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.
Showing posts with label Keynes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keynes. Show all posts
Tuesday
Friday
Great men think alike
The West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bandyopadhyay may be ‘ridiculed’ for her plans to turn Kolkata, the place where I belong, to London, the city where I have been living for over a decade now, but her way of thinking has now found a taker in no less than the US President Barack Obama. Apart from being ‘harbingers of change’ in their own constituencies, Bandyopadhyay’s economic policy of going on a spending spree without much concern for the health of the exchequer has now evinced interest for the Democrat President, who despite lot of hope and aspiration, is struggling to ensure a second term in office.
The rare Obama speech, delivered before the US Congress (on Thursday US Time, kept me awake till the early hours and a drowsy journey to work this morning lured me to frame a queer comparison between the two, which might be unfamiliar for any average person living outside West Bengal or without any clear knowledge about the state Chief Minister.
The speech that Obama delivered last night lacked much in detail, but the underlying message was crystal clear, ‘spend and get out of the economic mess' that the US and much of the western world is in. While there is a deliberate attempt to practice austerity (and carry out cuts) in the changed environment in Europe, yet Obama has taken recourse to the Keynesian way of creating demand through government spending. The impact of the stimulus packages, which the US and many other governments around the world announced after the demise of the Lehman Brothers, amidst the fear of a double dip recession, are debatable (although that was probably more of a historical necessity) but that did not deter President Obama from treading a path, which any conservative would find dangerous and self-defeating.
However, this is not the only manifestation of the desperation that Obama is facing in the run up to the presidential polls. In his much animated speech Thursday night, he couldn’t even resist the temptation of mentioning that the next round of elections were actually round the corner. “The next (presidential) election is 14 months away but the American people have no patience to wait that long”, quipped Obama. See the similarity in the rhetoric that Bandyopadhyay uses justifying her hasty approach: “I want move quickly and ready to learn from mistakes rather than do nothing”. Like Obama, Bandyopadhyay also wants to ensure jobs for the frontline staff, the teachers, nurses etc. build infrastructure projects (Obama calls for modernising airports and Bandyopadhyay wants to build new roads, hospitals etc.), plug government wastage and tax those who can afford to pay more (Obama mentions about Warren Buffett paying less tax than even his secretary).
Apart from the economic elements, there is also a shrewd political side to the whole saga. Despite being a Democrat, Obama has called for tax cuts which is very difficult for the Republicans to ignore and if they, because of their majority in the House of Representatives, try to block the President’s plan then there is a fear that the opposition would expose themselves to the American people (at least that is what the strategists in the White House are betting on.) On a similar vein, Bandyopadhyay can also combat any resistance to her plans, either from her opposition, including the CPI-M, or from her alliance partner the Congress, as being anti-development. At least the strategists from both sides are possibly thinking that the whole saga puts them in a virtual win-win situation.
However, the objective of this post is not to draw similarities between two personality cults operating in different circumstances or to compare Bandyopadhyay with Obama but to highlight what one of the greatest and influential economists of all times John Maynard Keynes, despite being a votary of the free market, observed during his time, that “even the government could fill in the shoes of business by investing in public works and hiring the unemployed”.
In an age when Keynesianism, as an economic doctrine, is considered to be exhausted and when the state plays only a secondary role to the private sector, Keynes might turn in his grave and say, “one day I saved Capitalism from Communist onslaughts and today I am back to save the whole world”.
Who knows?
The rare Obama speech, delivered before the US Congress (on Thursday US Time, kept me awake till the early hours and a drowsy journey to work this morning lured me to frame a queer comparison between the two, which might be unfamiliar for any average person living outside West Bengal or without any clear knowledge about the state Chief Minister.
The speech that Obama delivered last night lacked much in detail, but the underlying message was crystal clear, ‘spend and get out of the economic mess' that the US and much of the western world is in. While there is a deliberate attempt to practice austerity (and carry out cuts) in the changed environment in Europe, yet Obama has taken recourse to the Keynesian way of creating demand through government spending. The impact of the stimulus packages, which the US and many other governments around the world announced after the demise of the Lehman Brothers, amidst the fear of a double dip recession, are debatable (although that was probably more of a historical necessity) but that did not deter President Obama from treading a path, which any conservative would find dangerous and self-defeating.
However, this is not the only manifestation of the desperation that Obama is facing in the run up to the presidential polls. In his much animated speech Thursday night, he couldn’t even resist the temptation of mentioning that the next round of elections were actually round the corner. “The next (presidential) election is 14 months away but the American people have no patience to wait that long”, quipped Obama. See the similarity in the rhetoric that Bandyopadhyay uses justifying her hasty approach: “I want move quickly and ready to learn from mistakes rather than do nothing”. Like Obama, Bandyopadhyay also wants to ensure jobs for the frontline staff, the teachers, nurses etc. build infrastructure projects (Obama calls for modernising airports and Bandyopadhyay wants to build new roads, hospitals etc.), plug government wastage and tax those who can afford to pay more (Obama mentions about Warren Buffett paying less tax than even his secretary).
Apart from the economic elements, there is also a shrewd political side to the whole saga. Despite being a Democrat, Obama has called for tax cuts which is very difficult for the Republicans to ignore and if they, because of their majority in the House of Representatives, try to block the President’s plan then there is a fear that the opposition would expose themselves to the American people (at least that is what the strategists in the White House are betting on.) On a similar vein, Bandyopadhyay can also combat any resistance to her plans, either from her opposition, including the CPI-M, or from her alliance partner the Congress, as being anti-development. At least the strategists from both sides are possibly thinking that the whole saga puts them in a virtual win-win situation.
However, the objective of this post is not to draw similarities between two personality cults operating in different circumstances or to compare Bandyopadhyay with Obama but to highlight what one of the greatest and influential economists of all times John Maynard Keynes, despite being a votary of the free market, observed during his time, that “even the government could fill in the shoes of business by investing in public works and hiring the unemployed”.
In an age when Keynesianism, as an economic doctrine, is considered to be exhausted and when the state plays only a secondary role to the private sector, Keynes might turn in his grave and say, “one day I saved Capitalism from Communist onslaughts and today I am back to save the whole world”.
Who knows?
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