Hundreds of street parties are planned in London and thousands across Britain to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee in June. I had my first taste of street party in London last year, when the country burst into celebration to welcome the wedding of William Windsor and Kate Middleton.
Britons sang and danced on the streets to welcome their future heir to the throne. There were abundance of food and drinks and an air of optimism amidst the gloomy economic and social outlook, haunting Britain over the past few years. I didn't notice any such party in 2002 when Britain celebrated 50 years of the Queen's accession to the throne.
As I was passing by a notice put up by St. Stephen's Road Residents' Association inviting people to the street party on 4 June 2011, one thing that struck my mind was: There are street parties in London but no street cricket.
I have never seen children and teenagers playing cricket on the streets of London or in their estates, which was and still is common in the streets and alleys of Kolkata and her suburbs.
Tournaments are fought on the Indian streets with improvised bats, makeshift wickets and tennis balls, overlooking the security issues and other problems the game might cause to travellers. Often passers by would stop either to watch or participate in the game, and the participation, in whatever form, went beyond socio-economic and cultural barriers. Whatever be the background, when on the street with a cricket bat and a ball the only identity was that of a street cricketer.
This form of cricket could act as a social leveller ensuring cohesion in multi-cultural London. I am not sure whether the game was ever used to ensure socio-cultural harmony in the city and to inspire the youth, who are caught between drugs, violence, abuse and life without any direction.
Although there are claims that street cricket programme StreetChance has encouraged children and the youth of London to engage with the sports and refrained them from joining the gangs, which are so predominant in different parts of London, but its success has not been clearly evident, at least publicly.
This year street cricket has arrived on the streets of London. Not as a government programme though but in the imagination of a film-maker. Sid Sarkar and Sushanto Sarkar of Flame Visuals have visualised cricket as a way of bringing various communities together.
At a time when London is bustling with people from various socio-cultural, economic and ethnic backgrounds, nothing can be more appropriate than harmonising them, and that through some form of entertainment.
And what can be more entertaining than cricket, when England is giving the West Indians a real drubbing.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
Wednesday
When spring is short-lived
Around this time exactly a year ago, it was as if the spring had arrived in Bengal. A new government had taken over after a gap of over three decades and the change, whatever be the causal relationship, came as a gush of fresh air.
After the din and bustle of the state elections there was euphoria all around, not least because Mamata Banerjee took over the reins of the beleaguered state but because the Communists had been thrown out of power, exposing their vulnerability.
I remember the ray of hope I saw in the eyes of a young driver whose father lost his job following rampant and irresponsible trade unionism of the Left leaders.
The pout-faced chief ministers the people of the state were used to gave way to a leader who mingled with the masses, drank tea from earthen pots with the proverbial 'proletariat' after getting drenched in rain, responded to phone calls even from political opponents, tried to dissolve the government's partisan position which dominated the political sphere of Bengal for decades and made it a point to prove that she was indeed a people's leader.
The late spring that sprang in the midst of a humid summer filled the air with hope even when the people of the state were despairing the torrential monsoon downpour.
The situation in Darjeeling, the favourite destination of Bengali tourists for generations, was much different from a lull before the storm. The ultra-radical Maoists of Junglemahal took a breather probably to celebrate the downfall of a regime which tried to crush them to the ground only using force without initiating any political process.
And as the newly elected chief minister relished the positive changes that came her way, Mamata Banerjee's followers gradually took the people of the state for a ride.
The ever lasting influence of the CPI-M started showing even in its bitter rival, only driving home the fact the 'party' was one of the few things which got intrinsically associated with the institution of the state in Bengal.
Some of the intellectuals who helped the Trinamool Congress supremo to get the better of the polls started smelling rat. Questions were raked up in people's minds as to whether the transformation that the state underwent actually adhered to the much aspired 'change'. Signs of cracks started surfacing in the rock solid bond between the Trinamool Congress supremo and her intellectual backers.
Soon the waves of 'change' would turn into a Nor'wester that is very common when spring gives way to a baking summer in rural Bengal. This time it was the entire state, and to some extent the national politics, which seemed perplexed by the caricature that came along.
On the one hand, India's central government, led by the Congress, stood helpless in the face of the political onslaught launched by Mamata Banerjee to keep her image as a people's person intact, on the other she epitomised a typical politician in power who saw ghosts in her dreams.
The result was a political disarray gripping the state, and taking advantage of the overall confusion, the CPI-M supporters made full use of their imagination to ridicule and undermine the Trinamool Congress government. It was an irony that the CPI-M which once vehemently opposed the introduction of computers in the state was now trying to make full use of technology to launch a vitriolic campaign against Mamata Banerjee.
Despite some desperate efforts, which often seem mindless and trivial, the opposition is yet to cut any ice in the support base of Mamata Banerjee. The irony again is that the social media campaign of the Left hardly made any impact in rural Bengal, which once formed the crux of their power base.
My sources say whatever impact, if any, the vitriolic campaign could achieve was mainly confined to the urban middle class.
The triviality of such mindless campaign of the Left and the way the Trinamool Congress conducted itself, by getting into a slanging match, in effect brought down the gravitas of the politics in the state to such a level that the real issues facing the people of Bengal got mired in the humdrum of naive political point scoring and brinkmanship.
The sudden spring which ushered in the horizon of Bengal around the same time last year had been short-lived and the people of the state again got stuck in the alley of moribund politics.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
After the din and bustle of the state elections there was euphoria all around, not least because Mamata Banerjee took over the reins of the beleaguered state but because the Communists had been thrown out of power, exposing their vulnerability.
I remember the ray of hope I saw in the eyes of a young driver whose father lost his job following rampant and irresponsible trade unionism of the Left leaders.
The pout-faced chief ministers the people of the state were used to gave way to a leader who mingled with the masses, drank tea from earthen pots with the proverbial 'proletariat' after getting drenched in rain, responded to phone calls even from political opponents, tried to dissolve the government's partisan position which dominated the political sphere of Bengal for decades and made it a point to prove that she was indeed a people's leader.
The late spring that sprang in the midst of a humid summer filled the air with hope even when the people of the state were despairing the torrential monsoon downpour.
The situation in Darjeeling, the favourite destination of Bengali tourists for generations, was much different from a lull before the storm. The ultra-radical Maoists of Junglemahal took a breather probably to celebrate the downfall of a regime which tried to crush them to the ground only using force without initiating any political process.
And as the newly elected chief minister relished the positive changes that came her way, Mamata Banerjee's followers gradually took the people of the state for a ride.
The ever lasting influence of the CPI-M started showing even in its bitter rival, only driving home the fact the 'party' was one of the few things which got intrinsically associated with the institution of the state in Bengal.
Some of the intellectuals who helped the Trinamool Congress supremo to get the better of the polls started smelling rat. Questions were raked up in people's minds as to whether the transformation that the state underwent actually adhered to the much aspired 'change'. Signs of cracks started surfacing in the rock solid bond between the Trinamool Congress supremo and her intellectual backers.
Soon the waves of 'change' would turn into a Nor'wester that is very common when spring gives way to a baking summer in rural Bengal. This time it was the entire state, and to some extent the national politics, which seemed perplexed by the caricature that came along.
On the one hand, India's central government, led by the Congress, stood helpless in the face of the political onslaught launched by Mamata Banerjee to keep her image as a people's person intact, on the other she epitomised a typical politician in power who saw ghosts in her dreams.
The result was a political disarray gripping the state, and taking advantage of the overall confusion, the CPI-M supporters made full use of their imagination to ridicule and undermine the Trinamool Congress government. It was an irony that the CPI-M which once vehemently opposed the introduction of computers in the state was now trying to make full use of technology to launch a vitriolic campaign against Mamata Banerjee.
Despite some desperate efforts, which often seem mindless and trivial, the opposition is yet to cut any ice in the support base of Mamata Banerjee. The irony again is that the social media campaign of the Left hardly made any impact in rural Bengal, which once formed the crux of their power base.
My sources say whatever impact, if any, the vitriolic campaign could achieve was mainly confined to the urban middle class.
The triviality of such mindless campaign of the Left and the way the Trinamool Congress conducted itself, by getting into a slanging match, in effect brought down the gravitas of the politics in the state to such a level that the real issues facing the people of Bengal got mired in the humdrum of naive political point scoring and brinkmanship.
The sudden spring which ushered in the horizon of Bengal around the same time last year had been short-lived and the people of the state again got stuck in the alley of moribund politics.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
Friday
Pranab Mukherjee: A 'vintage' politician
Name any political position of authority and he is most suitable for it. Think of any crisis and he is the man who will use his tact and political acumen to douse it off. He is Pranab Mukherjee, the 'vintage' man of Indian politics. An industrialist who benefited immensely from the pre-liberalisation days of 'Licence Raj', once jocularly likened him with "vintage wine, getting better with each passing year".
And Pranab Mukherjee's efficient handling of difficult situations is not confined within the country. No wonder he is despatched to meet the US President to mitigate any obstacle coming in the way of the civilian nuclear deal or to represent India in the high table of G20 countries.
The most efficient crisis manager of the Manmohan Singh government and the Congress is possibly not the most trusted man of the party high command. Gone are the days, when Pranab Mukherjee used to be the most trusted lieutenant of Indira Gandhi. It was she who spotted Pranab Mukherjee's talent, while he was delivering a speech in Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Indian Parliament, supporting bank nationalisation, a pet political project of Indira Gandhi.
Since then Pranab Mukherjee has shown unflinching loyalty to Indira Gandhi, so much so that the former Prime Minister once remarked that if he was hit on the head with a hammer, nothing but smoke would come out of his mouth. Once a chain pipe smoker, Pranab Mukherjee has now quit smoking but his loyalty and respect for Indira Gandhi remains unchanged.
The political acumen of Pranab Mukherjee taught him where the power rests and this guided him not once but twice to be on the right side of it. Firstly, when he deserted his political mentor Ajoy Mukherjee, of the Bangla Congress, to side with the Congress led by Indira Gandhi in the early 1970s and again when he chose to side with his leader after her colossal defeat in 1977.
Pranab Mukherjee was aptly rewarded for his unflinching loyalty. He occupied the second position in the Indira Gandhi cabinet, despite not winning a single election, based on popular mandate. But it was this trust and loyalty which went against him when Rajiv Gandhi assumed power, after his mother's brutal assassination.
It is widely believed that Pranab Mukherjee aspired to be Prime Minister after Indira Gandhi's assassination. But sources close to a veteran journalist, who was privy to a conversation between Rajiv Gandhi, Pranab Mukherjee and late Congress leader A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury on their way to Delhi from Kolkata after Indira Gandhi's assassination, said Pranab Mukherjee only offered to undertake the interim position in the event of a constitutional bottleneck coming in the way of making Rajiv Gandhi the Prime Minister.
My sources said the story on Pranab Mukherjee's prime ministerial ambition was the handiwork of A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury, Pranab Mukherjee's one time bete noire in the party, then Home Minister P V Narsimha Rao, and Rajiv Gandhi's close friends Arun Nehru and Arun Singh. While the party veterans (A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury and P V Narsimha Rao) wanted to make sure that the trust of the Gandhi family on Pranab Mukherjee was vitiated, the namesakes (Arun Nehru and Arun Singh) hatched the conspiracy theory to isolate Rajiv Gandhi from the most trusted person of his mother.
As history would show, this paved the way of V P Singh becoming the Finance Minister in the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet and the expulsion of Pranab Mukherjee from the party. Pranab Mukherjee later confided that he never deserted the Congress, it was the party high command which threw him out. Although Pranab Mukherjee was taken back in the party but by that time the damage was done. Rajiv Gandhi was thrown out of power and the 'hate campaign' launched by V P Singh and his friends like K Karunanidhi, Jyoti Basu and Arun Nehru indirectly contributed to Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.
An inappropriate decision by Rajiv Gandhi to expel Pranab Mukherjee in 1985 indirectly contributed to his brutal killing. A similar mistake, of not projecting Pranab Mukherjee as a consensus presidential candidate after Pratibha Patil demits office, would tantamount to a political blunder for the country.
At a time when Manmohan Singh has turned into a lame duck Prime Minister without any real authority in office and the entire political class facing serious public apathy following charges of large scale corruption and lack of governance, the political mind in Pranab Mukherjee, holding the presidency, can add some shine and bestow some faith on the institutions of politics in the country.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
And Pranab Mukherjee's efficient handling of difficult situations is not confined within the country. No wonder he is despatched to meet the US President to mitigate any obstacle coming in the way of the civilian nuclear deal or to represent India in the high table of G20 countries.
The most efficient crisis manager of the Manmohan Singh government and the Congress is possibly not the most trusted man of the party high command. Gone are the days, when Pranab Mukherjee used to be the most trusted lieutenant of Indira Gandhi. It was she who spotted Pranab Mukherjee's talent, while he was delivering a speech in Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Indian Parliament, supporting bank nationalisation, a pet political project of Indira Gandhi.
Since then Pranab Mukherjee has shown unflinching loyalty to Indira Gandhi, so much so that the former Prime Minister once remarked that if he was hit on the head with a hammer, nothing but smoke would come out of his mouth. Once a chain pipe smoker, Pranab Mukherjee has now quit smoking but his loyalty and respect for Indira Gandhi remains unchanged.
The political acumen of Pranab Mukherjee taught him where the power rests and this guided him not once but twice to be on the right side of it. Firstly, when he deserted his political mentor Ajoy Mukherjee, of the Bangla Congress, to side with the Congress led by Indira Gandhi in the early 1970s and again when he chose to side with his leader after her colossal defeat in 1977.
Pranab Mukherjee was aptly rewarded for his unflinching loyalty. He occupied the second position in the Indira Gandhi cabinet, despite not winning a single election, based on popular mandate. But it was this trust and loyalty which went against him when Rajiv Gandhi assumed power, after his mother's brutal assassination.
It is widely believed that Pranab Mukherjee aspired to be Prime Minister after Indira Gandhi's assassination. But sources close to a veteran journalist, who was privy to a conversation between Rajiv Gandhi, Pranab Mukherjee and late Congress leader A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury on their way to Delhi from Kolkata after Indira Gandhi's assassination, said Pranab Mukherjee only offered to undertake the interim position in the event of a constitutional bottleneck coming in the way of making Rajiv Gandhi the Prime Minister.
My sources said the story on Pranab Mukherjee's prime ministerial ambition was the handiwork of A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury, Pranab Mukherjee's one time bete noire in the party, then Home Minister P V Narsimha Rao, and Rajiv Gandhi's close friends Arun Nehru and Arun Singh. While the party veterans (A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury and P V Narsimha Rao) wanted to make sure that the trust of the Gandhi family on Pranab Mukherjee was vitiated, the namesakes (Arun Nehru and Arun Singh) hatched the conspiracy theory to isolate Rajiv Gandhi from the most trusted person of his mother.
As history would show, this paved the way of V P Singh becoming the Finance Minister in the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet and the expulsion of Pranab Mukherjee from the party. Pranab Mukherjee later confided that he never deserted the Congress, it was the party high command which threw him out. Although Pranab Mukherjee was taken back in the party but by that time the damage was done. Rajiv Gandhi was thrown out of power and the 'hate campaign' launched by V P Singh and his friends like K Karunanidhi, Jyoti Basu and Arun Nehru indirectly contributed to Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.
An inappropriate decision by Rajiv Gandhi to expel Pranab Mukherjee in 1985 indirectly contributed to his brutal killing. A similar mistake, of not projecting Pranab Mukherjee as a consensus presidential candidate after Pratibha Patil demits office, would tantamount to a political blunder for the country.
At a time when Manmohan Singh has turned into a lame duck Prime Minister without any real authority in office and the entire political class facing serious public apathy following charges of large scale corruption and lack of governance, the political mind in Pranab Mukherjee, holding the presidency, can add some shine and bestow some faith on the institutions of politics in the country.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
There is no alternative
TINA or 'there is no alternative' is a terminology I grew up with. I had developed an interest for the flavour of Indian politics around the time when Indira Gandhi returned to power at the fag end of 1979.
Her return demonstrated the incompatibility of the non-Congress parties. TINA was a common parlance used by the political commentators then. The Congress enjoyed the benefits of the TINA-factor during the regimes of Rajiv Gandhi, who came to power with a historic majority, and P V Narsimha Rao, who completed a full term virtually running a minority government.
Politics they say make strange bedfellows. But nothing is stranger than the bedfellows Indian political parties are making in an era of coalition politics. So much so, that probably the TINA-factor hardly holds any ground in Indian politics now.
It is, however, not the case in the UK, although on a different context.
The recent local government elections in England, Wales and Scotland have shown that the electorates hardly have any alternative.
The Labour Party may have won a few hundred seats in local councils up and down the country, not unusual after the incumbent in Westminster is midway through its tenure, but the policies of its sheepish leader in Ed Miliband are not good enough to drag UK out of the current crises.
A careful scrutiny of the major policies of the ruling coalition and the main opposition would reveal no radical difference, only to show why the current state of politics in the country is more based on rhetoric and spin, rather than on substance.
This also explains the apathy of the electorate to vote.
When I decided to abstain from voting on Thursday night (3 May), hardly did I know that only 32 per cent of the voters would care to cast their ballots, the lowest since 2000.
The fact that voters in Manchester, Nottingham, Bradford and Coventry have rejected the proposal of having a directly elected Mayor, also shows that the people do not want any more powers for the politicians.
With the British electorate struggling with their lives, jobs and the future, David Cameron's "bright ideas" are thrown out of the window.
I remember Nick Clegg often telling the voters during the last general election campaign that he came to politics only to change it. As the past two years of the coalition government would show, politics has hardly changed, leave aside changing for the better.
The street smart politicians are only interested in scoring brownie points, not with their actions but with words. Mr Clegg is now seen more as an opportunist, interested only in personal political (not even for the party) gains, rather than bringing about good for the society.
Despite the Big Society argument of Mr Cameron, it is the ordinary man who is the least powerful and at the receiving end of the politics of the day.
The Labour Party on the other hand suffers from policy paralysis. Lack of innovative ideas make them indistinguishable from the ruling formation they are opposing.
Given the crises the Britons are facing, UK badly needs a leader who can bring about radical changes while taking the British public into confidence about his or her sincerity. The array of leaders at their disposal would hardly inspire the electorate of any crisis-ridden nation.
Unfortunately, there is no alternative available to the British people.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
Her return demonstrated the incompatibility of the non-Congress parties. TINA was a common parlance used by the political commentators then. The Congress enjoyed the benefits of the TINA-factor during the regimes of Rajiv Gandhi, who came to power with a historic majority, and P V Narsimha Rao, who completed a full term virtually running a minority government.
Politics they say make strange bedfellows. But nothing is stranger than the bedfellows Indian political parties are making in an era of coalition politics. So much so, that probably the TINA-factor hardly holds any ground in Indian politics now.
It is, however, not the case in the UK, although on a different context.
The recent local government elections in England, Wales and Scotland have shown that the electorates hardly have any alternative.
The Labour Party may have won a few hundred seats in local councils up and down the country, not unusual after the incumbent in Westminster is midway through its tenure, but the policies of its sheepish leader in Ed Miliband are not good enough to drag UK out of the current crises.
A careful scrutiny of the major policies of the ruling coalition and the main opposition would reveal no radical difference, only to show why the current state of politics in the country is more based on rhetoric and spin, rather than on substance.
This also explains the apathy of the electorate to vote.
When I decided to abstain from voting on Thursday night (3 May), hardly did I know that only 32 per cent of the voters would care to cast their ballots, the lowest since 2000.
The fact that voters in Manchester, Nottingham, Bradford and Coventry have rejected the proposal of having a directly elected Mayor, also shows that the people do not want any more powers for the politicians.
With the British electorate struggling with their lives, jobs and the future, David Cameron's "bright ideas" are thrown out of the window.
I remember Nick Clegg often telling the voters during the last general election campaign that he came to politics only to change it. As the past two years of the coalition government would show, politics has hardly changed, leave aside changing for the better.
The street smart politicians are only interested in scoring brownie points, not with their actions but with words. Mr Clegg is now seen more as an opportunist, interested only in personal political (not even for the party) gains, rather than bringing about good for the society.
Despite the Big Society argument of Mr Cameron, it is the ordinary man who is the least powerful and at the receiving end of the politics of the day.
The Labour Party on the other hand suffers from policy paralysis. Lack of innovative ideas make them indistinguishable from the ruling formation they are opposing.
Given the crises the Britons are facing, UK badly needs a leader who can bring about radical changes while taking the British public into confidence about his or her sincerity. The array of leaders at their disposal would hardly inspire the electorate of any crisis-ridden nation.
Unfortunately, there is no alternative available to the British people.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
Thursday
Missed opportunity Mr Bin Laden
The news on the release of Osama Bin Laden's documents from the secret hideout caught my eyes almost three hours after the story was first put out on the BBC website.
Probably an indicator that he no longer evokes such interest as was the case in the not so distant past.
There was a time when videos attributed to Bin Laden used to evince hair-raising experiences in newsrooms.
The timings of uncovering the videos were well planned, often directed to attract maximum attention from the White House and the population its resident represented.
Often the videos would be uncovered just before we were to go on air and it would be a challenge to decipher its content in a presentable form for our listeners.
The only common factor was a caveat that the authenticity of the videos couldn't be verified independently.
Not any more.
The documents posted online by the research wing of the US military academy, West Point, show that Bin Laden was a "frustrated man" in his hideout at Abottabad, struggling to control an unruly al-Qaeda network.
Reading through the story, I was expecting that somewhere down the line Bin Laden would seem a changed man, repenting the inspiration and leadership he provided to al Qaeda in causing mayhem all around the world.
I was expecting to see Bin Laden influenced by the non-violent principles of Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King or even Nelson Mandela.
It was not unnatural though to have such philosophical thoughts leading to change in mind, given the serenity of Abottabad.
But that was not to be.
Had it been so, Bin Laden would have probably survived the attacks from the US forces and may even have been revered as the present day Ashoka.
It was a missed opportunity Mr Bin Laden.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
Probably an indicator that he no longer evokes such interest as was the case in the not so distant past.
There was a time when videos attributed to Bin Laden used to evince hair-raising experiences in newsrooms.
The timings of uncovering the videos were well planned, often directed to attract maximum attention from the White House and the population its resident represented.
Often the videos would be uncovered just before we were to go on air and it would be a challenge to decipher its content in a presentable form for our listeners.
The only common factor was a caveat that the authenticity of the videos couldn't be verified independently.
Not any more.
The documents posted online by the research wing of the US military academy, West Point, show that Bin Laden was a "frustrated man" in his hideout at Abottabad, struggling to control an unruly al-Qaeda network.
Reading through the story, I was expecting that somewhere down the line Bin Laden would seem a changed man, repenting the inspiration and leadership he provided to al Qaeda in causing mayhem all around the world.
I was expecting to see Bin Laden influenced by the non-violent principles of Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King or even Nelson Mandela.
It was not unnatural though to have such philosophical thoughts leading to change in mind, given the serenity of Abottabad.
But that was not to be.
Had it been so, Bin Laden would have probably survived the attacks from the US forces and may even have been revered as the present day Ashoka.
It was a missed opportunity Mr Bin Laden.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
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