Keenly aware that she may soon have to bear the mantle of West Bengal

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from Writers’ Building, Mamata Banerjee may have just begun to correct her image as someone virulently inimical to industry.

She is credited with thwarting an indefinite strike by some 250 drivers of an outsourced fleet that works for Wipro at its facility in Kolkata’s infotech hub, Sector V of Salt Lake. The drivers are organised under a trade union led by Trinamul’s Madan Mitra. But it is not affiliated to the party.

Their action, including sit-ins outside the facility, was to coincide with another 72-hour general strike of transporters in West Bengal, called by another Trinamul- led and 13 other unions, that was to begin on August 10.

It is already widely known that Banerjee did not support the general transport strike and asked her trade union leaders to desist. What is claimed now is that she herself stepped in to also stop the strike at Wipro.

Had the strike taken place, it would have been the IT hub’s first called from within, though in the past the many facilities there have had to suffer general bandhs called by both Trinamul and the leftists.

A mail, written by Nasscom’s regional manager in Kolkata, Suparno Moitra, to PwC executive director Ambarish Dasgupta on how Banerjee stopped the strike is now doing the rounds of the web.

Dasgupta, who is also the Nasscom regional council chief, forwarded it to all IT people around the country who matter, just to make sure that the good word spreads about the leader who single-handedly forced the Nano’s flight from West Bengal, scuttled the planned chemical hub in Nandigram and stilled the Jindals in moving on a steel project in Salboni.

It is not clear whether Moitra chronicled Banerjee’s do-good act and sent the mail along in his personal capacity or was propagating his organisation’s standpoint.

Nevertheless, the mail claims the Trinamul leadership “worked hand in hand between August 9 and 12 almost 24x7” to avert the strike. Banerjee is claimed to have sent a strong message that, in the words of Moitra, “she would not support disruptive elements, who stand in the way of development and (specially) in IT-BPO industry, the sector being the pride of Bengal”.

As opposed to Nandigram where mayhem and murder accompanied the nixing of the chemical hub, and at Singur where threatened violence stopped the Nano in its tracks, at Wipro “not a single incident of violence by the drivers, not a baton raised by the police to retaliate, not a single job lost” was recorded, said the effusive mail. “This was only possible through restraint and continuous dialogue,” it added.

If that is true – we have only the Nasscom official’s and a Trinamul functionary’s words in support – then Banerjee has indeed undergone an amazing change of heart. Never before has she shown any interest in dialogue in resolving any of West Bengal’s industralisation issues. In fact, in the battle over the Nano plant, she withdrew from dialogue sponsored by the then governor, Gopalkrishna Gandhi.

Nasscom’s Moitra told Financial Chronicle, “There are actually winds of change. We were overwhelmed by the role played by the Trinamul leadership. I feel delighted that a major crisis could be averted in Wipro, thus keeping Kolkata’s head high.”

The leader of the opposition in the assembly and Trinamul spokesman, Partha Chattopadhyay, said, “This only reflects our party’s development orientation and commitment to do away with impediments to economic and industrial growth.”

Claiming a bit of the credit himself, he said he first got a call from Nasscom on August 9 (the day before the strike was the begin) when I was returning to Kolkata after Banerjee’s rally at Lalgarh. “Didi’s instruction came from there itself,” he said, implying that he was the one to set in motion the subsequent process of revoking the strike call.

Mitra, the party man who started it all by being behind the drivers’ strike call, is believed to have at Banerjee’s instance told the agitators that he would step down as their president and dissolve the union if the strike was not called off. The party also offered an apology to Wipro over the strike that did not ultimately happen.

Financial Chronicle could not get a word out of Wipro about Banerjee’s good deed.

But it all goes to show that after supping with the devil (that is, the Left front in Banerjee’s eyes), industry feels compelled to keep her in good humour, now that her ascent to power in the state seems more than likely. Equally, Banerjee feels as direly the need for an image whitewash, aware that while in Writers Building she will face the same issues of industrialisation as the Left so frustratingly has.