Thaindian News

Kolkata, July 3 (IANS) Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee’s budget proposal for setting up a railway coach factory at Kanchrapara in West Bengal’s North 24-Parganas district was welcomed by economists and locals who felt the project, if implemented, would generate employment and give a boost to the state’s industrial sector.
“There will be employment growth. Ancillary industries will come up and a supply chain will be created,” economist and professor at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) Abhirup Sarkar told IANS.

Banerjee has announced that the state-of-the-art coach factory would be set up in West Bengal’s Kanchrapara-Halisahar railway complex and manufacture 500 coaches annually in a joint venture or private-public partnership model.

Sarkar said the coach factory - combined with the proposed 1,000 MW captive power plant in Purulia district’s Adra and the railway ministry’s decision to take over the wagon units of Burn Standard from the heavy industries department would help in boosting the state’s infrastructure sector.

Economist Dipankar Dasgupta, a former professor at the ISI in Delhi and Baranagar, said the coach factory will be a boon for the private sector in this time of recession.

“But the minister has to first get the private sector partner and also generate the funds for the project. If she can, then it will be a marvellous thing for the private sector, which is in a bad condition because of the slowdown,” said Dasgupta, who has taught in noted universities in Japan and Canada.

There will be a lot of employment for the first one or two years during the construction phase itself, which will also be beneficial to industrial sectors like cement, iron and steel and other raw materials, he said.

“Then, once it begins operations, machineries sector will also gain. So in the short term, the project will have a great impact. However, whether the factory can be sustained or not, that’s a long term question, and only time can say,” he said.

On the power plant, Dasgupta said it will help in the development of the backward area.

Prominent Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Tarit Topdar welcomed the setting up of the factory.

Topdar was an MP for 20 years from the Barrackpore constituency, which covers Kanchrapara, but lost in the recent elections.

“It’s a good first step. The intention is good,” he told IANS, but added that people will monitor the progress of the factory.

He also claimed that Banerjee had merely acted on his suggestions. “I had given her the proposal for the rail coach factory during her first stint as the railway minister in the NDA government in 2000. She could not do it then. Now she has included it in the budget,” he added.