CM who tried to break ground

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee took charge to bring West Bengal on India Inc's investment map. He died with the dream unfulfilled,

- ISHITA AYAN DUTT

"How do you like the beginning?" a beaming Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee asked reporters.

It was May 18, 2006. Bhattacharjee had just been sworn in- at the sprawling Raj Bhavan lawn -as chief minister (he became chief minister in 2000) after a landslide victory.

From the ceremony, he headed straight for Writers' Building, the red colonial structure where the state secretariat used to sit, for an announcement that would later go down as a watershed event in the history of Bengal politics.

Ratan Tata had flown in along with the brass to make public the location of the small car project, Nano. At least four other states were vying for the project. But it was to come up in Singur, West Bengal. Tata said the investment in the state was a reiteration of the group's belief that West Bengal was one of the most industry-friendly states in the country.

Bhattacharjee looked seemingly satisfied - it was quite "the beginning".

He died on Thursday leaving behind a dream unfulfilled.

Industry's poster boy

Some images set the tone in 2000, as head of state, a dhoti-clad Bhattacharjee perched on a cycle-van reached out to a remote village in South 24 Parganas. And he became the “people's man".

But agricultural growth in Bengal was tapering from peak levels.

Fear of militant trade unionism had scared businessmen away through the 1970s, 1980s and even later. Time was running out to set things right.

So, Bhattacharjee took to wooing investors the Deng Xiaoping way. The course correction, though, had started in 1994, when the state's long-standing Chief Minister Jyoti Basu came out with an industrial policy. But his successor took it up with gusto.

In the first five years, the focus was on the services sector and West Bengal got Wipro and paved the way for Infosys, while Tata Consultancy Services expanded in a major way.