Mamata plans to hard sell her `Singapore story politically’
KOLKATA: While Mamata Banerjee markets investments from Singapore, she sends signals to party men to hard sell the media blitz by her five-day tour to blunt her critics.
“When we see Hillary Clinton coming here and calling on our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at Writers’ Buildings, before she entered South Block we feel proud and now when we see Mamata Banerjee winning all in Singapore in her business trip, aren’t we feel much the same way?’’ said party leader and party’s Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandopadhyaya here today, setting the bottom line of her message straight.
But more than enthusiasm, her message sets alarm bell ringing with educated middle-class here.
“It should make us more cautious instead than expecting miracle happening for Bengal like we did dance to the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s singing (Manmohan Singh’s) pro-reform utterences which fetched Bengal nothing,’’ said a political commentator.
“Sadly though we want Bengal to win but more in real business-like manner than rhetorically, like `we will show India the way,’ (Mamata Banerjee was reported to have said) after presiding over the signing of MoUs in Singapore,’’ he added, saying, “like scripting a dream in the air without proper infrastructure and planning up population growth, improving upon the higher education drop-out rates, you draw investment for whom the development wouldn’t fetch benefit for mass, but in long-term it would invite disaster.’’
Incidentally, with a more manageable population size in Bengal in ‘60s Bengal was better educated than during the time Left entered, more industrially developed though Congress Governments had no specific plans of growths.
“So people eat well and slept well despite poverty until a superficial political experiment like Naxalism instead of rebuilding the farming sector also destroyed education and industry in the state which merely set a trend for CPI(M) later,’’ said a professor of economics of Calcutta University, regretting, “I might look a pessimist, but prevention is better than cure and unfortunately neither Mamata nor Modi like Anglised Nehru want to address the basic issues like population control and poverty alleviation they are more concerned with populism.’’
If Mamata’s thesis for development without a proper planning made a large section of educated middle-class a little pessimistic, her plans to hard sell it both in political and business terms “will fetch gains for middle men and quick money-makers in short time, but certainly no major gains for Bengal,’’ feel economists.
