Appeasement Agenda? Bengal Government Offers 'Entrepreneurship Loans' To Returnees From Nuh

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has announced ‘entrepreneurship loans’ of up to Rs five lakh to those who have fled Haryana’s Nuh in the wake of the recent violence there. 

The violence at Muslim-majority Nuh was sparked by attacks on Hindu religious processions (read this and this).

The violence led many Bengali Muslim migrants from Bengal who were engaged as househelps, construction workers, ragpickers and daily wage earners to return to Bengal. 

According to the Bengal government’s assessment, around 150 migrant workers and their families — all Muslims from Malda, Murshidabad, North and South Dinajpur and Birbhum districts — have returned to Bengal from Nuh. 

The Chief Minister announced Monday (21 August) that the state government will extend ‘entrepreneurship loans’ to help the returnees from Nuh to set up their own businesses in Bengal. 

Banerjee mentioned that this was a welfare and humanitarian gesture towards “our Muslim brothers and sisters”. She was addressing a conference of imams and muezzins (men who call out to Muslims for prayers from mosques) in Kolkata, Monday. 

Banerjee had sent a team headed by Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam to Nuh to prepare a ground report on the violence there. 

Islam spoke to leaders of the Muslim community in Nuh, which is notorious for its high crime rate and is said to be the den of criminals and gangsters, and reportedly told them that the Trinamool Congress would stand by the Muslim community at all times. 

Samirul Islam, who was nominated to the Rajya Sabha last month, is a college teacher and runs a civil society organisation. He submitted his ground report on Nuh to the Chief Minister last week. 

According to state officials, the loans would be offered under the West Bengal Bhabishyat Credit Card Scheme. Under this scheme, the state government provides 15 per cent guarantee of money and 85 per cent loan guarantee.

The loan is a soft and subsidised loan for small entrepreneurs and has a very low rate of interest. 

No Need To Go Out Of Bengal

The Chief Minister said that those who have returned from Nuh won’t have to go to Nuh, or any other state for that matter, to look for work. 

“They can set up their own businesses and earn a lot in Bengal itself,” said Banerjee. 

Earlier, too, Banerjee had said those who migrate out of Bengal in search of work will not have to do so anymore. 

When lakhs of migrants from Bengal had returned to the state during the Covid-induced pandemic, she had said that all of them would find work in the state. 

The state government had also set up a mechanism to register the migrants and help them get jobs in the state. But nothing came out of that because employment opportunities are severely limited in Bengal. 

Mamata Banerjee had also made a similar claim after the 2 June train accident in Odisha’s Balasore district that claimed 294 lives, many of them from Bengal. 

Most of the victims of that disaster were migrant labourers from Bengal going to other states in search of work. Banerjee had said at that time too that a huge number of employment opportunities are opening up in Bengal and people will no longer have to migrate out of the state. 

Banerjee cited the three economic corridors coming up in the state and the new coal mining project that she claimed will generate lakhs of jobs. 

“Stay back in Bengal and take advantage of the many opportunities opening up. No one needs to go out. Stay in Bengal and be safe and prosper,” said Banerjee. 

But the very fact that lakhs of young men and women go out of Bengal in search of jobs — both menial, semi-skilled and skilled, or white, blue or brown collar — negates the chief minister’s assertion. 

Loan To Returnees From Nuh

But getting back to the returnees from Nuh, Mamata Banerjee’s offer of loans to them is problematic for three reasons. 

One, the loan offer appears to have been made because the returnees from Nuh are all Muslims. Had those returnees been non-Muslims, would Mamata Banerjee been so generous with them?

Two, the citizenship of many Muslims who have fled Nuh is doubtful. There have been many allegations that many Muslims in Nuh are Rohingyas and illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. 

Even Haryana state officials have voiced such allegations, and the Haryana Police recently arrested 17 Rohingyas who had gone to Nuh via Bengal (also read this report on Rohingyas in Nuh). 

As such, all returnees from Nuh ought to be placed under the scanner and their documents and antecedents checked thoroughly before any sort of preferential treatment is extended to them. 

Three, the returnees from Nuh deserve no special treatment. None of them are victims of violence and have left Nuh on their own. It is quite certain that all of them will return to Nuh again simply because they will find no sources of sustenance in Bengal. 

Entrepreneurial loans are available to anyone who can convince lending institutions of a good business plan. Such loans should be extended strictly on merit. 

The Nuh returnees ought to have been told that if they want to start small businesses on their own, they can apply for loans through the proper channels and will have to meet the set criteria to get loans. 

Spending taxpayers’ money on appeasement policies is not good governance. It can be safely assumed that there are slim chances of the loans given to the returnees ever being repaid. 

The loans, then, will turn into bad loans that will have to be written off. 

But all this appears to matter little to Mamata Banerjee who always places her narrow political interests above those of the state exchequer.