Mamata's Red Carpet For Industry

Mamata is laying out the red carpet for industry and trying hard to bury the ghosts of Singur and Nandigram. Progress is slow, and she still has some way to go before she can put industry at ease

- Romita Datta

It has been nearly two months since Mamata Banerjee took over as the chief minister of West Bengal for the second time, and she is letting everyone know that she means business. A US delegation led by the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas A. Shannon met her in the first week of July. Among other things, say sources in the chief minister’s office, they discussed investment in the state.

If Mamata made history last term by overturning 34 years of Left rule in West Bengal, she also undid a lot of that good with her intransigence on Nandigram and Singur, failing to deliver the poriborton she had assured her electorate. West Bengal failed to shake off the image of being a graveyard of industry under her. Didi is determined to change things this term and the audience at her felicitation cere mony in June, by the nine chambers of commerce and industry in Kolkata, got the first taste of it. “Is the market in an economic slowdown or are we making it slow by just chanting Hare Rama, Hare Krishna,” an admonitory Mamata thundered.