Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee

KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Sunday said the State's success in the agriculture sector should form the base for transformation in industry.

"If society has to progress, it has to move from agriculture to industry," Mr. Bhattacharjee said at a rally organised by the Democratic Youth Federation of India. Further employment was not possible in agriculture. Hence, opportunities had to be created in industry, business and commerce.

In the face of the Trinamool Congress-led Opposition's allegation that the Government had forcibly acquired farmland for industrialisation, he said the Government's policy took care of the interests of workers and farmers.

"If 78 per cent of agricultural land in the State belongs to the poor people, it is because of the struggle waged by the Left Front to transfer the land from the landlords," he said. It was because of the Left Front Government's attention to agriculture that West Bengal recorded the highest production in the country in rice, vegetables and fish at a time when the agricultural economy was disintegrating throughout the country.

"But only agriculture is not enough to go forward. The increasing problems faced in the farm sector, including fragmentation of the limited land available as well as increasing costs of inputs such as irrigation, seeds and fertilizers, were making it unviable.

"For a place like Singur [site of the proposed Tata small car factory], it is important to ascertain and compare the amount of wealth created and people employed, depending on whether the land is used for agriculture or industry."

Mr. Bhattacharjee said industries had started to arrive in the State, with the biggest steel plant in the country to be set up by the Jindals at Salboni in West Midnapur district and two other steel plants planned for Burdwan and Purulia.

There was also a plan to develop the area around Haldia into a chemical hub and a special economic zone dealing in electronics to be set up by Videocon in Darjeeling district in north Bengal.

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