The Hindu Business Line : Belated rise of the east

The past couple of years there has been a flurry of economic announcements from the eastern States of West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand and to a lesser extent Bihar, suggesting that the economic prospects for the area in the coming years may become much brighter than has been the case till now. This is good news because States such as Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa have been the traditional economic laggards though well-endowed with natural resources. This apart, the four States together account for as much as around 23 per cent of the country's population (2001 Census) but only a little more than 12 per cent of the GDP.

In recent times, West Bengal has made succeeded in attracting investments from information technology companies not to speak of the Tata small-car project, which is in the bag and yet not quite in it because of land acquisition problems. Orissa has signed a bagful of MoUs on steel projects, the two jewels in the crown being the 12-million-tonne plant by Posco of South Korea involving the investment of a whopping Rs 50,000 crore and another unit of similar capacity with L. N. Mittal's outfit. It is, of course, quite another matter that the Mittal group has also sounded out the Jharkhand Government for a mega steel project, the point being clear that one of the two States will be dumped by the group when a final decision is taken on the project. Jharkhand, in fact, has signed some 40 MoUs, including for a 10-million-tonne steel plant proposed by the Jindal group, a spate of projects all depending on supplies of iron-ore which, experts fear, may not be adequate for all of them. Bihar, according to its Chief Minister, has so far received 100 proposals for setting up various industrial units in the State, 61 of them, entailing an investment of Rs 26,000 crore, having being cleared already.

All this looks good on paper but, of course, it is the implementation that matters without which all the talk about economic resurgence will come to nought. While poor infrastructure has been the bane of all four States over the past decades, land acquisition is turning out to be a major problem in West Bengal and Orissa, the specific point of conflict being that the sites that are ideal for promoters are at the same time of critical importance to farmers and tribals for their livelihood. Admittedly, the issue is being overly politicised by some people to serve their own narrow interest, but the fact remains that the States of the region, including Jharkhand and Bihar, will have to tackle it effectively if they are to make any headway in their belated attempts to catch up with the rest of the country. If Singur in West Bengal and Kalinganagar in Orissa are any indication, the battle ahead promises to be long and hard.

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