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STATES: WEST BENGAL
Riding The Tiger
Having got Calcutta renamed, the Naba Jagaran group
is hurtling down the parochial path to reinvent the state's identity-with
some help from the Left
By Sumit Mitra
 After
four decades of industrial downslide and decimation of jobs, West Bengal
has now been promised a Naba Jagaran-call it a reawakening, or even a
renaissance, if you like, of the spirit of business. When was the first
awakening? Nobody is sure, for the 19th century Bengal Renaissance was
a youth movement spurred by western education and mainly literary and
cultural in character. On the question of building entrepreneurship in
a province full of rent-seeking landlords, matriculate pen-pushers and
ignorant peasants, there has not been much "awakening" ever.
The only messiah of enterprise in the past was
Acharya P.C. Roy (1861-1944), chemist, social reformer and educationist,
who powerfully pleaded that the Bengalis should develop an appetite for
business risk. His appeal homed in marginally, if at all, for even today
only a few Bengali business house of the state can claim assets in excess
of Rs 150 crore.
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SATYABRATA DEY
An entrepreneur who runs a small shoe company is the Naba Jagaran
Trust's mascot for revival of industry
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TAPAN MITRA
The trust's president has been retained as Haldia Petrochemical's
chairman and was consulted before the budget.
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NAZRUL ISLAM
The police DIG is allowed to propagate the cause of Bengali people
by the state Government
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ASHOK DASGUPTA
General secretary of the Naba Jagaran Trust, the Aaj Kal editor
espouses an unabashedly pro-Left line.
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SUNIL GANGOPADHYAY
The eminent novelist's involvement lends credibility to Naba Jagaran's
efforts |
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On August 2, 1999, the birth anniversary of Roy,
Naba Jagaran, an organisation for promoting "revival" of Bengali
awareness in business, culture and education, held its first public meeting.
Since then it has held 155 more meetings or three meetings in a fortnight
on an average. The audience may be thin, but the organisation's voice
has become more audible in public life. Before presenting the state's
2001-2 budget last month, Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta consulted Naba
Jagaran among other interest groups. Last year, it lobbied with the state
government to remove the additional tax imposed on some items following
the harmonisation of sales tax.
It is due to pressure from Naba Jagaran and
its two associates- Bhasha Shaheed Smarak Samiti (BSSS), a group named
after the Language Martyrs' Day in Bangladesh, and Bhasha O Chetana (Language
and Awareness)-that the West Bengal government initiated the move to change
the name of Calcutta to Kolkata and that of West Bengal to Bangla (the
state renaming proposal awaits Parliament's approval).
Last year, Naba Jagaran secured an assurance
from Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya that Bengali would be used
for all internal official functions of the state Government. The BSSS,
led by celebrated novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay, is campaigning for signboards
of all commercial establishments in the state to be compulsorily painted
in Bengali. It wants Bengali lettering on the licence plates of vehicles,
in addition to English, if that is a statutory requirement.
Bhasha O Chetana (BOC) is the eccentric fringe
of the group, with its leader, Imanul Huq, a college teacher who was once
in the CPI(M), recently leading an attack on a Pepsi stall at the city's
Nandan auditorium. "We are against Coke and Pepsi," he screams
in a tone reminiscent of the campus leaders' in the 1970s. Even these
romantics caught in a timewarp are finding resonance in the state's powerful
quarters. BOC is a critic of Bhattacharya's recent policy to overturn
the 1980 decision to defer teaching English till Class V, starting on
the language in Class I instead. As Huq, and some of his friends in Naba
Jagaran, began lobbying against it, they found a supporter in none other
than Kanti Biswas, the school education minister. Faced with such powerful
opposition, the newly converted Anglophiles in the Bhattacharya camp made
a near about-turn and promptly put the subject before a "committee
of experts".
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