Most people wouldn't associate Lenin with India's entrepreneurial information technology boom.
But in communist-ruled West Bengal state, IT and socialism make a perfect mix, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattarcharjee told Reuters. A picture of Lenin peered from the wall behind the soft-spoken Bhattacharjee.
"If you can do business in China, you can surely do it here," he said at his communist party headquarters in a drab Soviet-style building in the heart of Calcutta, a teeming city of 14 million.
Calcutta, better known for its urban squalor and Mother Teresa's good works, has appeared on India's IT radar screen, long dominated by the technology hubs Bangalore and Hyderabad in the country's south.
Infotech firms like India's third largest software services exporter Wipro Ltd and software firm Satyam Computer Services are flocking to Calcutta, lured by steady power supplies, educated workers, low staff turnover and cheaper living costs compared with Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Those already present, such as India's top software services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and IBM which already has more than 1,000 employees in the city -- are expanding. Other firms in the city are Cognisant Technologies Solutions Corp and Computer Associates.
"This city has all root requirements for IT: good communications, good power supply, intellectual talent, low attrition rates and, in recent years, a responsive government," said TSC vice-president Ajoyendra Mukherjee, adding his firm will double its staff of 2,400 in two years.
The city, also India's cultural hub, is home to some of the nation's best colleges, English-language schools and engineering and science institutes, giving it an edge in software development for financial services, engineering design and animation.
"Calcutta is already India's IQ capital. It has the right mix of creative people with top-class educational institutes which is needed for the IT industry," Nazeeb Arif, secretary-general of the Indian Chamber of Commerce said.
Almost all IT firms in West Bengal are concentrated in and around Calcutta and their numbers are rising. Three months ago, American International Group set up a software development centre in the city.
Wipro plans to hire a 1,000 people for its software and call centre in tech suburb of Salt Lake that starts operations this year and aims to have more than 5,000 employees by 2006.
But with unemployment running at over 14 percent in a population of 80 million in West Bengal, IT remains just an acronym for many Calcuttans where thousands of poor jostle in front of charity kitchens and free health clinics everyday.
"What is IT? What are computers? I am just thinking of filling my stomach," 62-year-old Krishna Bahadur said as he prepared his "bed" of jute and plastic bags on a spit-marked pavement, home as long as the police turn a blind eye.
Tens of thousands are homeless and more than 1.7 million people live in slums that contrast with the swanky malls, coffee bars, five-star hotels, and designer shops springing up.
The IT surge, which has seen at least 185 software and back-office firms employing more than 16,000 people materialise over the last eight years, is partly due to West Bengal's communist rulers.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, the left's pro-rural bias and mollycoddling of belligerent unions had led to a flight of capital, making a decrepit Calcutta a "no-go-zone" for many firms. Indeed, the former capital of British India came to symbolise militant unionism, urban decay and strikes.
But in 1996, five years after India embraced economic reforms, West Bengal's left made its truce with private capital and foreign firms and began to rein in its infamous unions. Keen to protect IT from the unions, West Bengal amended laws in 2002 to declare IT as an essential service and outlaw strikes. "Information technology is a huge opportunity for Calcutta and we have to grab it," Gyan Dutt Gautama, the top bureaucrat of West Bengal's IT department, said from his office in a new high-rise commercial complex.
It's still early days. In the year ended March 2003, the state contributed just 3.2 percent of India's total IT sector exports of $9.5 billion. By comparison, Bangalore logged software services exports of $3.9 billion in the year ended March 2004, while Hyderabad's IT exports are four times that of Calcutta.
"West Bengal aims to provide at least 15 percent of country's total IT revenue by 2010," Gautama said. India's exports of software and back-office services are forecast to touch $50 billion by 2008.
The city's existing tech park is already full, compelling the government to race to complete two more to meet demand from IT and back-office outsourcing firms.
"Give us five years and Calcutta will be at the forefront of India's IT industry," said 60-year-old Bhattacharjee.