Making Bengal a magnet for industry | West Bengal's Suvendu Adhikari

Suvendu Adhikari could not have ushered in the new era in Bengal politics on a better day—May 9, 2026, the 165th birth anniversary of poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore. And the new chief minister and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made the most of it, from the portrait of Tagore on the stage and Rabindra Sangeet during the swearing-in ceremony to Suvendu’s visit to Jorasanko Thakurbari, Tagore’s ancestral home, where he paid floral tributes to the ‘kabiguru’ and recited his poem, ‘Chitto jetha bhoy shunyo (where the mind is without fear)’. ‘Bhoy’ (fear), he echoed Union home minister Amit Shah’s words, had now given way to ‘Bhorosha’ (trust).The occasion is heady enough for Suvendu to wax eloquent. The 55-year-old is the ninth overall and the BJP’s first chief minister of Bengal, handing the saffron party its final prize in the east, that too with an astounding 207-seat majority in a House of 294. Gone is the divisive, acrimonious rhetoric of the poll campaign, and in its place is a calmer, more inclusive language. “Now, I am CM, I belong to everyone.” “It is not ‘I’, it is ‘we, we, and we’.” “This is a government ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’, not ‘for the party’.”But Suvendu will need more than words to honour the weighty mandate he has been given. He may have been the architect of the Nandigram agitation and the subsequent rise of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), but development has long been held hostage to politics in Bengal, first under 34 years of Left rule, then playing second fiddle to Mamata Banerjee’s welfare architecture for 15 years. It has left the state without any industry, and its youth deprived of job opportunities. Doles and welfare schemes can take you only so far, as Didi discovered, and though the BJP intends to continue down that road, it will have to balance welfare expansion with fiscal discipline. Equally challenging will be the task of curbing crime. The BJP may have weaponised the R.G. Kar incident to highlight the lack of women’s safety under TMC rule, even successfully fielding the victim’s mother, Ratna Debnath, from Panihati, but the end of the TMC regime will not automatically mean the return of law and order. Having once been part of the TMC himself, Suvendu perhaps knows its ‘cut money’ culture only too well and how to beat the party at its own game. Securing the state’s borders to prevent infiltration from Bangladesh, a prominent theme of the BJP’s poll campaign, is another tough to-do. The Bengal strongman has proved his mettle at winning elections, he must now demonstrate how he can bring the ‘badlav’ (change) he has been elected for. THE POLITICAL PREDICAMENTSNabanna’s new sheriff has hit the ground running. In a significant departure from the one-woman show that was Mamata Banerjee, where you could not tell the party organisation from the state administration, the new CM and his party have made it clear that they will coordinate, but function independently of each other. BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya remarked that the administration would not be “BJP’s government, because it is the West Bengal government”. But the Centre’s shadow, as Big Brother, could well loom large over the state’s functioning. Suvendu’s first order of business was the instating of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Ayushman Bharat scheme, both of which the Mamata government had objected to.But Suvendu’s challenges could also well lie within. The state BJP has several influential heavyweights, among them Dilip Ghosh, who has never shared a particularly warm rapport with Suvendu. A former state BJP president and MP, Ghosh had fallen out of favour with sections of the party leadership in recent years but has now made a political comeback with the backing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. As part of the new Bengal cabinet, he has been given charge of the crucial panchayat and rural development department along with animal husbandry and agricultural marketing. Four others took the oath of office alongside the CM, among them two of his closest loyalists from his days as Leader of the Opposition, Agnimitra Paul and Ashok Kirtania, as well as former Union minister of state for home affairs and youth affairs and sports, Nisith Pramanik, and first-time MLA Khudiram Tudu. However, Suvendu will have to consider loyalty, factional interests and organisational expectations while forming the larger cabinet.Meanwhile, his personal style of functioning is already becoming a subject of discussion within bureaucratic and political circles. A retired bureaucrat who worked with him when he was a minister in Mamata’s cabinet describes his presence as “imposing” and occasionally even “intimidating”. Yet, he also recalls how Suvendu would listen carefully and remain open to persuasion. “I can recollect multiple instances when I had differences with him,” says the official. “But he would give an ear to our logic and reasoning. If you could make your case, Suvendu babu would retreat.”In his first two days as CM, Suvendu, sources in the administration say, appeared receptive and accessible. “It seems he is on a mission to prove he is not like his predecessor,” one police officer says, on condition of anonymity. This became evident in Suvendu’s very first cabinet meeting at Nabanna, where the CM signalled a sharp administrative and political reset with a series of decisions. These included restoration of inter-state training for IAS and IPS officers, a five-year age relaxation in government recruitment, resumption of the delayed census process and the transfer of land to the Border Security Force for the completion of border fencing along Bangladesh.The government simultaneously stressed stricter civic and administrative discipline. The Special Intensive Revision exercise may cast a shadow beyond the election, as it was first announced that people who do not figure on the electoral rolls would not be entitled to state benefits only to clarify later that this would not apply to those whose names may be missing in the rolls but who have applied for citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment Act) or sought redressal under the tribunal. The government also declared that everyone was free to practise their religions peacefully, but blocking roads and loudspeaker-related inconvenience would not be tolerated except during festivals, and with legal permission. It did mandate the singing of Vande Mataram in schools. The government is also expected to address many of its big poll promises, including monthly allowances to women, their security, reopening investigation in cases such as the R.G. Kar rape and murder, and the implementation of the 7th Pay Commission. The impediment in this good intent? The state finances. THE ECONOMIC IMPASSEThough West Bengal is India’s sixth-largest state economy, with a projected Gross State Domestic Product of Rs 21.8 lakh crore for FY27, its Rs 1.71 lakh per annum per capita income is 20 per cent lower than the national average of Rs 2.12 lakh. Compounding the challenge is the state’s enormous debt of Rs 7.71 lakh crore, which places it fifth among all states. Bengal’s share in India’s foreign investment inflows, too, is a measly 0.7 per cent.The administration must also address the state’s massive migration crisis. Unofficial estimates suggest that more than 5 million workers have left Bengal for employment elsewhere. This poses a socio-economic challenge for the government, especially as the BJP campaign focused heavily on job creation and industrial revival.At the same time, the government will have to continue welfare schemes, but with higher payouts than the TMC’s. More than 20 million women availed of Mamata’s Lakshmir Bhandar scheme that boasted an annual budgetary allocation of Rs 26,700 crore. The scheme provided Rs 1,500 per month to women from the general category and Rs 1,700 to those in reserved categories. The BJP has promised to increase the amount to Rs 3,000 a month, which would require an estimated annual allocation of nearly Rs 72,000 crore. And this is just one of the welfare commitments the BJP made during its election campaign.“West Bengal has depended on welfare and services-led growth,” says Rudra Chatterjee, managing director of the Luxmi Tea group and chairman of carpetmakers Obeetee. “The next phase cannot be driven merely by consumption, subsidies and construction. If Bengal wants to become a $500 billion economy by 2030, it must reinvent itself as an export-oriented manufacturing and logistics powerhouse—creating jobs at scale through textiles, food processing, digital infrastructure and industrial urbanisation.”Industry experts broadly agree that unless substantial investments flow into Bengal, the economy will continue to struggle. Dependence on government employment must come down and opportunities in the private sector must expand. However, the last requires a favourable investment climate. “The biggest problem so far was the indecisiveness of the administration,” says Mayank Jalan of the Keventer Group. “Investors were unsure of what to do. We have been struggling with the Kulpi Port project for decades.” The BJP’s newly elected BJP MLA from Rashbehari, Swapan Dasgupta, believes that attracting at least one major investment project is necessary to “set the ball rolling”. A JOB WELL DONE: Suvendu Adhikari greets PM Narendra Modi after taking oath as CM, Kolkata, May 9. (Photo: PTI) CLEANING UP GOVERNANCEDasgupta identifies two more challenges for the new government. “We must stop the menace of goonda raj and cut money,” he says. “Law and order, too, needs immediate restoration.” The government has ordered the immediate closure of all unauthorised toll gates, drop gates, barricades and collection points in the state. The previous administration was accused of turning a blind eye to such extortionist practices. Another significant allegation against the Mamata government was that sections of the police operated more like party cadre than neutral law-enforcement personnel. Suvendu, in his first interaction with senior police officials, emphasised he wanted the force to function independently. They have reportedly been instructed to address incidents of post-poll violence without consideration of political patronage. This, even as Suvendu’s personal assistant, Chandranath Rath, was shot dead two days after the party’s victory. Both Suvendu and party president Bhattacharya have publicly stated that no violence or intimidation would be tolerated, whether by the BJP’s own workers or their opponents. Restoring faith in law enforcement and ensuring political neutrality of the police will remain a defining challenge for the administration.THE BORDER BUGBEAREven as the new BJP government moves to seal the border with Bangladesh, it grapples with the politically sensitive issue of alleged illegal infiltration. The BJP’s poll campaign had repeatedly promised—echoing the commitments made by home minister Shah—that a BJP government in Bengal would “detect, delete and deport” illegal infiltrators, particularly from Bangladesh. But enforcing this will be a challenge. There have been instances elsewhere when, in the process of identifying illegal immigrants, several Muslim Indian citizens have allegedly been forcibly pushed into Bangladesh. The Assam government is accused of similar overzealousness, with sections of the Muslim population claiming recurring harassment. According to a highly-placed administrative source, the government will neither tolerate illegal immigration nor harass Indian Muslims. “We will devise a way to identify illegal immigrants. That can be done easily. We will deport them to Bangladesh after that,” the source says. But if Indian Muslims in the state feel targeted or harassed unnecessarily, it could alienate sections of Bengal’s liberal electorate who voted out the TMC in search of peace and stability. Already, Suvendu’s bulldozer drive in the Topsia and Tiljala areas of Kolkata recall ‘Bulldozer Baba’ Yogi Adityanath’s actions in Uttar Pradesh, and the directive to enact the 1950 animal slaughter act that prohibits open slaughter of animals without due certification have stirred unease.For now, Suvendu appears eager to project his government as administratively firm yet politically restrained. But governing a state with such legacy problems as Bengal’s is different from fighting an election. Being ‘everyone’s CM’ is easier said than done.- EndsPublished By: Shyam BalasubramanianPublished On: May 15, 2026 19:10 IST

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Making Bengal a magnet for industry | West Bengal's Suvendu Adhikari

The divisive rhetoric of the poll campaign over, Suvendu Adhikari gets down to the task of providing inclusive governance, while bringing industry and jobs to the state

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