On the occasion of BCC&I Managing Committee meeting, The President, Mr Subir Chakraborty formally welcomed Shri Sanjeev Sanyal, Member, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India as an Honorary Member of The Bengal Chamber and presented a ceremonial “Key” as a special gesture. 

Shri Sanyal delivered a speech on the 'Central Importance of Kolkata to Eastern India's Economic Prosperity'. In his opening remarks he stated that he had deliberately chosen to speak about the importance of Kolkata as a city and particularly on the role it needs to play in India’s and more specifically in Eastern India’s economic, intellectual and social growth. 

He mentioned that months back the Economist magazine had reported in an article that India had a ‘latitude’ problem. However, the real problem, he felt  was ‘‘longitudinal’  in that the Eastern part of India was poorer than the Western part in all aspects. This was true even for some larger States. Having made this reference, he went on to say that there was no such thing as poor people, there are only poor places.   

Urbanism and urban hubs mattered most for growth and development and here lay the problem in the East. Every single developed society had strong and vibrant urbanized core and very often large cities or network of cities were the ones that drove economic engines. Urbanism was a critical part of driving economic growth and in this context, one needed to understand the problem of Eastern India and the under-performance of Kolkata. Geographically centrally positioned, the most important city of Eastern India,  Kolkata, needed to rapidly pull its weight. Therefore, there was a need to look at the rapid urban drive of Kolkata seriously as a national project. 

In order to ambitiously re-imagine Kolkata for the 21st century one should stop labelling it as a ‘nostalgic city’. Instead, it should be transformed as a City that aspired and drove for ‘today’ and for that to happen, one needs to work on the landscape of Kolkata. A beginning should be made by creating iconic buildings, which had never been done. Some buildings are to be redeployed and preserved, and rest to be taken down which doesn’t fit the purpose. We need to be bold enough to rethink and re-imagine Kolkata as a living city. We should be willing to build completely from scratch new office buildings, new set of temples, new city centres etc. Shri Sanyal mentioned about the possibility of redeployment of the Hooghly river-front through selective preservations wherever necessary. There was a need to boldly rethink about this City, whether it is Burra Bazar, BBD Bag or any other place. Much of the urban regeneration, Mr Sanyal felt, was cash positive and they would sustain for themselves. 

Urban hubs necessarily need to be parts of networks. That’s what makes them grow and become vibrant hubs. So, Kolkata needs to be linked with its immediate hinterland and also to the world. Cities and their leading citizens need to stand up and demand these linkages. Most important thing to understand is these inter-linkages work like gravity, the more mass, the more it attracts. He felt it was important to go out and market Kolkata’s linkages deliberately. It was necessary to go out and create strong links with the immediate hinterland - Patna, Ranchi, Guwahati, Bhubaneshwar. The Chamber had a role to play here in reaching out and building linkages, he felt, as this surely does not happen organically. He gave examples of Singapore and London which worked very hard to become  great global cities. Kolkata needs to do this for the whole of the Eastern India. 

Kolkata had been bleeding Human Capital and this had to be seriously thought of. While there are several reasons for this, Shri Sanyal felt that there was a need to rebuild Kolkata, a place where the nextgen felt the vibe of the place, which he termed as “urban buzz”. This should be the place where young people should love to live which could  be provided by giving  them a greater space in public life.   

Shri Sanyal concluded his talk by advising that Kolkata should not become a place for non-resident Kolkatans, the city should be re-built as a city for today and not thinking too much about tearing down the past, if necessary, as building for a better future needs some degree of courage.