Legacy industries anchor NITI Aayog’s Bengal blueprint

Kolkata: NITI Aayog is working on a long-term economic and industrial blueprint for Bengal, identifying key growth sectors and structural reforms for the new state govt to prioritise. The think tank is expected to stress balanced regional industrialisation to reduce disparities between districts.The exercise is being driven in part by Ashok Lahiri, former Balurghat MLA and now NITI Aayog vice-chairman, who had earlier led the BJP's manifesto committee with a focus on reviving Bengal's traditional industries. That thinking — centred on jute, tea, leather, foundry, forging, engineering and small and medium industries — is expected to inform the blueprint.Key geographic focus areas are likely to include the Hooghly jute belt, Howrah's foundry and engineering ecosystem, the Durgapur-Asansol industrial corridor, Haldia and the petrochemical sector, and the Ashoknagar oil field.North Bengal is expected to receive dedicated attention, with emphasis on tea-based industries — including value addition and global branding for Darjeeling Tea — alongside tourism-linked enterprises, food processing and logistics infrastructure.The blueprint is also expected to recommend sector-specific industrial ecosystems — textile parks, engineering parks, MSME clusters, logistics parks, food processing parks and electronics manufacturing clusters — distributed across the state.A transparent land bank drawing on unused public land, closed PSU sites and dormant industrial units is being considered to enable faster project implementation through plug-and-play infrastructure.Port and logistics-based development is another focus area, covering deep-sea fishing infrastructure, fish processing, cold storage and export facilities, and coastal logistics.Agro-processing industries built around rice, potato, mango, fisheries, poultry and horticulture are also under consideration. Modernisation packages, export facilitation, branding support and technology upgradation for legacy industries are expected to feature as well.