Monday, August 29, 2011

HALDIA DEVELOPMENT BOARD ! HALDIANS ARE WATCHING YOU !

Haldia area is by now, welknown as an area where an industrial complex, served by a port, is coming up. Various organizations are now working in the area towards the fulfillment of this scheme. Co-ordination among them is therefore a must, if haphazard growth is to be avoided.

A master plan for Haldia has already been prepared. It has now to be translated into factories, roads, houses, shops and so on. It is here that a co-ordinated effort is called for. Each agency has its own problems. There are, however, many problems which are common to all or to many agencies. An individual agency can noy tackle these problems, by itself. While these problems will be described in detail subsequently,an attempt has been made to list some of them below :-

1. Lack of communications whether it is by rail, road or river or it is postal,telegraphic, telephonic or wireless. Presemt facilities could, at best, be termed as primitive.

2. Lack of construction materials and consequent high cost of projects.

3. Obstructions put by persons whose lands and houses are to be acquired.

4. Lack of entrepreneurs. Here is a paradox. Plenty of opportunities coupled with plenty of unemployment. Yet there are no entrepreneurs. This vicious circle has to be broken.

5. Need to get popular local support for the successful completion of the Haldia complex. Sudden intrusion of city folk in a rural area is apt to give the locals, a feeling of 'Colonization', with consequent feelings of alienation,jealousy and indifference, if not outright hatred.

6. Need to put up common urban facilities such as schools, hospitals,stadium, university, dairy, shopping centres, hotels, restaurants etc., so as to avoid duplication of the same by every agency.

It is perhaps with a view to achieve these aims that the West Bengal government has constituted the Haldia Development Board. To me, it appears, at first sight, to be a doubtful proposition. Such boards are known to assemble for their meetings and eatings and very often turn out to be mere debating societies. A quotation from the Greek Historian Thucydides, that was a favourite with the late President Kennedy and which is relevant here, refers to Peloponesian policy making bodies. It says " Each member of such bodies presses its own ends....which generally results in no action at all.....they devote more time to the pursuance of their own purposes than to the consideration of general welfare.....each supposes that no harm will come of his own neglect.......that it is the business of another to do this or that......and so on. As each separately entertains the same illusion, the common cause imperceptibly decays "

It is quite possible that each agency represented in the Haldia DevelopmentBoard may pursue its own narrow interests. each one may take shelter for its own defects behind the failure of another agency to do the task allotted to it. At worst, some agencies may even collaborate in non-fulfillment of their tasks by mutual blaming which they had agreed upon in advance.

Some might consider thse fears to be unfounded and hypothetical. Such things have, however happened in the past and are likely to be repeated till such time as responsible behaviour that goes hand in hand with democracy, gets firmly rooted in all of us.

What then, is the solution ? Should an overall body like a holding company or a development Authority vested with powers to co-ordinate the activities of various agencies be constituted ? No ! Such bodies would only put an additional obstacle in the path of whatever little or unco-ordinated steps that the various agencies might be taking. Such a body would want to vet every scheme that any pursue with consequent red tape in the jungle of which, the objective itself would get lost or delayed beyond use.

The answer lies in finding a man of adequate stature and vision to be able to carry out the objectives. Find such a man and build the complex around him. He would, I am sure, like to make Haldia his home.Do not fetter him with administrative responsibilities. Give him instead sufficient wire pulling abilities to see that each agency works towards the goal. "Management By Objectives" is getting to be a much used cliche. Therein however lies hope for the people tired of hair-splitting over methods and procedures. Alas ! The one man who could fill the bill is no more. I mean the late B.B.Ghosh.

By the way, the Haldia Development Board held its first meeting in Calcutta recently. Was it in answer to an artcle published in an earlier issue of this journal with the title " Is Haldia being built in Calcutta ? "

When ! Oh when ! will our neo-feudals get out of their Calcutta based mentality ? They do not seem to like getting out of it the Gandhian way. Perhaps they prefer being moved out the Mao way ! It should be remenbered however thatin today's circumstances, the "Mantra" of Mahatma or Mao is " Back to the villages ". Let us change ourselves in time, before time changes us.

The Haldia Development Board is now a fait accompli. It desrves a fair trial. Well, let us wait and see. In the meantime, it would only be fair for the Haldia Development to know that Haldians are watching them.

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