MANY MARWARIS TRACE ROOTS TO KOLKATA

'NO VICTIMISATION'

With inputs from Our Kolkata Bureau

KOLKATA: The fire that devastated AMRI , an upmarket hospital, and claimed 90 lives on December 9 last year has resulted in collateral damage of an unusual kind. For the first time in living memory, many among Kolkata 's Marwaris, who dominate industry and commerce in the eastern metropolis, say they are feeling threatened and discriminated against.The fallout: a spate of resignations from company directorships and charitable trusts because of the fear an accident may mean incarceration for directors. At least 10 members of the community, who spoke to this paper, said they had resigned from various positions after the incident.The angst is acute enough for some members of the community, who migrated from Rajasthan to Bengal centuries ago, to aver that they are curtailing fresh investments. An industrialist on the verge of setting up a chemicals plant and a steel manufacturer both said their next investments would be in Gujarat.The vitriolic reaction of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee , who appeared to equate those arrested after the AMRI tragedy with murderers and terrorists, has not soothed nerves. Banerjee's reaction was in response to remarks by industry body FICCI expressing concern at the arrest of seven AMRI directors not in charge of day-to-day affairs.Of these, four are promoters of Emami , a Rs 3,700-crore group, while two are owners of Shrachi, a Rs 1,000-crore enterprise. Three directors are absconding.Four of the 14-member AMRI board - Prof MK Chhetri, managing director; Dr Soumendra Nath Banerjee, chairman; and two directors Ashim Kumar Das and Dr Pronab Dasgupta - have not been charged.The arrest of the seven non-executive directors is a sore point among almost all businessmen, cutting across community lines. A leading city industrialist said: "Under tremendous pressure, she has vented her fury on some of the directors of AMRI."This feeling is shared by many in business. Mumbai-based Ankit Miglani, managing director of Uttam Galva Steel , in which LN Mittal 's ArcelorMittal has a 30% stake, said: "Our system says you are innocent, until proven guilty. Hence a person is entitled to get bail.""Whatever action is taken against the AMRI directors should be according to laws. If it is contrary to law, then investment in Bengal is expected to take a beating," Jagdish Khattar, the former managing director of Maruti Suzuki, told ET. Khattar, who is now an entrepreneur, is chairman of Carnation Auto, a contract manufacturer.State industry minister Partha Chatterjee declined comment. "Please do not ask me to say anything, because it is only chief minister Mamata Banerjee who has the authority to speak on AMRI-related issues," he said.Communal prejudice, or even the perception of it, is virtually unknown to Kolkata unlike other Indian mega cities such as Mumbai and Bengaluru where tension between communities has sometimes caused violence. In contrast, Bengalis have been welcoming of Marwaris and Gujaratis, who along with the British have built much of the city and employed locals in large numbers.Many of India's storied Marwari families such as the Birlas, Singhanias and Goenkas trace their roots to the former capital of the British Empire.A leading chartered accountant and a lawyer expressed puzzlement at the course of action pursued by the police as the law specified that only some directors and other officers in charge of day-to-day operations could be charged under criminal provisions in case of an accident.Not everyone agrees that members of a community are being targeted.An ET poll, which had a sample size of 20, revealed that opinions were divided. While 50% felt that members of the Marwari community were being victimised, an equal number said they did not feel this to be case. But most, even in the latter group, felt the mercurial chief minister understood very little of consequence, except politics and public pulse."There is no victimisation. All this business of targeting Marwaris is bull. Mamata responded to the public outcry during the AMRI fire in the only way she could think of - arrest the owners. She does not understand the Companies Act in all likelihood, and, therefore, she didn't know that the act was very clear about liability in such cases," said an industrialist.The chief minister's statement -"Terrorists are terrorists, murderers are murderers" - after the Ficci intervention has gone down particularly badly."We would certainly not like to be equated with murders and terrorists for an accident beyond my control. And if entrepreneurs are termed such for an accident in an enterprise created by them and needed by the state, who would like to set up a business enterprise here?" was the identical reaction of two young industrialists, one in jute and the other in mining and allied services.Ten members of the Marwari community, in businesses as diverse as financial management to fashion, met ET this week to discuss the post-AMRI situation. "Our great grandparents had brought industry to Bengal. Over generations, we have nurtured it, expanded and given employment to lakhs and we did not, like many else, run away from Bengal even in the worst of times. This state has become our home for generations. If we have made money, we have also lost money too. One tragic accident has overturned all the good work. We are now obliquely equated with terrorists and murderers. Unfortunate," a member of the group said.BK Syngal, former chairman and managing director of the erstwhile VSNL (now Tata Communications), who had orchestrated an investment of close to Rs 500 crore in West Bengal back in 1992, said the state needed to improve the investment climate after successive fiascos over land acquisition at Nandigram and Singur. Kolkata's subsequent emergence as a leading IT hub is credited to Syngal's initiative."We built the backbone of international connectivity infrastructure in West Bengal back in the early 90s as we felt safe, business-wise. Things like the AMRI fiasco strike at the very root of whatever positives that had emerged when a new government stepped into Writers Buildings six months ago," he said.An academic, though, felt the preponderance of members of one community among those arrested was simply because that community dominated business."I don't think this will affect either business or investor sentiment. If a particular community has been very active in various fields, especially education and healthcare, for the last 50-odd years, and if something happens, there's a high probability you'll find some of them involved, simply because there are so many of them in the field. It's not that the state government is singling them out. So, if this matter is handled properly, it will actually send out green signals," said Anindya Sen, economics professor at IIM-Calcutta