However, what is disconcerting is the total lack of ethics and the single-minded intent of spreading disinformation against the Front Government. Not that this is anything new; India's longest-serving chief minister, Jyoti Basu, has time and again said that that the Press in Bengal has never been up to much good and that his government has had to fight this from the first day it assumed office in June 1977. Despite the support of the people which has seen the Government being voted back to power again and again, the Press has remained hostile simply because the Front has not now-towed to the whims and pleasures of the monopoly big business and has taken upon itself to keep the development of the state on the top of its list of priorities.

The facts of this particular case is as straight as is it simple. The state is hosting a seminar, "Destination Bengal'' on January17-18, 1999 at Raichak near Calcutta.The seminar is expected to be a watershed in the industrial development of the state and the FICC, the apex body of trade and commerce, has already given its assent for participation. However, the only confusion if at all, there was any, in the first place_ rose from the fact that the FICCI working committee meeting is to be held on January 7-8 in Calcutta, the original dates for the proposed seminar. It was this overlapping which had triggered the Telegraph story, but with a passion which necessarily overlooks the basic need for finding out the truth before putting pen to paper. The daily went ahead and published what it wanted to. Facts are redundant in such cases.

FICCI president Sudhir Jalan has since said that his organisation will fully cooperate and participate in the Raichak seminar and the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation chairman Somnath Chatterjee has revealed that at least 50 top business houses of the country, not forgetting some international giants like Mitsubishi of Japan, will be present and that the seminar is expected to open up greater possibilities for the industrial resurgence of Bengal, which is already in full swing.