For the last two days, Mamata has been giving Japanese ministers and diplomats priority in appointments and has been busy in closeted in meetings with the foreign diplomats.
Railway minister Mamata Banerjee is anxious to shed her anti-industry image, albeit, on her terms. For the last two days, Mamata has been giving Japanese ministers and diplomats priority in appointments and has been busy in closeted in meetings with the foreign diplomats.
The reason is clear. She wants to put the proposed eastern freight corridor between Ludhiana and Kolkata via Dankuni on the fast track. Since the Japanese are funding the western freight corridor through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica), Mamata is lobbying them for funds.
Mamata met Japanese foreign minister Hiroyuki Ishige on Tuesday and on Wednesday she had a meeting with Hideaki Domichi, the Japanese envoy to India.
The eastern freight corridor is not the most viable project of the railways; at least, not as viable as the western corridor is. This is because the eastern freight corridor stretch has faced difficulties in terms of land acquisition and feasibility of commercial hubs along the way.
“We have an in-principle approval for Rs20,000 crore from Jica for the western corridor and are negotiating another Rs12,500 crore for the eastern corridor. We will manage the rest,” a railway official said.
Officials have already approached a few agencies for soft loans. “For the eastern corridor, a loan of Rs10,000 crore is being sought from the World Bank, besides Rs2,500 crore loan from the Asian Development Bank,” an official said.
However, what can burst Mamata’s bubble is the fact that permits and red tapism have delayed the western corridor project to a point where the Japanese government told prime minister Manmohan Singh on his trip to Japan last year that they wanted some speed in the project.
Mamata has set herself a scorching pace and deadline till 2011, since the assembly elections will be held in West Bengal in that year and she will have to show her alternative development vision to the people. “We want to prove we do not need to cheat farmers to bring development and industrialisation,” an aide said.
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