The Devil’s Deal? An Ethnographic Insight from A Bengal Village

Effective public support for local-economic development can be, broadly, categorized under two approaches: first, the universalist approach and second, the strategic approach. The first has a burden-relieving character, the relief being provided by the burden-reducing exemptions and subsidies. The returns for such interventions are immediate, automatic and conspicuous. They are universalist and distributive in the sense that they are directly available to each firm as an individual unit. The second has a transformative character. Such an approach strategically identifies bottlenecks and tries to remove them in order to improve efficiency, productivity and marketing. The idea is holistic i.e. aiming to improve the lot of the sector as a whole. Before extending support, Governments hinging on this approach identifies the exact problem and the exact unit requiring attention is taken up. Thus, only those firms most capable and most interested in upgrading their production will be benefited directly. This strategic and sector specific support does not automatically benefit all firms. Also, the benefits will show in the long run rather than in the short run, and many firms will feel them only indirectly. The region will benefit as a whole, though, but notwithstanding all this, yields in terms of electoral dividends may not be immediate, and thus this becomes a serious disincentive for politicians to espouse the latter approach.

These SF were notorious for not paying taxes, a national news magazine reported - “taxes not paid here…this would not even exist if firm owners had to pay taxes.” And the State’s Treasury Department went on record saying that the taxes collected here did not even represent one percent of their potential. Paradoxical as it may sound, the government stands committed to patronizing the SF cluster, and in this it really has no choice. But such support by the Government by making use of political institutions and alliances in favour of the devil’s deal makes it extremely difficult to generate political support for large-scale strategic public interventions.

Although some businessmen/traders (men) pursued this as secondary business, it was conspicuously evident in case of women. It could thrive owing to entrenched practice of dowry and increasing penetration of consumerism in this urbanized village.

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