My Idea of India

The King's India Institute was formally inaugurated on January 26, India's Republic Day. It is on such days that the feeling of Indianness reverberates within me. My inner self stokes with an inquisitiveness as to what India stands for me in the 21st century.

Almost 65 years ago at the stroke of midnight hour when India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru delivered his famous 'Tryst with Destiny' speech, not many people were hopeful that India, as it stands now, would traverse such a length of time united. The parting of the British rulers , who encapsulated the diversity and robustness of India in the form of a nation state, was seen as a signal that the disintegration of the country was only a matter of time. The communal violence which accompanied India into her independence only gave credence to such cynicism. However, as history has shown, India has managed to keep her borders intact, notwithstanding the threats posed by terrorism, diverse aspirations of the various ethnic, religious, linguistic and social groups, poverty and social inequality. The diversity of India turned out to be her binding force and the apprehension of disintegration seems nothing more than a cliche now.

It was not an easy journey though. The path of democracy that India embarked upon created the political matrix which held the various religious, linguistic and ethnic groups together. The sense of Indianness has grown in strength with passing time and now the whole world wants to have a share in India's success story. It is now an incentive to be part of India, in whatever form, than to ignore her spread in various spheres of modern life. It is not only the economic success of India which lured the whole world but also her democratic polity, which promotes pluralism. Despite all its shortcomings, India never thought of abandoning democracy. The plurality in India made the politics in the country more vibrant. If nationalism and patriotism were India's strength then it never came in the way of allowing others to question majoritarianism.

I was born at a time when the experiment called India was still at its early stage. Despite several successful  elections, democracy was not as deep rooted as it is now. Poverty threatened the very existence of a young nation. Patriotism and nationalism were yet to give way to pragmatism and rational thinking and India was still not sure whether it could hold on to what it stands for. My first test of Indianness happened when as a seven year old boy I saw the nation burst into celebration after the defeat of Indira Gandhi in the 1977 elections. It was a national celebration and the young mind in me never looked for a regional rationale or a Bengali element to it. I am proud to be a Bengalee but my Bengaleeness was not an incentive enough to abandon or overlook my Indian identity.

Almost three decades after my birth, on the very day when I stepped outside my motherland, I was witness to a situation which only strengthened my bond with India and the idea it stood for. The day I reached London in 1999, a Greek girl asked me how come Bengali is spoken in both India and Bangladesh yet they are two separate countries. It is not an exceptional case though, however, it is not very usual to the homogeneity that the Europeans are used to. Even before I could respond, a colleague of mine from Bangladesh quipped: "We carved out a country for ourselves but they chose to remain with India."

To tell the truth, I was not a bit offended. I visualised myself more as an Indian than a Bengalee. My Bengalee identity lies in the cradle of India and it is  true for all facets of my existence, be it physical, emotional, psychological, political or economic. India lies at the very heart of my identity, not only because I am an Indian by birth but because of the plurality, democratic politics and more than anything else the sense of intellectual excitement she stimulates.

Now with the economic rise of India, there is a well defined trend of reverse migration. Many people who left India to enjoy and explore the opportunities and comfort of the West are now home drawn. It is not unusual at a time when the whole world wants to have a share of India. Despite a third of the world's poor people still living in India and the unexplainable inequalities, India is considered to be the land of opportunities, achieving what she has, despite democratic pluralism. On my part though, I would like to see India from a distance and relish her rise from a different perspective than being sipped into it.

My idea of Indianness became more pronounced ever since I left the country about 12 years ago and Sunil Khilnani's 'The Idea of India', the first book that I bought in London from the Economist Bookshop at Piccadilly Circus, stoked it even further. I wonder whether my sense of Indianness would have been so pronounced and well defined had I remained within her physical confines, travelled to work everyday on a crowded local train from a Kolkata suburb or got stuck in a traffic snarl near ITO in Delhi. India for me is more of a concept which goes beyond anything physical and stimulates my intellectual imagination.

All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.

Let's take it easy

Even in the new year the air looks gloomy. Unemployment, social unrest, accidents and natural calamities - things continue as they were in 2011. Well nobody expected things to change dramatically, yet everybody hoped that 2012 would look slightly better. After all we have to hope to live.

As I was groping to find a topic to write my first post in the new year, I thought, why not write as if I am scribbling my mind on a sheet of paper. This is just an experiment. It would be nice to know your thoughts on listless writing. After all the year end partying, the brain needs some rest so that it could again gear up with some fresh energy.

My daughter, Seemontini, in her blog Silly Billy Thoughts, has been describing every party we were going during the Christmas break. She also had something to say about DON 2, which we watched in 3D just before the new year. My daughter always complains that my posts are just too serious. Probably she is right. Who cares about what I think on the crisis of capitalism, although it provides me with an intellectual nudge.

So I have decided to be less formal this year. Less intellectually burdened and my posts would be more about what would come from the top of my head. You may not like my computer scribblings but it would give me and many others a break.

Let's take it easy man.


All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.

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.