Infertile imagination

Rajdeep Sardesai signed off a news capsule saying, “What Bengal thinks today, the country has thought yesterday”. This CNN-IBN news channel boss, referring to the West Bengal government cancelling the IT project, obviously needs a lesson or two on objective news presentation.
Anyway, the point here is not really on our loud and opinionated television anchors. The issue here is the way the media, both electronic and print, have been projecting the scrapping of the IT park project near Kolkata as a day of mourning for West Bengal. Infosys and Wipro were to set up an IT park on the delightfully fertile land. The media reacted as if the decision has denied the IT giants of nourishing Bengal, starving after the Nano pullout.
This question rattles me on and off: Is development only about industrialisation? Or can we really get on to a fast track with giant agricultural strides?
Why are the states, and even the media, not showing maturity in understanding development. It is a myth that only industrialization will grant high returns and generate employment opportunities. This myopia has to be corrected. We can, if we look in that direction, tap the rich agricultural opportunities, and convert them into a highly advanced industry. This will, in turn, generate unbelievably good work prospects.
Every state has different geographical identities. While few states have highly productive and fertile land, the others have to work harder for increasing soil efficiency. The states having greater capacity for agriculture can be tapped for just that, rather than trying desperately to woo industries.
West Bengal is a case in point. It is nestled in the most fertile part of the Gangetic plain, where the Ganges deposits rich alluvial soil as it meanders in its final course before ending up in the Bay of Bengal. This delta is nature’s bounty to the country. No wonder then that the state occupies around three per cent of India’s productive land, with more than eight per cent of the country’s food being generated by the state’s agricultural sector, cultivating 68 per cent of the total area (source: http://business.mapsofindia.com/state-agriculture/west-bengal-agriculture.html).
Naturally, agriculture becomes the major means of livelihood in Bengal, especially after the effective land reforms. In fact, until 1980s, West Bengal recorded a slow agricultural growth.
According to data available for the period from 1980-81 to 1998-99, while the average annual growth of foodgrain production for all major states was 2.5 per cent, the corresponding rate of growth for west Bengal was highest at 4.2 per cent (source: www.rdiland.org/PDF/PDF_reports/RDI_112.pdf). And, increase in yields per acre has also been impressive, with 3.5 per cent in relation to 2.8 per cent in other states.
These changes were possible by private investments in groundwater irrigation. The agrarian reforms had created a favourable climate for such private investment in agriculture.
The state has also registered remarkable growth in vegetable production in recent years. But more important than agricultural growth is the uplift of West Bengal’s rural population, including its poorest sections. West Bengal’s poverty line dipped from 60 per cent in 1977 to 25.1 per cent in 1997 (35 percentage points) as compared to 29.1 percentage points in the all-India level (source: planning commission data). The state scores in cash crop production too, with tea and jute as its major revenue spinners.
However, the agricultural growth in West Bengal declined significantly in the mid-1990s from an impressive growth rate of the 1980s. There has been a sharp fall in yield growth during the 1990s. But with changing the dynamics of crop diversification, the state can exploit the advantages of globalization to achieve a higher growth rate.
So can we spare a thought on how we can leverage the wealth of agricultural land and pour in investments to magnify employment prospects in that sector? Let us not assume that agriculture will not fetch high returns.
In a federal set-up, states are meant to co-exist, constantly exchanging ideas and technology. We can easily earmark agriculturally productive states and get them take the lead in providing food for the nation, while the relatively barren states can take care of hosting industrial zones. After all, India is one big nation. Every state can have its own area of expertise. Why should there be a race for brutally killing the fields to attract industrial investments to become a me-too industrialised state? Why should there be a tournament for bagging the most industrial contracts?
But more than that, why should the media bias towards industrialization shape public opinion or policy decisions? In spite of negative inflation, food bills are pinching hard. Bengal is unwittingly keeping the right path. So Mr Sardesai, what Bengal is thinking today, the nation will think only tomorrow.