Full Marx

A dangerous idea is gaining publicity. And repeated often enough it threatens to acquire the garb of certitude. The idea is this: that in any policy thrust towards industrialisation, usage of farmland for industrial hubs will jeopardise India’s food security. This is not only a false choice, it also misrepresents the interests of workers employed in the farm sector. There also exists a consequent danger. That the argument could now be considered important enough to first be settled theoretically, and only thereafter would it find utterance in policy decisions. Therefore, West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s refusal to submit to this trap must be emulated in the rest of the country too.

Bhattacharjee told the CPM’s farmers’ wing that the process of industrialisation is irreversible. Industrialisation, he added, would be in interest of sharecroppers and marginal farmers. The audience could not have been chosen with more care. The protests building up against manufacturing hubs — in various parts of the country, but most stridently in West Bengal — are inevitably in the name of farmers. So, it is to the farmers that the argument and the promise have to be taken. The argument may be easier for Bhattacharjee to formulate, because his party’s highest Marxist theorists have already made the case for sustained industrialisation to gain inclusive economic growth. Yet, no matter what ideology may be upheld in countries which have been quick to pull the most number of persons out of poverty, the primacy given to mass manufacturing is a constant. This was as true of western Europe a century ago as it is of China today.

The chief minister’s confidence that he has the mandate to nurture industrial hubs in his state is welcome too for its wider ramifications. Our state governments are today driven by a competitive chase for private investment. In many cases — for instance, Tata Motors’ small car project — many states are perceived to be wooing investors for the same project. Any one state’s bid for investment will therefore increase the stakes all around.