“Debt Can be Turned Around”

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What prompted AMIT MITRA to quit the secretary general’s post at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, or Ficci, to jump into the hurly-burly of state politics? And that too on the side of Mamata Banerjee, a political leader not associated in the public mind with vision? BT’S SUNNY SENandSOMNATH DASGUPTA caught up with Mitra a day after he felled CPI(M)’s Asim Dasgupta, who was West Bengal’s finance minister, in the state assembly polls. Mitra talks of the Communists’ failure in the state and the road ahead. Edited excerpts:

West Bengal has a debt of`2 lakh crore. Do you already feel like running away?

The debt can be turned around. Mamata Banerjee will sit across the table with the prime minister and the finance minister, with an appropriate milestone and plan structure. Please understand that the CPI(M) never submitted a milestone based vision document for the health of the state finance. I don’t know why it didn’t.

You are tipped to become the finance minister…

I did not come here giving up everything I had in Delhi to become a minister. I was involved with at least 15 ministries… I have come to Bengal just as my wife and I once left the United States in 1990 [to come to India] without a job. That was a typical rash decision… Because we have worked with Mamata Banerjee for one and a half years, I knew that her courage, her fortitude, her integrity, her connect with the common people was going to result in a tectonic shift.

How will you use your contacts to improve Bengal?

First, we have to be pragmatic and understand that industry does not come because of contacts. They put their money where their mouth is, which means they need returns. Mamata Banerjee is ideologically very clear that trade unions are important for democracy. Building factories that provide jobs is also important. But Mamata will not spare any company doing illegal things.

What is the way forward: manufacturing or agriculture?

Manufacturing in the state occupied about 13 per cent of India’s total manufacturing revenues from 1965 to 1975. That has systematically come down to about seven per cent or less than that – some very small single digit number. Why? About 58,000 factories have closed down in West Bengal, according to the state’s own statistics. Most of them were manufacturing units. Agriculture in West Bengal was growing at 17 per cent a year before the Left Front came to power. That has fallen to seven per cent. One crore people are unemployed.

When will we see the Trinamool begin to act?

I worked with Mamata Banerjee in the railway ministry… She came to every meeting five minutes early, unlike many politicians in this country. She literally goes to yesterday, “Why wasn’t this done yesterday?” So her approaches deliver. So when she did this vision document, one thing she asked everybody she consulted was– My first 200 days. And that’s how she put the 200-day agenda.