only 0.7% of the total!

Opposition parties in Bengal and Assam cite different and contrasting reasons for the relative failure of both Sarma and Mamata Banerjee to secure the confidence of top industrialists in India. Poor governance might have been the main cause.

In post-Singur Bengal as well as Assam (to a lesser extent), the volatile law and order situation and recurrence of violence affecting different communities have been common in recent times. Both Chief Ministers have been more adept in pandering to narrow vote bank interests than attending to their economic priorities. Widespread corruption has been a common feature of governance in both states. No wonder such trends have not exactly encouraged investors, foreign or homegrown, to repose confidence in their words or announcements. (IPA Service)