Didi has returned from her blitzkrieg tour, marketing West Bengal as the best destination in India for investments. Unlike in the usual retinue of her entourage, she had another star alongside her: Variously known as Dada, Maharaj, or the Prince of Bengal.
Didi believes people on their face value and may not understand the complex business issues, like her eternal optimist advisor, Amit Mitra, who never stops regaling himself at the thoughts of billions of dollars flowing into Bengal’s industrial sector after each year’s Bengal Industrial Conclave. The tour indeed had all the usual thrill of Didi braving the punishing European hot weather, jogging on the cobbled pavements with huffing and puffing others on her trail.
Be these trivialities as they may, Didi conquered Spain with their top brand, Zara, reportedly in haste to invest in West Bengal. They reportedly claimed to be very impressed with the infrastructure in the Bantala Leather Complex and would need about a hundred acres to set up a footwear park. The outcome of the Spanish textile major Tempe’s investment ideas was revealed to the ogling media in a press meeting by a few local permanent fixtures who accompany the West Bengal CM on her tours. My attempts to reach out and elicit credible information from the Spanish group met with no success, and I put the claims regarding setting up a factory in West Bengal to some rest.
Zara, incidentally, is one of the big brands operating out of Bangladesh and has about a dozen manufacturing centres across the world, mostly in developing countries. I leave the economics, like the cheaper and exploitative labour and the advantage of no quotas for textile apparel, which have made the neighbouring Bangladesh into a textile hub that cannot be rivalled by India. The media briefing on Zara’s Bengal forays was a kichadi and included sourcing leather and non-leather for footwear, sourcing textiles, and a hundred-acre plot besides whatnot. A serious company like Zara would do much better than such ambiguities!
Next, why did Saurav announce an investment of Rs. 3500 crore in the abandoned steel plant of the Jindals? Spain is a soccer-crazy country, and the cricketer would have been known no better than I. He was merely a proxy batting for his friend, a mediocre name in the steel business in West Bengal. The cricketer has not covered himself with glory with his earlier offers for investment, which had out-of-turn land allotments by the former left-front government and which had to be returned on court orders.
I would be truly happy when big-ticket investments come to West Bengal. However, the present two offers do not excite me from the point of practicality. Huge investments were promised by the many MOUs signed earlier by successive industry representatives. The former West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was crucified by the media for misstating that Gucci was going to invest in Bantala Leather Complex. It ended with a showroom in a mall. Zara too has a showroom in another mall, and there it rests for now.
Didi’s perseverance will surely bear fruits some day!
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide Voix
