Bengalis can get back to entrepreneurship through hard work: Tathagata Roy

Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy on Sunday said that the only way Bengalis can get back to entrepreneurship is hard work and steadfastness while blaming the Leftists for the industry in West Bengal going off the track. He said that the present situation, wherein people are being encouraged to fry chops, etc in the name of entrepreneurship, is bad and will be worse in the near future.

Speaking at a webinar on Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray's thoughts and ideas to rebuild Atmanirbhar Bengal, Roy said: "as was said by the Acharya, the only way forward for Bengalis in entrepreneurship is hard work and steadfastness in their goal." He said that the chemicals industry was set up in eastern India first, but it shifted to the western states. The Meghalaya governor blamed the Leftists and their militant trade unionism for the flight of industries from Bengal.

"The Leftists taught the people that owners are capitalists and were thus evil and workers were the oppressed lot," he said.

"West Bengal, which was at the forefront of industrialisation, is now in the 14th or 15th position in the country," he said.

Speaking at the webinar, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta said that Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray was not only a scientist or an educationist, but was an inspiration for entrepreneurship. Regarded as the father of chemical science in India, Ray had founded the country's first pharmaceutical company Bengal Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals in 1901. Dasgupta said that a belief was created by the colonial mind that scientific mind is an antagonism of sanatan dharma and that the two have no relation with each other.

"But Acharya Ray proved that there was no incongruity between the two; on the one side was his scientific temper and on the other hand was the Indian tradition," he said.

He said that Ray had attempted to bring back the zeal of entrepreneurship among the Bengalis from being job-seekers, a change that had occurred among them during the British Raj.

"During the Left rule, an idea was propagated among the Bengalis that capitalism is evil," Dasgupta said.

He said that Bengalis hold important executive positions in many organisations, but the desired zeal has not been seen in entrepreneurship. Jishnu Basu, a scientist at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, said that Ray had propagated the idea of atmanirbharta (self-dependence). He said that Acharya Ray not only created Bengal Chemicals and other enterprises, but also taught a set of brilliant students who took part in shaping the future of the country. Patriotism was imbibed in his students by Ray for creating an Amtanirbhar Bharat, Basu said.