Kolkata

“When I was born in the early seventies, Kolkata was the most important economic hub in India. It was one of the most important industrial hubs in Asia.”

“Chief minister Jyoti Basu and the communists basically destroyed not just the economy of Kolkata and West Bengal, but, you know, the entire intellectual cultural sphere to a point that Kolkata has never recovered from that shock.”

“It is also the case that Kolkata has never produced again, somebody of the caliber of Satyajit Ray, or Ravidnath Tagore, or Swami Vivekanand, or Netaji Subhash Bose, or Sri Aurobindo, or Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, or any number of other names I can give yo…”

“A large part of it was domestic policies of the state. There was a demonization of entrepreneurship, business, and risk taking. And not surprisingly through the seventies, eighties and nineties business systematically left Kolkata so much so that it is not a s…”

“Kolkata should have been that growth zone. Anchor of the East. So bringing back Kolkata is not just about, ah, reviving West Bengal. It is an anchor of the East, because when it gets going, it, it's just overwhelmingly bigger than Bhuvaneshwar or Ranchi or Goh…”