Bengal Global Business Summit

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is betting big on the two-day Bengal Global Business Summit that gets underway at Salt Lake stadium on Wednesday morning. With many corporate heavyweights confirming attendance, this big-ticket event is Bengal's best bet to shake off its old ghosts and showcase itself as an attractive investment destination.
While Godrej Group chairman Adi Godrej and Mahindra Group CMD Anand Mahindra will add weight to the summit, the presence of Union ministers Arun Jaitley and Nitin Gadkari will add a dash of political spice.
The inaugural session promises to be an interesting one, given that Mamata will share the dais with Union finance minister Jaitley, who is likely to mention the new land acquisition ordinance that makes it easier for industry to acquire land.Mamata, who rode to power on an anti-acquisition wave, opposes the ordinance strongly and industry circles are agog with speculation on how Mamata would react to Jaitley's probable tom-toming of the “industry-friendly measure“.
The Jaitley-Mamata chemistry will be interesting to watch in deeply polarized and poll-bound Bengal where BJP has sprung up as a surprise challenger to Trinamool hegemony . The CM realizes that she desperately needs some positives to take to the masses and is pulling all stops to attract investment and thereby create jobs.
Mamata will speak three times at the summit -first to deliver the welcome address, then a session later in the afternoon and the valedictory address on Thursday afternoon. State government officials say a host of industry bigwigs -including Adi Godrej, Anand Mahindra, ITC chairman Y C Deveshwar, Yes Bank chairman Rana Kapoor, N Hiranandani of Hinranandani Group, Edelweiss Group chairman R Shah, Great Eastern Energy chairman Y K Modi and The Lalit Group chief Jyotsna Suri -are likely to attend the summit. However, top draws like Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani and Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry have not confirmed their participation as yet.
The inaugural session will include an address by Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra and the screening of a short film made by West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation that will showcase Bengal's investment potential. The inauguration will be followed by a session where Indian business leaders will speak on their expectations from the Bengal government and their experience of doing business in this state. One session in the afternoon will be addressed by Union road transport minis ter Nitin Gadkari and this will be followed by another where global business leaders like Mitsubishi Chemicals global CEO H Ishizuka, UK-India Business Council chair Patricia Hewitt, top executives of Samsung Electronics of Korea and Changi Airports of Singapore and Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (Kotra) director F H Kim will talk about doing business here.
Mamata will deliver a 20-minute address after this. The sessions will be interspersed with business-to-business and government-to-business interactions and a lot of networking between industrialists, senior government officials and corporate bigwigs, say officials.
The second day of the Summit will have parallel breakaway business sessions, presentation of the outcomes of these sessions, a special conclave of medium, small and micro enterprises (MSMEs), to be followed by the much awaited signing of business agreements and announcements in the presence of the chief minister. It is this session on which all eyes would be focused and Mamata hopes some big-ticket investments would be announced here. She will then deliver the closing address.
That Mamata has pulled all stops for the summit is evident from her personal efforts to ensure its success. After fine tuning the sessions and calling up industrialists personally to invite them, she visited the venue on Tuesday evening to oversee the arrangements and give last minute instructions.