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The heart of the matter: Deeper asymmetries to be curedBy: Procyon MukherjeeZurich20
th
May 2009The recent debacle of the Left, particularly in West Bengal, should never be looked atfrom a political stand point and judged by the underpinnings of strategy against availableoptions that were orchestrated from the center of the organization; that could be just asmall part of the many reasons that could be tabled for scrutiny. Not much effort has beenput in so far, apart from an etiolated attempt to defend moral positions, to question thevery root cause of the shift of support base in the deep roads of rural Bengal, where threedecades ago a process was initiated that provided the seeds for the emboldening of apolity that almost made elections a matter of a foregone conclusion, until it all changed inthe recent case. The ubiquitous nature of the defeat cannot be left to the vagaries of highlevel analysis that some have put forth, most of which is directed to the fringes of thepuzzle, not the root, as defenses have shirked to define the puzzle itself.The puzzle as I define is: Did the rural poor feel at the end of three decades that landreforms, which provided a deep restraint to the continuity of poverty, make a lastingcontribution to the continuity of employment creation and wealth in turn, for the massesof rural Bengal?If the answer to this puzzling question is that the reform process, although providing adiscontinuity to poverty, had actually hit a wall at the end of three decades as neithermore land is being made available to the rising numbers in the rural heartland, and beingdone with semblance of judicious equity as before, nor is there a transparent processcreated for the polity to deal with the issue of industrialization where arable surpluswould need to be deployed for gainful employment for industry, then we hit the rightchord to set the debate in motion. The pace of reforms slowed on one hand and thelimited benefits of livelihood sustained by the process was inadequate to temper theeffects of involuntary unemployment in the rural poor.The deeper endemic nature of the problem leads one to look at the iniquitous nature of land dealings for the sake of industrialization, the issue of preferential access to landcreating an asymmetry on both sides in terms of gains to be shared; the gains of theIndustry participant far dwarfed the gains of the landless and this inequity pervaded allthrough the series of deals that eclipsed in Nandigram and finally in Singur. The meek response of the party to settle the disputes leaves a lot to be desired and the failure tocreate a polity that would be able to deal with the crisis in good time points to theinability of the leadership to create alliances that go beyond the needs of politics.Land reforms by itself is never an end in itself to quench the needs of poverty alleviation,the process is just a beginning, a very unavoidable beginning, but never an end in itself.With distribution of land, the landless labor starts to breathe but that is never sufficientunless the programs that are needed to sustain the process of generating surplus value
 
from land can be made effective. It was put in place and it served the needs for almosttwo decades, but in absence of parallel diversification of agriculture and creatingconditions of industrialization of agriculture that balances the need of creatingproductivity growth in agriculture, the process had its own short-comings. The world hadlearnt to move expeditiously to the process of industrialization after agriculture providedthe natural fillip to the issue of degenerative employment in pre-reform era in agriculture.In simple terms by distributing land, the land remained to be far less for an individual toget access to credit that would have improved the productivity of the produce and thusprovide a surplus value. On the contrary, the Panchayats, that were created to provide thesupport to these activities, turned out to be ‘reform centers of distribution of the littlesurplus’ that the reforms created and not the centers of initiation of programs that couldbuild the case for productivity growth, without which it is impossible to generate anysurplus after discounting all costs.I have not seen efforts to either reduce transaction costs, or distribution costs, or efforts todiversify to move up the value chain in a systematic manner through plannedinvestments. In absence of these three processes, reforms is bound to hit a wall and thegrowing need of employment generation to be quenched outside of the prospects of landbecame quite imminent towards the end of the late eighties. The period of the lateeighties to the late nineties was the lost decade of opportunities where almost every statemade rapid strides towards industrialization as the liberalization process was set in theearly nineties and the process of globalization was also concurrent.The ‘resurgence’ story, although it began in the early part of the current decade, lackedany ammunition as the work culture in the bulk of the government offices kept ondeclining. The government therefore lacked credibility apart from the verbal prowess of some of the self chosen advertisers for the cause; it never touched the fancy of theindustrialists, both domestic and foreign. There is otherwise little reason how Chennaibecame the centre of auto ancillary industry and auto industry, Hyderabad and Bangalorethe center for knowledge industry and the whole of Gujarat the chemical hub for India, toname a few. Foreign direct investment in India although meager, never touched theshores of Bengal.Do we remember the names of any of our Bengal Industry ministers before the currentone? Did they venture outside their turfs to scout for opportunity to bring in investmentsinto the state? Did they create alliances with the industrialists of the state? This wasentirely left to the Chief Minister, and he perhaps missed to apply the much neededperspicacity to this duty entrusted on him.The land reforms programs and its success put too much on display than what it deservedand the shift in focus needed was only too late and when it happened it was orchestratedas a divisive agenda than a concerted one. The denouements of land acquisition forindustrialization and the process of redressing of the disputes needed a far moredisciplined approach than that what was meted out with a customary mix of ineptness thatvaried between arrogance and ignorance.
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