‘Should the son of a farmer always remain a farmer?’ The ambivalence of industrialisation and resistance in West Bengal

Abstract

When the Left Front (LF ) government of West Bengal was re-elected for a record sixth consecutive time in 2006, the comfortable victory was widely interpreted as a popular endorsement of an electoral promise of rapid industrialisation in a state that had by then witnessed a prolonged industrial decline lasting for several decades. The LF ’s election manifesto’s section on industrialisation had promised the electorate to set up industrial parks; to increase investments in industry; and to modernise and make competitive the traditional labourintensive industries. The state would in addition establish a minimum of four Special Economic Zones (People’s Democracy 2006), which would be earmarked as duty free enclaves operating under a relaxed and business friendly policy regime (see also Bedi, this volume). As the quote – from the then chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) (cited in Da Costa 2010: 20) – in the title of this chapter indicates, the stated aim of this policy was to create meaningful employment opportunities for ‘the sons of farmers’ outside of an agricultural economy that was increasingly recognised as incapable of fulfilling the economic needs and aspirations of present and future generations. Yet, as is by now well known, the LF ’s policy of rapidly industrialising the state encountered resistance in several places, derailing the LF ’s plans and eventually contributing to its ouster from office in 2011. In this chapter we are concerned with understanding the link between industrial policymaking and its manifestation and reception in specific localities in West Bengal. How has industrial policy evolved in the state over the past decades? How have the liberalisation-induced alterations of the federal terrain influenced the processes and forms of industrialisation in West Bengal? And how can we understand the deep sense of ambivalence and resistance with which specific industrial projects are often received in rural settings? To contextualise and engage with these questions the chapter proceeds through three main areas of discussion. We first review the governance record and key policies of the LF ’s years in office from 1977 up to 2006. This is a story of agrarian reform and democratic decentralisation coupled with industrial decline and a centralisation of power and social control in the hands of the CPI(M) that has been told often, and we therefore only reproduce this story in condensed form here.