Teach them young

Britain is setting a new record every month but there are no reasons to cheer. Many more than a million people have been made jobless in the three months ending October. This despite all the tall talk of David Cameron and George Osborne that the British economy is gradually getting to terms with the new economic reality. What is more worrying is the continuous rise in youth employment, which now has reached a new height of 1.027 million.

The figures on rising unemployment (and also rising youth unemployment) were announced on the day when a BBC Radio 4 poll shows that parents in Britain are losing control of how their children behave. The survey also suggested that more than three-fourth of people interviewed think the way parents raise their children in Britain has deteriorated in the past decade.

Both the findings are seriously worrying for Britain but do we have reasons to equate them?

There is a structural side to the woes Britain is facing economically. The global economic balance has now significantly shifted towards Asia with the rise of  China and India. Technological changes have made sure that the chain of production continues uninterrupted. Abundance of labour force in China and India have transformed these two countries into global production houses. The huge internal markets have not only stretched the innovative and productive capabilities of the domestic industries and service providers there but also lured foreign companies. Anxious parents of school going students are now abandoning Latin and German for Mandarin and Hindi. 


The number of products and services that Britain can now sell to the outer world are very limited. Even its internal market is dominated by cheap Chinese, Indian, Malaysian and Indonesian  products. Large number of immigrants and a significant floating population are also draining out a  proportion of  British financial wealth outside its national territory. Dadabhai Naoroji had attributed India’s poverty to the drain of resources by the British. Had he been alive today, he probably would have been very happy to see some form of a reverse flow.

Britain has sacrificed its manufacturing heartland, citing the rise of  The City as the global financial capital. The so called British supremacy of the financial world is also not without risk and challenges. The neglect of the real economy in favour of  financialisation has created a pool of  workforce who have nothing to offer nationally and are also unable to compete globally. This is probably where Radio 4’s findings call for serious introspection.

"Three-fourth of the parents surveyed admit they have no control over their children’s behaviour and 65 per cent of the respondents blame the teenage gang culture on poor parenting". My hunch is that a survey on primary and secondary school teachers would have produced nearly similar results. Britain has chosen libertarianism overlooking the importance of discipline in individual life.

Given the decline of British manufacturing and the tumbling of the British financial empire, it seems Britain can now rely only on the knowledge economy  (using knowledge as an economic good). Even today  thousands of  foreign students make a beeline  for British universities, which are still considered to be of global standard. But for the knowledge economy to deliver in a sustained way, Britain needs to look internally and assess the standard of primary and secondary education that is on offer as compared to other leading countries of the world. Capacity building is the key to success of the knowledge economy in the long run, and this might take care of some of the economic woes Britain faces today.

To brave the current social storm though, a meaningful engagement with the youth is absolutely necessary.   This can take place by inculcating a sense of belonging among the disenchanted youth and impressing upon them, right from their childhood days, the virtues of  modern life and the challenges that lie ahead. 


A way out of the social mess coupled with the radical reform of elementary education system (leading to capacity building in the knowledge sector) could play an effective role in halting the current downturn of Britain. 


All comments are personal and have no bearing on others. 

Care without compassion

I am still finding it hard to reconcile with the fact that seriously sick people were virtually thrown to the throes of death at the very place where they had gone to revive their lives. Medical negligence is not uncommon in India and often people are forced to take it as part of life, yet what happened at the Advanced Medical Research Institute (AMRI) in South Kolkata is very difficult to live with.

About ten years ago, during a visit to Kolkata, I had to see a well known ENT specialist as I was suffering from serious sinusitis symptoms. I do not want to name the doctor, who was embroiled in a much publicised case of medical negligence, as he is no more. He suggested some tests, including an MRI scan, and kept insisting that I get them done from the now infamous AMRI hospital.

I was too ignorant then to understand the so called doctor-corporate nexus. However, the enlightenment came soon on my first visit to the AMRI on a December morning. Right from the reception desk I was swamped by a team of salesmen, who wanted to sell all sorts of policies and services. As I tried to avoid them saying that I lived abroad, they got even more interested in me, capitalising on emotional issues, like what would happen to my ageing parents when I was away to the difficulties of an outsider in finding a reliable doctor for proper treatment.Finally, I had to tell them, quite rudely, that I lived in Kolkata for three decades and the city where I belong to is no alien to me. 

Recently, one of my relatives was diagnosed with cancer and had to be admitted to the AMRI. Those who get their patients admitted to hospitals like the AMRI know fully well the financial burden they have to undertake, but what you get as a bonus is the inhuman behaviour meted out both by the staff and the doctors. The attending staff had no clue when my relative passed away in the early hours of a day in mid October and didn't even have the courtesy of informing my sister in law, who was waiting downstairs. Moreover, they charged Rs 1200 just for releasing the body. 

Mine are no exception. The out pour of public anger over the past couple of days in media outlets, social networking sites and even in interpersonal conversations are testimony to the fact  that many others have had similar experiences in some of the private hospitals in Kolkata and elsewhere. Despite such anguish we were unable to do anything that would put a check on the heartless actions of the wily traders of the health business. 

My friend Parthapratim Mandal has raised a very pertinent question. Partha asks, when so many private hospitals have come up in Kolkata over the past few years, why not a single government hospital was built. Not that we get any better service at government hospitals, but it seems that the entire health business is leased out to the private sector.

Whenever there is any incident like the one that took place at AMRI recently, we start talking idealism. The media tend to capture the moment, overlooking the systemic problems. And there are people who find morbid pleasure in getting embroiled in blame game along party lines. After a while, as the dust settles down we tend to leave the personal tragedies with those who suffered and life moves one.

People forget to  ask some of the vital questions like: why the poor and middle class people are forced to go to private hospitals like the AMRI even at the cost of selling their assets, why the salesmanship dominates over compassion in the health sector and why the doctors prescribe the same tests over and over again as patients move from one medical unit to another. These are only a few that comes to my mind now. There must be plenty more unanswered questions to deal with.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.  

Left lacks political imagination

Ever since the decline of the Left in West Bengal was evident in public eye, I have tried to reason it as a 'crisis of hegemony', 'failure in governance', compromise with the inherent left ideology and embracing neo-liberalism to match up with the inter-state competition following economic liberalisation. Following my recent interface with 'time' as a historical entity, I am now tempted to revisit my arguments about the decline of the Left after being in power for over three decades. This, however, presupposes the argument that I do not consider the recent trouncing of the CPI-M as an after effect of anti-incumbency. Had it been so it could have had happened after 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 years and not at this moment in history when the mainstream left ideology is facing a global crisis.

Before making the case using time as a historical entity, let me enumerate my thinking so far about the decline of the Left in West Bengal, which has seen electoral manifestation since the Panchayat (local government) elections in 2008.

My understanding is that the assumption of power by the Left in West Bengal was solely a political project and the leaders barely had any economic or developmental objective in mind. This was evident through the various measures taken by the CPI-M, the dominant partner of the Left Front and also by the Jyoti Basu-led government. This includes land reform - providing land rights to the tillers like the small and marginal farmers and sharecroppers, basic improvement in minor irrigation, enhancing the salaries of the teachers in government schools and other employees in the state sector without ensuring that they are held to account etc. These measures in a way created a sense of belonging among the poor and the lower middle class Bengalees in favour of the government, without outlining the broad economic and developmental policies of the Left Front.

They also created an internal chain of support in favour of the CPI-M, which later gave way to the formation of a beneficiary class; in line with the patron-client relationship, which helped the Left to set up an internal mechanism to retain power. This patron-client relationship later turned into party-backed promoters in the urban and semi-urban areas and non-farm actors - like the primary school teachers, owners of rice mills, distributors of seeds and fertilisers etc. - in the rural areas.

Land reform on the other hand ensured a strong political support base for the Left in rural Bengal but the fragmentation of land created impediments for capital formation which was so essential for industrialisation. I have a suspicion that the Left leadership never had industrialisation in mind when they assumed power in 1977 and this only speaks of their failings in political imagination and also about their commitment to long term economic development in the state.

Lack of industries created a population of jobless and this led to draining out of talents to other states within India and also abroad, and West Bengal at one stage assumed a moribund identity, although the Left leadership would immediately denounce it. However, following economic liberalisation in India, globalisation of production chains and technological development, the population in West Bengal, especially the youth, were exposed to the fascinating changes that have been taking place both within India (in other states) and also abroad.

To cope with these challenges and that of inter-state competition to attract capital and also to cover up for years of non-performance, the Left leadership hurriedly tried to deliver some results. This in a way resulted in the Left embracing Neo-liberalism as a dominant economic doctrine, despite their ideological opposition to it. This initially created confusion within the traditional support base of the Left but the leadership mistook their 'hegemony' as a way of negotiating such a problem without proper debates within the party and the state. This eventually led to resistance and conflicts finally resulting in the Left being booted out of power.

The sequences of events described so far shows that the left leadership were manipulative in using various social elements to their political advantage, but were not imaginative enough to bring about desired socio-economic development in the state. The rhetoric of the leaders like Jyoti Basu, claiming West Bengal to be the best in the country in terms of agricultural productivity are not backed up by sufficient empirical evidence.

The dearth of political imagination of the Left leaders was also evident in their lack of understanding the difference between homogeneous and heterogeneous time. Although homogeneous time is utopian, yet capital and market have a tendency to negotiate with homogeneity rather than dealing with heterogeneity, which is more realistic. (This could be one of the reasons behind our fetish with growth.)

Capitalistic principles would possibly see growth and industrialisation as possibilities of economic improvement but constituents of heterogeneous time could very well disagree. The population within heterogeneous time might still prefer the traditional agrarian way of life over industrialisation. The broad identity of the population, which got disenchanted with the drive for industrialisation by the Left Front government, bears testimony to such an argument.

The Left being a political entity of grass root connection has failed to identify this element of heterogeneous time. The reasons for such failure could be lack of political imagination. Although they claim to portray a socio-economic and political thinking which is alternative to the mainstream discourse of capitalism, yet the events in West Bengal show that the thinking of the Left is heavily influenced by the way capitalism functions within utopian homogeneity.   

*I owe my thinking on using time as a framework of analysis to Partha Chatterjee of the Centre for the Studies in Social Sciences, especially his book 'The Politics of the Governed.' 

All comments are personal.

Learn the hard way

The United Kingdom government is planning to limit the use calculators in primary schools to encourage children develop skills in basic maths. This comes a year after the school league table produced by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranked the United Kingdom 28th for maths skills across the developed world. Too much dependence on the gadget has created a generation of children who are unable to do basic maths using reliable written methods of addition, subtraction, times tables etc. Now the government wants to correct the mistakes of the past by introducing time tested methods of arithmetic.

It is not only in maths that average students in the UK fare poorly, I have hardly seen any person who has been educated in the UK schools with reasonably good and legible handwriting. A recent study has also highlighted the pathetic literacy standard of children leaving primary schools in London. 

I am not an expert, but my apprehension is that there is a serious structural problem in the school education system in this country.

The experience of dealing with my daughter over the past three years has shown that the curriculum relied more on packaging rather than the content and there is always a tendency among the teaching community, with due respect to them and their hard work, to be 'politically correct'. By being 'politically correct', I mean that teachers shy away from candidly highlighting the shortcomings of the students and delve more on some generalised observation. The reasons could be the fear of offending the parents, as is the predominant culture among the wily politicians now not to antagonise anybody, or may be the thought that any such blunt yet honest comment would be construed as a failure of the teachers themselves. After all, many things in Britain are now measured by the fulfilment of certain set targets. 

At the end of every term, the parents get a chance to have a 15-minute audience with the class teacher. In every meeting that we have attended so far, the teachers have tried to impress upon us how good our daughter was (and this is pretty much the experience with most of the parents of school going children we know of). Such has been the experience, that now at the beginning of every meeting we tell the teacher that we want to hear about her drawbacks so that we could work around those issues.

I'm not denying that encouragement and praise are necessary for a child's physical, psychological and intellectual development, but just for the sake of being 'politically correct' the teachers should not refrain from calling a spade a spade.

I still remember how my late grandfather ensured that I wrote a page everyday in English and Bengali to improve my handwriting, which in the first few years was pathetic to say the least. Now I realise what an asset a good handwriting is. I do not support regimentation as a way of life and am all for attitudinal choice and freedom of thoughts, yet the importance of a degree of discipline cannot be denied in the formative years.

Lack of discipline has produced a generation in the UK, who is totally insensitive to the virtues of modern life. Britain's obsession with unqualified freedom, without any compulsion of sharing responsibility has created citizens who are wrapped in cotton wool by the state but have no stake in the well being of the country. Till recently, it was profitable to receive benefits rather than going for jobs.

Those who abuse the system of social security in Britain or circumvent rules to lead a lazy life are probably oblivion of the hardship that ordinary Britons have undergone during the post-war period. 

Aspiration for a better life and commitment for the well being of the society are something which Britain needs today. The primary school teachers have a lot to offer on that front. The success, however, depends on the support the teaching community gets from the government in particular and the society in general in  mentoring young minds, rather than meeting 'faceless numerical targets' to serve certain 'political purposes'.  

All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.

Greed is instinctive

Those were the turbulent times. Soviet Union, which was thought to be epitomising an alternative to capitalism was crumbling. Mikhail Gorbachev, who many think brought in a sense of freedom in the country, was held captive, as a maverick in Boris Yeltsin rose to assume power. The iron curtain disappeared and the fragility of the Soviet land was exposed to a wider world.

Academic discourses were galore; explaining the possible reasons behind the demise of what was a dreamland to many. Dr Suman K Mukherjee, who taught us Economics at the St Xavier's College, in Kolkata, had a very simple explanation to the stream of events that overtook the whole world. "Capitalism survives as it is the natural extension of human behaviour", said Dr Mukherjee in a prophetic way during one of his lectures.

This statement was probably the most effective lesson I had on economics and whenever I think about the happenings around me, I keep that in mind. Capitalism, despite all its odds, has survived. It has adapted itself with the changing time and capital still continues to be the dominant determinant of global production and profitability.

If capitalism is the natural extension of human behaviour so are greed and a desire to accumulate wealth. Wealth accumulation can take place in various ways and for different reasons but the ultimate objective is profit, to ensure comfortable and better lives for those who matter - it could be self or near and dear ones - whatever form they might envisage.

Any discussion or discourse on the crisis of capitalism or any societal problem often points a finger towards greed, as if it was the root cause. I think it is over simplifying the complexities that modern life holds. Greed and favouritism are nothing new in the historical genealogy of society.

The desire to see her son Bharata on the throne of Ayodhya prompted Kaikeyi to blackmail Dasaratha and send Rama to the forest for 14 years.

It was the greed for power which prompted Duryodhana to play all the tricks in the world to keep the Pandavas away from the throne. There are many such examples all around the world to show that greed is very instinctive to most human being. Hermits are those who are not prone to such innate behaviour.

To blame an instinctive human behaviour for the plight of humanity is nothing short of escapism and would hinder any analysis of the problem in its right earnest.

Imagine a time bereft of greed. This would have meant the collapse of capitalism. People would have been without any entrepreneurial zeal and the world wouldn't have seen many of the scientific inventions and discoveries, which changed our lives. Greed may be associated with a negative connotation in the moral sphere but from an economic perspective it is the driving force behind any aspiration for a better life.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.

Light still not in sight

There is a nip in the London air and with it an increased sense of gloom. The unemployment figure in the United Kingdom is now 2.62 million and over one million youth (16-24 years) are out of job. Despite the personal tragedy of the jobless people, politicking continues. David Cameron and his team blame the Eurozone crisis for the plight in Britain, while Labour leader Ed Miliband terms the path followed by the government as flawed. Whatever the reason, there is no denying that millions of Britons are facing a tough time and the policymakers have no clue to get over the crisis.

When I first arrived in Britain over 12 years ago, those were the bright days of neoliberalism. The Thatcher days of high inflation and unemployment were gone. The benefits of free trade and globalisation were reaching fruition. Britain was getting things cheap from all around the world. Walking along any London street you would bump into an Indian techie, who was in town to meet the ever increasing technological demand of London, the financial capital of the world.

Under the eyes of New Labour, the business districts of London thrived but the signs of decadence in the manufacturing heartland of Britain were overlooked. As factories closed one after another in the Midlands, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown carried out road shows in The City, encouraging speculation. Risk averse were considered to be outdated and trade was the mantra as manufacturing was left with the dusty world of the developing countries.

There was a sense of global merrymaking then. Indian software companies rejoiced as their business increased manifold, the manufacturers of garments in countries like Bangladesh plunged into new ventures as Primark provided cheap shirts in British high streets, The values of western modernity were muted for profits as the garment worker in a dingy room in Bangladesh sweated all day in exploitation to deliver the fruits of neoliberalism.

We were all happy then. Money was in the air. The parents and relations of people working abroad were exposed to foreign trips, western lifestyle and gadgets. Foreign cosmetics and gifts were presented to friends and relations at a much cheaper price than what was available back home. That was the day when capitalism was blooming at its best. It was spring time of financialisation. Much of the world overlooked manufacturing with the hope that financialisation would take care of all the global demands. Urbanisation was the order of the day, as if we can do without villages.

"The days of boom and the bust are over", remarked an arrogant Gordon Brown as if a new form of capitalism had unfolded. But the good days were soon to be over.

The global economy could still survive the bust of the dotcom bubble but the sub-prime mortgage was too big a burden for the American banks. The instrument which was used to justify the validity of neoliberalism, to show that even the Spanish Americans and Afro Caribbean, who are at the lower strata of the economic ladder in the US, had a stake in the system, collapsed like a pack of cards. Financial waste, as bad assets were termed, spread like wild fire and the mighty western world stood powerless.

We are yet to get over the crisis. Look at what is happening in Spain, Greece, Italy and the worst of all in Britain. People have been jobless for years; fresh graduates are languishing out of jobs after spending a fortune in higher education. The social fabric is cracking leading to economic consequences like the riots witnessed during the summer. Yet there is no solution in sight.

John Maynard Keynes provided the solution to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Could he provide an answer to the economic mess this time round and still be alive in the long run? Peter Clarke claims "Yes" but there are doubts about the Keynsian prescription of spending out of the crisis. Merely creating effective demand is not good enough. The cheap Chinese products are there to capitalise. China already pays for the huge budget deficits in the US and now there is call for them to bail out the crisis ridden Europe. Adam Smith has finally settled in Beijing but only after watching his economic doctrine of laissez faire crumble back home.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.

That was more than Cricket

I gulped back emotions on my way home as I read an eveninger the day the Southwark Crown court judge pronounced his verdict against three Pakistani cricketers for spot fixing. "It's not cricket", observed the judge. Cricket has been tarnished and the supporters cheated, said an outraged world, which watched the transformation of the game, over the past decades, from being a passion to a money spinner. As the cricketing fraternity groped to come to terms with another crisis, I regaled over how the game brought me happiness and joy as I grew up at a non-descript place, far away from the facilities of a modern city.

My tryst with cricket started towards the end of 1976, when Glenn Turner’s New Zealand visited India. We were living in Sahibganj then and my uncle bought me a transistor to listen to the commentary. I do not remember how as a six-year-old, I  got hooked to cricket then but can still recall the names of all the players of the Indian side. Bishen Bedi was the captain and with his battery of magical spinners, Chandrashekhar, Prasanna, Venkatraghavan, literally stripped the Kiwis off all their cricketing might. India won the series 2-0 and my liking for cricket was set rolling.

Anand Setelwad, Balu Alaganan, Rajan Bala, Sushil Doshi, Murali Manohar Manju were the commentators then and on weekends, I would sit all day next to the transistor with a scorecard – dotting every odd ball and noting every boundary, imagining as if I was seated among the players. (Pavilion and Press Box were not part of my vocabulary then.)

After the Kiwis left, Tony Greig’s England visited India to play a five test series. I do not know why the visiting side was called the MCC. Tony Greig with his flamboyance mesmerised those who were lucky to watch him play as the visitors thrashed India. The hosts only managed to win the test at Bangalore where Bedi took six wickets in the second innings. The Indian skipper was my hero then and the day India lost at the Eden Gardens I literally cried and refused my lunch, inviting ridicule from relations who would tease me, saying that as the players enjoyed in their hotels I cried at home. My liking for Bedi continued even as I grew older and despite his maverick behaviour, so as my dislike for John Lever, who became infamous for the Vaseline controversy during the same series.

Cricket was not an all year phenomenon then. Our winter vacations, after annual examinations, were packaged with no studies - either in the morning or in the evening, oranges in the bright afternoon sunshine, Joynagar-er Moa (a winter delicacy in Bengal), Barodin-er cake (Christmas cake), family picnics, circus, a trip to the zoo and of course cricket. There was no television then but transistors would provide our minds with a more intense view of what was going on and off the field. For a very long time I dreamt of becoming a commentator, often commentating of mock cricket matches and drawing wrath from the elders,

The over exposure of cricket now has dried up the tremendous appetite I had for the game. But during the school winter holidays if we would go on any trip outside Kolkata, I would make sure that a transistor was with us. Remember the series that India played in 1977-1978, when Bob Simpson made a comeback as captain after most of the world-class players joined the World Series Cricket of Kerry Packer. I remember, India losing the first two tests and then making a dramatic comeback in the next two. We were then at Puri and I would get up very early every morning (due to the time difference between Australia and India) to listen to the heroic deeds of the Indian cricketers. Bruce Yardly, Graham Yallop, Peter Toohey, Kim Hughes were some of the familiar names then in the Aussie side. Finally, India lost the final test and Australia clinched the series.

Cricket then was like a fairly tale for many of us. When India was playing Alvin Kalicharan’s West Indies at the Eden gardens, I remember a young relation of mine shouting in the middle of the night as if the visitors have lost a wicket. The game stirred your imagination to unimaginable limits. When there was any test at Kolkata, we (the children in the family) would be taken in a group a day before the start of the match to places around Grand Hotel, the only place where the cricketers were put up then, and Eden Gardens. The places then wore a festive look with decorative lights all around. Strolling past the Grand Hotel or outside the Eden Gardens we would have a surreal feeling of being in the midst of the players or watching the match from the gallery. My real life entry to the Eden Gardens happened much later and on the very first occasion I took my shoes off to rub my barefoot on the grass of the ground, which enthralled my imagination and captured my dreams for years.

Within days of me joining the Financial Express, India was playing West Indies in the day and night final of the Wills World Series in Kolkata. My friend Ritwik Mukherjee had managed a ticket for me and I silently disappeared in the afternoon to watch the match. India finally won and the next day my Resident Editor Buroshiva Dasgupta called me up to express his disappointment at the sudden disappearance but spared me as India had clinched the tournament.

Cricket has been a long time love for me, a companion at times and a fantasy till I got busy with other things in life. As I read through the pages of the tabloid my mind was filled not with anguish for the disrepute the Pakistani trio brought to the game but with some sweet memories which made my life more joyous than one would have expected.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.

Prosperity Without Progress

Every time I visit Belgharia, I have a sense of despair. Not least because of the potholes, puddles or household rubbish dumped on the roadside, as they are all to be seen in the part of London I live in, especially in this age of austerity, but because the civic life hasn't changed in Belgharia despite signs of prosperity. The number of apartments, private cars and shops have all increased significantly even in those parts of the suburb, which once housed many refugee families like mine.

Public dumping of garbage is an
essential component of the image
associated with Belgharia

I heard from my grandmother, how difficult it was for them to have a bucketful of clean drinking water. The women folk would wait in a queue for hours in front of a dripping tap for drinking water, while the household washing were carried out by water from roadside puddles, created mostly due to lack of drainage facilities.

There was no electricity, she would tell me, and the roads were reduced to arable land, especially during the monsoon and people would have to fold their trousers up to knee height to travel to and fro from the railway station. Not of this proportion though, but even 30 years ago I had witnessed pretty bad roads and water logging near Adarsha Nagar, the vast stretch of land adjacent to what is now known as the Belgharia Expressway.

Things have apparently improved over the years. The disposable incomes of the people of Belgharia, which was once likened with Vitenam by the Communists, have increased manifold. The number of concrete houses and apartments have gone up. Belgharia has now many more shops, schools, a flyover and the number of personal vehicles has gone up substantially. The people of Belgharia are generally much better off than from my grandmother's generation.

Affluence, indeed speaks of the prosperous transformation that this place has undergone, yet every time I have visited the place over the past 12 years, I felt remorse. Despite the flyover, every year many lives are unnecessarily lost while crossing the railway lines, people are exposed to accidents near both ends of the flyover as there are no policemen to control the irresponsible traffic, water bodies are encroached by promoters and other vested interests, polluting vehicles are parked near schools and above all the people in this place are yet to acknowledge and appreciate the importance of keeping their surroundings clean.

Organisations which claim to be
doing public good are stealthily
encroaching communal
water-bodies in Jatin Das Nagar

The phenomenal changes that have been taking place all around the world, it seems, have failed to influence the place, and to me Belgharia still remains a place of the past. Whenever I mention this to my family and friends back home they blame me for being snooty, make oblique references as if I have come from a different planet, but before moving to London in 1999, I have spent most of my life in the dusty suburb. The problems that I see in Belgharia today never struck me when I lived there. I know that proximity, or the lack of it, gives a different perspective, especially when one is more exposed to the wider world.

However, I also notice a sense of resignation among the residents there today. Ask any resident of Belgharia about their travails and the average answer would be 'bole ar ki habe, kono kichhu to hoar noy' (meaning nothing will change whatsoever so what's the point of trying to address the issues or resolving them). What they forget though is that change only comes for the deserving.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.

Remembering Arindam Sen

It was the second half of 1987 and we had a new Economics teacher in class XII. Room number 6, just beside the college office in St Xavier's College had by then descended into total chaos. Suddenly a well built man rushed out of the staff room and as he entered the classroom, the cacophony literally changed to pin drop silence.

That was my first encounter with Arindam Sen, who had a tremendous dislike for students coming from posh, upmarket schools. Sen, as he was known among the Economics Honours students, used to teach us Mathematical Economics. His trademark was a cotton side bag, which hardly matched with the sophistication of the college, and would draw curves with their axes in thin air.

Sen, was hardly bothered if anyone attended his class or not and would circulate a sheet of paper for the students in the room to write down their roll numbers for attendance. Taking advantage of his two hour classes we would often slip into the noon or matinee shows at cinema halls in central Kolkata. Our friend Soumyananda Dinda, whom Sen liked for his humble background, low profile and sincerity, was entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring our requisite attendance as we enjoyed outside. Only once as a fellow student was trying to skip his class, Sen retorted that he was 'physically, mentally and intellectually more able than all of us". If someone ever tried to act smart, Sen's treatment would be to ask him questions ranging from Lord Tennyson's 'Ulysses' to what not.

From the looks, however, he seemed a very idealistic person. Mostly sporting a set of crumpled Punjabi-Pajama (Kurta-Pyjama), he would often push his dense hair from over his broad forehead while delving with the mathematical expression of complicated economic theories, without any concern as to whether they made any sense to a majority of the students in the class.

Often the very moment becomes more important than what was fundamental, and it was so true with Sen. Rather than trying to relate to what he was trying to explain, we would either bunk his classes or would scribble on paper, pretending as if we were listening to his lectures with apt attention.

From disinterest grew indifference and gradually Sen turned out to be an enigma for many of us. It was so intense that a joke was doing the rounds when we were in college and it related Sen with the celebrated economist Paul Samuleson. The joke went like this: once Samuelson landed at the Kolkata Airport and someone present to receive him whispered in his ear that Arindam Sen taught Economics in a city college.  Hearing Sen's name, Samuelson got so puzzled, fearing that Sen's mathematical analysis of Economics would be totally incomprehensible to him, that he took the next flight to the United States.

This may just have been a joke but the enigma surrounding Sen continued within me even after I left college. So when I heard from the famous Bengali singer Srikanto Acharya (who incidentally is a Xaverian but from the Political Science Department) a couple of months ago that Sen passed away, the first thing that crossed my mind was the enigma that surrounded him. Despite not relating to his lectures, I always wondered what his position would have been on some of the complex issues relating to economic theory or if he had some published work, which would give us some idea about his thinking on controversial topics.

One thing is for sure, he was a very determined person and I have a personal story to complement that. I used to take private tuition in Mathematics from Dr Shankar Prasad Bhattacharya, who used to live on the same road as Sen at Sinthee in north Kolkata. When Sen was adapting himself to the mathematical treatment of Economics, he would often seek help from Dr Bhattacharya. In Dr Bhattacharya's own words, Sen wouldn't bother about the time of the day, be it morning or evening, and would rush to him (Dr Bhattacharya) whenever he was faced with any mathematical problem. Dr Bhattacharya himself told me that it was very unusual for a man of Sen's stature and age and only speaks of his determination and dedication for the subject.

Sen still remains an enigmatic person for me and I would like to untangle the intellectual puzzle in him by searching for his works which would give me some idea about his original thinking.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com

All comments are personal. 

Global World

We are living a very exciting moment in history. The changes in the world order have thrown open new opportunities and at the same time exposed the mankind to innumerable challenges, like never before. As the global population reaches seven billion, we are reminded of the scarcity of resources to meet astronomical demand.

The world needs to work out innovative ways to meet the difficulties that lie ahead. Possibly, we need to recycle more to meet the increased demand for goods. Probably, the media needs to share the responsibility of educating the people as the number of formal schools may not be enough to reach a large section of the population. May be the big corporate houses and non-governmental organisations need to play a supportive role in sustaining the global health system. Be it food or energy shortage, all we need to do is to break from the past and work out innovative ways to meet the challenges of the future.

The list of global problems doesn't end only with the scarcity of resources. This has been an area of concern for the world leaders and policymakers for a very long time. Challenges also come from the opportunities that have been created with the advancement of science and technology. While, new technology has made life easier for many, it has also increased the threats of unemployment. The current form of globalisation, with its compression of time and space, has made capital more expansive, yet increased inequality in the society.

Conventional wisdom has taught us for decades that as we move to higher stages of development the economy becomes more formalised. However, in the current phase of capitalistic expansion informality is the norm, leading to formation of sweat shops in the developing world, resulting in increased exploitation.

Then there are problems related to the environment - climate change is threatening to punish those who are in no way responsible for the emission of greenhouse gases, making the atmosphere warmer.

The social changes are also throwing up enormous challenges. Various forms of social, economic and earthly threats are making people more insecure, resulting in serious familial consequences. Urbanisation is exposing the children to unhealthy competition; nuclear families are retarding their physical and mental growth. Invasion of dominant cultures are undermining cultural pluralism and pushing indigenous knowledge to oblivion.

Addressing these challenges cannot be the work of only the national leaders, policymakers or professionals - like the economists, scientists, and environmentalists etc., each one of us have a stake in the well being of the planet and need to take responsibility in finding a solution to the difficulties that lie ahead. Each one us needs to think a way out of the crises.

My new blog 'Global World' is going to be a forum for reflecting on the problems and working towards their solutions, however small and insignificant the contribution might be. This blog will thus deal with issues involving development, economic problems, environmental concerns and social challenges, to say the least.

Over the past couple of months, I have got tremendous response and support from my friends, well wishers, pals in social networking sites, in promoting Stray Thoughts. As a tribute to such magnanimity all my posts for Global World will be reproduced in Stray Thoughts.

When I decided the name of my new blog, my wife was very confused. She found the combination 'world' and 'global' very trivial. However, I stuck to the name for a definitive reason. The new challenges that lie ahead have placed us in a strange predicament. The world has become smaller and now the actions of each one of us living in this planet affect the others. Our world now is not confined only to ourselves, our families, communities, states, countries or even continents. Each and every member of the global community is now intrinsically linked and we share the same future. Our world has now become truly global.

Finally, like the Stray Thoughts, Global World is also monetised. Any proceeds, however small it might be, will go to a charity. The name of the charity will also be published on the blog site.

Any proceeds from this monetised blog will go to a charity.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.

Comments on the post are welcome at the blog site.

Art of the Possible

Visualise the situation of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a dominant party of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, leader M Karunanidhi pleading before the Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi, the release, on bail, of his beloved daughter M K Kanimozhi. Despite the best of efforts, Karunanidhi couldn't ensure Kanimozhi's release before Diwali, the festival of lights ensuring the arrival of a new year in certain parts of India and the victory of the good over evil.

Kanomozhi has been arrested in connection with a scam involving illegally undercharging mobile telephony companies for frequency allocation licenses, which they would use to create 2G subscriptions for cell phones.

Politics is undoubtedly a great leveler. The octogenarian leader may now be pleading, the Italian-born Indian politician Sonia Gandhi to use her influence to secure the bail of his daughter, but it was the same Karunanidhi who joined former Prime Minister V P Singh and other anti-Congress leaders, including the late Communist Jyoti Basu, to spearhead a movement, which virtually turned into a hate campaign against the now deceased Rajiv Gandhi.

Sonia Gandhi's husband may have been killed by the Tamil Tigers, yet one can hardly doubt that the vitriolic campaign launched against former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi portrayed him as a political villain sipped in corruption.

When V P Singh launched a campaign against Rajiv Gandhi, alleging, he and his close associates received kickbacks in the infamous Bofors arms deal, Karunanidhi, Basu and other anti-Congress leaders put their weight behind it, without properly scrutinizing the facts behind such allegation. As V P Singh displayed a diary, allegedly having the names of the kickback takers, in public rallies, India was agog with sloganeering, which branded Rajiv Gandhi has a 'thief'.

One can't deny that such unfounded yet vitriolic campaign made Rajiv Gandhi politically more vulnerable, leading to his desperate attempts to reach out to the public, which might have contributed to his brutal assassination.

Despite such roles of Karunanidhi, Singh, Basu and other leaders, Sonia Gandhi cobbled together such disparate elements of Indian politics to keep the BJP at bay, and finally attained power in 2004. Although, in a personal interaction, Sonia Gandhi confided that she overlooked the past only to resist the rise of the so called communal forces in Indian polity, yet this only speaks of politics being an art of the possible.

There are allegations of rampant corruption against both Karunanidhi and his arch political rival, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha, yet they enjoyed being in power in the state at regular intervals. This is attributed to their charisma and the partisan nature of the state's political landscape. However, one cannot deny the lack of choice faced by the voters in Tamil Nadu, which speaks of one of the many flaws in India's brand of democratic polity. Taking advantage of such a flaw, both Karunanidhi and Jayalalitha not only remained in power in the state but also made hard bargains with the national parties like the Congress and the BJP to be part of successive central governments.

India may take pride in its brand of democracy, yet the survival instincts of some of its politicians also remind us of the famous adage that politics is the art of the possible.

This Blog is monetised, any proceeds, whatsoever, would be donated to the charitable sector.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.

Comments on the post are welcome at the blog site.

Beyond Lip Service

It is like a wave sweeping across parts of the globe. First it was Tunisia followed by Egypt and now it is the turn of Libya. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh narrowly survived the popular protest and Bashar al-Assad of Syria is still trying to put up a brave face against the uprising with the help of brutal forces.

The media sphere is no short of acronyms and they range from the 'Arab Spring' to 'Jasmine Revolution'. The West has likened the series of protests and the uprisings with a wave for democracy. What has happened in Africa undoubtedly epitomises the fall of dictatorial regimes but whether such events would facilitate democratic polity is a matter to watch in the future.

Be it another wave of democracy or popular uprising facilitated by globalisation and technological innovation, the events which uprooted longstanding dictators in the Arab world also exposes a level of hypocrisy by the West. Remember the vacillation by the US administration when Hosni Mubarak was struggling for his political life. The western countries always provide lip service to democracy and the peoples' right to self determination but in reality prefer someone in power who would act as the custodian of their political and economic interests. Hosni Mubarak was one such custodian as is Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.

There is a difference though between Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. Colonel Gaddafi was loathed by the West in the past but, once he promised concessions about furthering their interests, the western leaders embraced him with open arms. Colonel Gaddafi's heinous past was forgotten in the name of diplomatic engagement only to have access to the plentiful natural resources of his oil-rich country.

Such hypocrisy is, however, not associated only with the West. Even countries like India, who leave no stone unturned to pride itself as the world's largest democracy, considered undemocratic leaders like Saddam Hossain and Muammar Gaddafi as its trusted friends. While the West did so in the name of economic and political gains, countries like India did so in the name of non-alignment or to uphold its anti-west credentials for playing to the gallery of its domestic constituency.

Leaders across the globe have likened the developments in the Arab world as a manifestation of the peoples' power. Whether such power really lies with the people would determine the success of this wave of transformation.

As dictators like Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali make exit from public life in the face of popular protests, the western leaders need to make some introspection to match their words with action. They should not only celebrate the advent of 'democracy' by jugglery of words but also question whether it is fair to support undemocratic and tyrannical regimes like the one in Saudi Aarabia.

Democracy and right to self determination should not only be the prerogative of the West. Those who claim their right to modernity should also take the lead in propagating it, not only through words but also by actions.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.

Comments on the post are welcome at the blog site.

Selling the Past

King's College is just across the road from my workplace at The Strand. Everyday I take the bus from in front of the King's College to go to the Waterloo British Rail station on my way home. Everyday I see the pictures of well known people associated with the King's College on the glass wall of the institution's Strand Campus.

Never did it strike the chord so strongly till the time when I entered the premises of the King's College to get myself enrolled for my latest academic endeavour. I felt a strong bond with John Keats, who abandoned his career in medicine to become a poet, Desmond Tutu or may be Martin Bashir. They were all alumni of the King's College. It is this special link with the past which probably makes us proud today and provides inspiration for the future.

I have seen such exhibition of the past glory in almost all the famous British academic institutions. Pictures of great Indians like Amartya Sen, Meghnad Desai, I G patel, K R Narayanan adorn the walls of the London School of Economics. Similar is the case with the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Oxford University, which has many prime ministers and presidents as its notable alumni. However, I haven't seen anything like this in the Indian educational institutions that I went to.

At the St. Xavier's College in Kolkata there were portraits of Jagadish Chandra Bose and Ramananda Chattopadhyay but probably the Jesuit institution produced more luminaries, who could be considered well known in their respective fields. That the West Bengal Industry Minister Partha Chattopadhyay is a Vidyalaya Praktani became known to me only after reading a report of his felicitation in a Bengali newspaper, although I have interacted with him several times during my reasonably long stint in journalism. Like the St. Xavier's College,Calcutta, Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya, Narendrapur, also produced many personalities, who later made significant contribution to either their fields of work or to the society at large.

From our childhood days we were taught to be humble and not to boast about ourselves. I still remember my grandfather telling me "baro jadi hote chao, choto hao tabe" meaning if you want to be seen as well known and hence respected you should be humble and not boast about yourselves. This principle, however, doesn't find many takers in the age of Neo-liberalism, when individualism rules the roost. One might not boast about oneself but should not be self evasive either.

What else could be more self deluding than being indifferent to the rich past and being ignorant about the good work of the predecessors. As a student of the Calcutta University's Economics Department at the Katakal Campus, I have never seen portraits of or commemorative plaque about people like Bhabatosh Dutta, Amlan Dutta, Santosh Bhattacharya, Panchanan Chakraborty and many others, who either as economists or as teachers were well respected during their times. Neither was there any knowledge or interest about these personalities and their works among the students nor any effort to make them (students) conscious about such things.

Engaging with the past bestows a sense of responsibility and pride for the incumbent generation, which is essential for success. Moreover, when the market has become the ultimate platform to assess success, probably marketing the past may ensure a better price for the future.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.
Comments on the post are welcome at the blog site.

Governance sans Democracy

Twenty-seven year old Utpal Biswas works as a car driver. He has been working for a car hire company for the the past seven years. His parents wanted him to study and do a government job, which never happened as his father lost his job when Utpal was only four years old.

Debal Biswas, Utpal's father, used to lead a team of about hundred people in Belgharia's one-time well known textile factory the Mohini Mills, which closed down permanently in 1988. Since then the Durga Puja there has stopped, most of the workers were forced to take up meanial jobs for living and some even committed suicide. Utpal can't even recollect the Durga Puja days at the mill complex. He was barely four then when it all stopped. Now the deserted mill complex stands like as if it is in ruins. Utpal's father became a rickshaw puller to sustain his family and whatever money he earned was not enough to send Utpal to a good school. As a teenager, Utpal learnt driving to relieve his father from pulling rickshaws.

On a recent trip to Kolkata, Utpal was driving us from Belgharia to Bandel. While driving past the Durgapur Expressway, near Singur,I asked him what he thought about Mamata Banerjee. From Utpal's enthusiasm and energy it seemed as though he was waiting for the question to be asked, especially near the place which built Banerjee's political fortune for years to come.

"Didi will bring about real change", quipped Utpal, the glimmer in his eyes showing the real conviction unlike the rhetoric that political elements are used to. I tried to understand what he meant by 'real change' and there was no defintive answer but only a sense of euphoria and hope.

"But how is it going to affect you, what will happen to Mohini Mills where your father worked for years and yet didn't get his dues!"

My sense of suspicion or being a devil's advocate, failed to make any change in Utpal and he said, "Didi-r kachhe khabar chole gechhe. Mohini Mill-e rail-er karkhana habe". (Banerjee is aware of Mohini Mills and will set up a railway factory there.) My questioning the validity of such an expectation was, however, not 'hopeless' enough to dampen his hopes.

Utpal was not the only one who was euphoric about Mamata Banerjee. A fruit vendor at Dunlop or a man selling cheap dresses outside Baghbazar Bata also spoke in similar vein.It seemed as if the dispossessed were more hopeful than others and I could not figure out why. A senior colleague, who has been a well known correspondent in India for years, feels, "the people of Bengal were desperate for change".

Will the people of Bengal move to a higher trajectory of democratic polity or practice? Will the new government ensure better governance?

Governance is the buzz word for Banerjee these days. Her unannounced visits to government offices, hospitals, schools, market places are making people happy although the real reason behind such happiness is not very clear to me yet. Are they happy because they hope that good days would return or they are pleased that those who were reaping the benefits of being paid their salaries for not doing enough work or extorting the ordinary man are being pulled up?

From the surface though it seems that people are pleased with the effort to ensure governance and bring it back within the public domain. The danger of expecting too much on governance is that both the government and the governed tend to confuse between 'democratic governance' and governance which is not necessarily participatory and democratic.

Democracy and governance are probably both mutually exclusive. Governance is no pre-requisite for democracy and the vice versa is also probably true. One can ensure governance without stains of democracy.(Even a military regime can ensure governance without any obligation for democracy.) The best example is probably the emergency days of Indira Gandhi. So when a US Congressional report praises Narendra Modi for governance, they tend to overlook his pluralistic credentials or lack of it, which also raises serious questions about their understanding of democracy.

I am not in any way comparing Modi and Banerjee but I can see in her a desperation to ensure governance without much concern for participatory practices. Remember the way she announced closure of schools a day after students drenched to the core celebrated the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Thakur or the way she keeps on announcing welfare projects in the state. They are definitely intended to bring about welfare but there is no mechanism or any evidence to ensure that the objectives are desired and would be achieved.

Banerjee prefers the 'top-down' approach of development but the 'bottom-up' path is a more participatory one and hence mindful of the essence of democracy. Democracy definitely has many deficits but whether governance bereft of democratic values is desireable calls for a much wider debate.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on my present or past places of work. Comments on the post are welcome at the blog site.

SOAS I live for thee

After a heart wrenching few weeks on making a personal choice between the two premier educational institutes in London, I decided to go for the King's College KCL over the School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS. This is of course no aspersion on the proficiency of SOAS as an academic institute of repute, not only within the United Kingdom but also worldwide. SOAS was my entrypoint to the world of academics in Britain and the decision to choose KCL has been largely guided by what the Bloombusry institution taught me in two years. As a hetrodox academic institute, SOAS taught me to challenge the mainstream and try things which situate thinking in a different perspective. The choice of KCL was only to witness the alternative to what I imbibed from the SOAS.

SOAS has literally been a melting pot of alternative thinking and the intellectuals there aren't shy of practising what they preach. One would thus see academics delivering lectures not in pin-stripped suites, as is the usual practice in most western institutions, but wearing Pink Floyd T-shirts and faded Jeans. The campus would witness a sprectrum of thoughts ranging from the Old Socialist school, vehmently opposing any reduction in the role of government, to making a case for the meanial migrant workers, who often face deportation threats, and finally queing up to have themselves fed by the 'karma food' provided free by the International Society for Krishna Conciousness (ISKCON).

It is not only the image of enacting the alternative that stood SOAS apart, the academics, undoubtedly some of the best in the world, also provided the intellectual succour behind the emobodiment of such a hetrodox thinking.

Being a student of the Department of Development Studies, I had the pleasure of interacting with some of the wonderful minds, ranging from acclaimed academics like
Subir Sinha to Gilbert Achcar. Subir Sinha influenced much of my recent thinking, especially his improvisation on discursive analysis provides a rare insight into the roles of civil society and social movements within the domain of global politics, and Gilbert Achcar is an epitome of knowledge.

Although I studied Keynesian economics at the undergraduate level in India, but it reached a fruition beyond the IS-LM Curve Analysis only after Alfredo Saad Filho explained the political economy of its rise and demise. Jens Lerche with his breadth of knowledge on agrarian change and class relations in South Asia would often meticulously attend some of my trivial queries on land following the developments in Singur and Nandigram.

Paolo Novak was my first admissions tutor at the SOAS. Coming from a South Asian background we are not generally used to seeing teachers as friends but as days progressed Paolo with his warmth and informality turned our relationship into more of friendship and similar was the case with Dae-oup Chang, who joined the SOAS in the same year as I did.

My experience at the SOAS has been more of a journey, as Henry Bernstein would use the metaphor to describe 'development', into the world of knowledge guided only by the pleasure of learning, made possible by the academics and also by a team of dedicated staff in the faculty led by Jack Footitt. I leave SOAS, with a heavy heart, only to put to test if I have rightly picked up the essence of what this hetrodox institution stands for.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on my present or past places of work. Comments on the post are welcome at the blogsite.

"Duniya Dot Com"

It was a weekend of song and dance and also a drift down memory lane. At a Bengali cultural programme here in London, I came across quite a few people after a span of many years. As one recollects the years gone by, there is a feeling of nostalgia and also a sense that the world is changing everyday and getting even smaller.

Who would have thought that one day I would come across Samit-da here in London. Samit Ray is now the Managing Director of the Rice Group and we share the same root of growing up at Jatindas Nagar in Belgharia. Although, he is a few years senior to me, yet as young boys we were associated with the same Udayan Club for years. Seeing the organisation headed by Samit-da making strides in India, I sometimes felt if we could come across but never dreamt that it would come true of all places in London and that too possibly after almost three decades.

The two people who influenced me most in taking up journalism as a career almost two decades ago were my two great friends Ritwik Mukherjee and Debasish Choudhury . Ritwik had joined the profession during our college days and almost regularly we used to walk to the office of Kolkata, a daily which is now defunct, at Lenin Sarani. It was there at the Kolkata office that I came across Kunal-da. Kunal Ghosh, now the Executive Editor of Sangbad Pratidin,a Bengali daily published from Kolkata, and the Chief Executive Officer of Channel 10, a same city-based television channel. More than two decades ago he was one of our windows to the world of journalism and we would be mesmerised by the exciting stories he would tell us about shoulder-rubbing with people at the helm and getting hold of those in power, especially the Congress politics with which he was then very organically linked.

While in Kolkata, I came across Kunal-da a few times later but not so much ever since joining journalism myself. Probably, the last time we met was during a demonstration at Esplanade East, one time well known rallying point for protestors and demonstrators in Kolkata, in 1995, which he was covering possibly for Aajkaal, another Bengali daily. As I get to read the articles written by Kunal-da for Sangbad Pratidin, here in London, thanks to the internet, and with the political metamorphosis that has taken place in the Indian state of Bengal, it was a pleasure meeting him here in London after over 15 years.

Nearly 20 years ago when I first joined journalism, we were a group of 20, selected to revive an ailing Bengali newspaper, Jugantar, with a rich history. It was during those days when the print media had not been shadowed by the glitz and glamour of television journalism. Veteran journalist, late Niranjan Sengupta was entrusted with the responsibility of training us. It was during the training stint of three months at the St. Xavier's College in Kolkata that four of us - Anindya Chattopadhyay, Joydip Chakraborty, Santanu Mukhopadhyay and I - got very close. Every evening after our training sessions we used to cling like a group and it was so conspicuous that one of the fellow trainees then and now the Assistant Editor of the Anandabazar Patrika, a Kolkata-based Bengali daily, Ishani Dutta Ray chose to write a creative piece on the group "Ekti Bakul gachh ebong charte chhele" , meaning one Bakul tree and four boys. I still remember a Bakul tree on the Park Street footpath just outside the college.

Since my leaving Jugantar for The Financial Express in 1994 the four of us were not as close as before because of practical reasons but we were still in touch. In 1997, when I returned from Delhi, to join the Press Trust of India in Kolkata, I heard that Anindya has taken up a career in singing and set up a Bengali band called Chandrabindoo.

Just before leaving for London in 1999, Anindya presented me with a cassette of one of their popular numbers. Since then we hardly met, except for a brief stint in 2001. Anindya and his group have since grown to be one of the popular Bengali bands. It was only through his performance at London that we got to meet each other after a span of over ten years.

All these meetings, with the three very successful people in their respective fields,are sure to incite nostalgia but at the same time it gives me a cosy feeling of how small the world is becoming with every passing day. Technology and its advancement have transformed the world in such a way that even a foreign land is no longer alien. At the same time aspirations are skyrocketing in a globalised world with increased opportunities. Many professional Indians are realising that the world is there for them to grab. As I am sipped with nostalgia after drifting down memory lane for the past two days, I can only think of a popular number by Anindya and his band Duniya Dot Com. Those who understand Bengali would definitely appreciate the wonderful lyrics of the song. Even those who don't, and hence deprived of such a wonderful performance, also realise how the worldwide web has literally transformed this globe into a virtual village.

I hope Anindya and his band wouldn't mind me using the title of one of their popular numbers as the title of this post. It is me basking in reflected glory.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on my present or past places of work. Comments on the post are welcome at the blog site.

Bankruptcy is the cure for Cancer

'Cancer Cures Smoking' - this was the advert which caught my eyes over three decades ago on a family trip to Guwahati, as it is now called. Little did I understand the importance or the appeal of such a campaign and my only connect to it was a close relation of mine accompanying me, who was a chain smoker. The creativity of the advert was not good enough though to make my relative quit smoking, which he finally did after many years following lung infection.

As a ten year old boy then, cancer was very much alien to me, nor was I aware about its dreadfulness and the trauma it causes not only to the infected but also to the affected families. However, the trauma had befallen us a few years later when another close relation was diagnosed with cancer. As a teenager, I could estimate the anxiety that had gripped my family members then. Thanks to a timely intervention by the famous oncologist Dr Abani Chanda that the relative survived, despite being frail.

About 26 years later the trauma has returned again to our extended family and this time with a much grievous impact. The patient was diagnosed late and had to be shuttled between doctors and nursing homes, either because of lack of adequate facilities or with the expectation of improving the chances of her survival. Each movement was accompanied by a frustration of the delay in getting the treatment started and the rising cost in medical bill. When the choice is between spending more money and the hope (even if it is faint) of increasing the longevity of a loved person, the relatives are literally left with no option.

This is probably a typical story of any cancer patient in India. Every movement from one doctor to another involves a series of medical tests costing thousands of rupees. Although each test is carried out in clinical laboratories recognised by the government or any statutory or regulatory body, every doctor or a nursing home or a private hospital would demand a fresh set of the same examinations costing not only the patients and their families even more money but also draining out huge resources. My mother worked in a government laboratory for over three decades and I am fully aware about the cost of some of the tests that patients, suffering from life threatening diseases have to under go.

I wonder how the successive clinical tests are linked to the diagnosis or the treatment of the patients, especially when all of them are carried out in recognised pathological laboratories, or if there is a quid pro quo like in any other business. If there are failings then the concerned laboratory can be held accountable and brought to book. Often there are instances when two different medical practitioners have asked for similar tests to be carried out from the same laboratory and it beggars belief that these are guided by reasons beyond the remit of medical science. I have many friends who have taken up the noble profession of saving peoples’ lives. If they find time to read this blog and have an argument different from mine then I am ready to stand corrected.

While researching for this blog, I found that some private medical institutes, which took off in the major metropolis in India over the past decade, including some set up by non-resident Indians and foreigners, have been beneficiaries of discounted land prices and other infrastructural facilities with the promise of serving the poor. I wonder if there is any mechanism of auditing how many poor people they serve each year.

My fellow student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Sheena Sumaria has done a wonderful piece of research on the “financialisation of health care and pensions” in developing countries for the Bretton Woods Project.

The report argues “that the privatisation reforms have failed to adequately address the social risks of old age, poverty and poor health. Far from increasing efficiency, the reforms have proved costly and have drained public resources through lavish tax incentives and significant administrative and regulatory expenses.”

The report also underlines that despite the failure of the privatisation reforms to benefit the majority, “the national governments – pressed by local elites, multilateral agencies and global corporate and financial interests – have contributed significant public resources towards enacting the reforms”.

Lack of accountability of private medical institutes and failure of the government to provide adequate services in state-run hospitals are actually leading to the pauperisation of those who suffer from life threatening diseases like cancer, so much so that, as a recent story done for the Anandabazar Patrika by Parijat Bandyopadhyay demonstrates, the families living in the lower end of the economic strata are not even willing to treat their loved ones, virtually pushing them to the throes of death.

I owe the idea behind this post to my colleague Alastair Lawson-Tancred.

The Anti-Smoking advertisement entitled "Cancer Cures Smoking" was created for the Cancer Patients Aid Association by O&M's Pushpinder Singh and Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar with the Creative Director - Mr. Piyush Pandey at the helm in 2003. It was awarded the Gold Lion in the category 'Outdoor Public Health' at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival held in Cannes, France in June 2003.

Thinking Civil Society with reason: Responding to some comments

There have been quite a few responses to my blog, 'Thinking Civil Society with reason'. Many comments were made in Face book and Twitter, where I post my blogs regularly, and some had even taken the trouble of personally emailing me with their thoughts. This was a pleasant surprise for me as the blog was broadly discursive. It would be much appreciated if future comments were made at the blog site, in the specified area below each post.

My intention was not to be patronising and provide an academic deliberation on the evolution of civil society and how it operates in the Indian context, but to come up with a broad idea within which the concept of civil society, as it is seen today, is situated.

The objective of such an analysis was to highlight the fact that the acrimony that is overshadowing the debate over the role of the civil society in India is actually weakening the phenomenon from within. The reason behind such an apprehension is the fact that such acrimony is not guided by intellectual necessity and is merely a personal one.

The logic behind such an observation stems from the fact that all the components of the acrimony have reached their pre-eminence because of the broader (global) discourse of the civil society being situated to replace the state in some areas of operation.

I do not think that the civil society movement is yet to get concrete shape in India. Although in its present context, the pre-eminence was a western influence but with the course of time it has developed organically cutting across the rural-urban divide. However, I do accept that at a very conceptual stage civil society was an urban phenomenon.

The mention of a weak executive is also not acceptable; since my understanding is that the Indian executive is very monolithic and hence is resistant to any structural changes at least in the power relations within the society.

Finally, I would like to thank everybody who took the time to read my blog and contributed to the debate. It is very encouraging and would definitely stimulate any future thinking.