Speaking at the recently concluded India Today Conclave on "India Tomorrow: Perception and Reality." VS Naipaul passed judgment that "Bengal was the economic and intellectual leader of India till it discovered Marxism. It discovered Marxism and like poor Russia in 1917, committed suicide. The economic lead of Bengal has vanished and so has the cultural lead." (See The Hindu of February 26). While cultural development cannot be quantified, economic growth can be and the evidence before us suggests that Sir Vidia's opinion takes more than just poetic license with the facts. The facts are that after 1993-94 West Bengal has the second highest growth rate with 7.2% with only Karnataka (8.1%) ahead of it. It would also seem that the Marxist rate of growth has been better than the Hindu rate of growth since India only grew at 6.3% during this period?
Even in terms of growth of per capita income West Bengal has fared much better than all other states during the post reforms era. It achieved an average growth of 5.5% after 1993-94 as opposed to the nationwide growth of 4.3%. This is even more revealing when you consider that during this period West Bengal was also racking up an average annual population growth of 1.78% between 1991-2001, which is much higher than the rate of the high achievers like Tamil Nadu (1.11%). If one were to consider the population growth since 1981, West Bengal grew at 2.34%, which is uncomfortably close to the national average of 2.51%. Undoubtedly the seem
