India, April 19 -- It is unfortunate that those who unthinkingly make the argument that big business cannot unfold in Bengal have never heard of the economic dreams of men like Dwarkanath Tagore, Ramdulal Dey, Mutty Lall Seal, Raja Rajakrishna Deb and others from 19th and 20th centuries, a time when the idea that the industrial revolution would unfold on the banks of the Hooghly seemed not only probable, but imminent.

But since then, a comfortable fatalism has settled over discussions of West Bengal's economic future. The argument runs roughly as follows: land is too fragmented, labour too militant, and politics too chaotic for serious industry to ever take root again. This fatalism is historically illiterate and economically lazy. Benga...