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The Economic Times
The Economic Times
Diva Jain

Bengal, count plants, not promises: The real test of its industrial comeback

Last week: West Bengal finance minister Swapan Dasgupta stated that the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act 1976 has to go. That reform would be instrumental, he said, in unlocking land for development and attracting fresh investments. This, and other measures, are on the anvil for the 5-mth-old BJP government's plans to put the state on an industrial path.

Bengal's industrial history is unusual, not because it started late but because it started so early and lost so much. Five decades of Left and Trinamool politics squandered the inheritance of one of India's earliest cotton mills near Calcutta, car-making by Hindustan Motors at Uttarpara, locomotive-making at Chittaranjan, steel at Durgapur....

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