The Economist reported how the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, surrounded by friends and colleagues, cut a lonely figure at a recent meeting to assess the economic reforms he initiated over two decades ago and also to celebrate his work, seen as the main reason behind India's high growth trajectory.
I can see the eagerness of publications like The Economist to push for more reforms in India so as to open up the economy to foreign interests. As well orchestrated tools of the West to further business interests, they are quite right in putting forward the argument that India needs to open up more to sustain the momentum of high growth.
Given the economic climate in the West, many European and American companies are now making a beeline to grab a share of the market in the East. India is a favourite destination of foreign companies given its huge internal market, ever expanding upward mobile middle class, a relatively young population enjoying the benefits of liberalisation and having a higher consumption level, long sustained commitment to democratic pluralism and India's longstanding relationship with the West.
Despite such a long list of benefits accruing to the businesses from the developed countries in India, there is a sustained outcry about the bottlenecks of investing in the country. One need not lose sight of the fact that India is a case of economic dualism where the filthy rich live side by side with the people in abject poverty.
In such a situation, politicians often work out policy bottlenecks not out of patriotism or as checks and balances backed by any high idealism of doing good to the society, but more often to play to their political gallery, consisting of more poor people than the rich, to demonstrate their commitment, even if it is symbolic, to the dispossessed and the downtrodden. This is true cutting across all political lines.
Politicians in India are having their heydays because of the country's track record on democracy and the resilience of the Indians deserves the most credit for it. Since the lopsided prescriptions of global institutions like the World Bank and the IMF or the mandates spelt out by the credit rating agencies have no democratic endorsements, politicians are often wary of accepting them in the apprehension of losing their positions of privilege in the impoverished and opaque Indian society.
I do not have an iota of paranoia about liberalisation or the West. On the contrary, I value many of the liberal and democratic principles of the western society. My classmates at the St. Xavier's College in Kolkata, know how the first phase of economic liberalisation of 1991 was welcomed in our lunchtime discussions at Arun Da's canteen. However, in my subsequent life as a journalist, I have witnessed the not so happy side of economic liberalisation, not only in India but also elsewhere. More than anything else, economic liberalisation has increased disparity, weakened social cohesion and made lives more insecure than ever before.
The Economist probably refers to the fact that the culture of acknowledging the importance of high growth is not deep-seated among the Indian middle class, when it states: ".....India's middle class has no clue how high economic growth was first brought about, and instead is deeply, and increasingly, suspicious of capitalism and liberalisation. The result, as another speaker eloquently pointed out, is that there is no political constituency for reform."
It is important that the politicians reform themselves first to carve out a populous constituency for economic reforms. No reform is without pain, which is worth bearing only if the privileged in the society, and this includes politicians, can demonstrate that they are also sharing a part of it. The ordinary people can't be expected to bear the brunt of reforms when the politicians are seen to be making hay.
Political reform is a necessary pre-requisite for the next phase of economic reforms in India. Since politics is overarching in Indian society and the politicians are among the most privileged, reforming the political system would have its impact on other elements of the society. More often than not, political patronage or the lack of it make and unmake personalities in India.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
Wednesday
Thursday
Vexed Views
The recent dictum of the West Bengal government, led by Mamata Banerjee, to the public and state sponsored libraries not to subscribe to any newspaper but the eight (this figure has been revised later) has created a lot of furore. Banerjee is blamed for being partisan, an allegation she herself hurled against the Left Front, during her years of campaign which ultimately brought the Trinamool Congress to power. In his guest post for Stray Thoughts, veteran journalist Buroshiva Dasgupta looks at the complex relationship between the state and the media and reflects on how the political parties in West Bengal coax and compel the media for their own benefit.
In my days with The Statesman (1977-86), I wrote few articles, which the Left Front, then the ruling formation in West Bengal, did not like at all. One of them was on the list which the Left Front government had prepared and sent to all public libraries as a guideline for book purchases. The list had several books written by Marx and Lenin and of several writers well known for their Marxist beliefs. Only two thin volumes of the greatest Bengali poet and thinker Rabindranath Tagore (one as far as I can remember now was Letters from Russia) was included in the list.
During the time, the Left was also trying to discontinue Tagore’s ‘Sahaj Path’, the children’s primer; from schools on the ground that Tagore was ‘feudal’. I wrote another article showing how wrong it was to describe Sahaj Path as ‘feudal’. Both the stories in The Statesman created quite a public uproar and we saw how finally the government had to retreat on their decisions, seek public apology and rectify. The lists used for library purchases had to be amended in the subsequent years and the plan to remove Sahaj Path from schools dropped.
Recently, Mamata Banerjee’s decision to dictate the public libraries buy only a handful of newspapers, who are loyal to the government and keep out the major ones who are critical makes me relive my past experience of the Left’s highhandedness.
Power is surely a corrupting influence. Banerjee was very friendly across the media when she was fighting the elections to defeat the Left. She even visited the office of Bartaman (one of the popular newspapers in Kolkata) and garlanded the portrait of its founder-editor Barun Sengupta immediately after the election results were published. She was extremely cordial with Star Ananda – the television news channel of the Anandabazar Patrika (ABP) Group – and its anchors.
The channel covered initially almost every bit of her life from Kalighat home to the Writers’ Building, the state administrative headquarters. But when the media started becoming critical - first the Bartaman and then the ABP – she lost her temper. She boycotted Star Ananda and ordered all her ministers to boycott the channel. This boycott was followed by the Left Front government, once ABP’s honeymoon with Buddhadeb Bhattacharya was over.
Government’s handling of the media, one need to realise, is a specialised affair and it is not everybody’s cup of tea. Media does not exist just to write only about the ‘good work’ of the government; nor should the government think it that way. Media too is not clean enough - we have heard about the ‘paid news’ and about the lobbying of Neera Radia.
We have also seen for long the power wielded by party mouthpieces like the Ganashakti of the CPI (M) and now lately the Jago Bangla of the Trinamool Congress. But we don’t expect the frontline daily newspapers and channels to follow party lines. And that is what precisely Banerjee has charged the media of – to justify her stand of keeping out the major newspapers from the library purchase list.
All the frontline English newspapers are off the list. Are we to believe that these English language newspapers are all political? Even CNN and Fox News are sometimes accused of having rival political strings attached. But can you think of the US government boycotting them?
Dr Buroshiva Dasgupta is a veteran journalist, columnist and a media academic. He has been a practising journalist for over 25 years with major Indian newspapers like The Statesmen, The Times of India, The Economic Times, The Indian Express and The Financial Express. He writes extensively on politics, economy, environment, culture and contemporary Indian life. As a media academic he is associated with the Manipal Institute of Communication, the University of Asmara in Eritrea and many other Indian educational institutes of repute. He did his PhD on New Media and New Poetics: the changing interface from the Calcutta University, and is the founder-editor of the Indian Edition of the Global Media Journal. He has compiled a book named, ‘Market, Media and Democracy’.
In my days with The Statesman (1977-86), I wrote few articles, which the Left Front, then the ruling formation in West Bengal, did not like at all. One of them was on the list which the Left Front government had prepared and sent to all public libraries as a guideline for book purchases. The list had several books written by Marx and Lenin and of several writers well known for their Marxist beliefs. Only two thin volumes of the greatest Bengali poet and thinker Rabindranath Tagore (one as far as I can remember now was Letters from Russia) was included in the list.
During the time, the Left was also trying to discontinue Tagore’s ‘Sahaj Path’, the children’s primer; from schools on the ground that Tagore was ‘feudal’. I wrote another article showing how wrong it was to describe Sahaj Path as ‘feudal’. Both the stories in The Statesman created quite a public uproar and we saw how finally the government had to retreat on their decisions, seek public apology and rectify. The lists used for library purchases had to be amended in the subsequent years and the plan to remove Sahaj Path from schools dropped.
Recently, Mamata Banerjee’s decision to dictate the public libraries buy only a handful of newspapers, who are loyal to the government and keep out the major ones who are critical makes me relive my past experience of the Left’s highhandedness.
Power is surely a corrupting influence. Banerjee was very friendly across the media when she was fighting the elections to defeat the Left. She even visited the office of Bartaman (one of the popular newspapers in Kolkata) and garlanded the portrait of its founder-editor Barun Sengupta immediately after the election results were published. She was extremely cordial with Star Ananda – the television news channel of the Anandabazar Patrika (ABP) Group – and its anchors.
The channel covered initially almost every bit of her life from Kalighat home to the Writers’ Building, the state administrative headquarters. But when the media started becoming critical - first the Bartaman and then the ABP – she lost her temper. She boycotted Star Ananda and ordered all her ministers to boycott the channel. This boycott was followed by the Left Front government, once ABP’s honeymoon with Buddhadeb Bhattacharya was over.
Government’s handling of the media, one need to realise, is a specialised affair and it is not everybody’s cup of tea. Media does not exist just to write only about the ‘good work’ of the government; nor should the government think it that way. Media too is not clean enough - we have heard about the ‘paid news’ and about the lobbying of Neera Radia.
We have also seen for long the power wielded by party mouthpieces like the Ganashakti of the CPI (M) and now lately the Jago Bangla of the Trinamool Congress. But we don’t expect the frontline daily newspapers and channels to follow party lines. And that is what precisely Banerjee has charged the media of – to justify her stand of keeping out the major newspapers from the library purchase list.
All the frontline English newspapers are off the list. Are we to believe that these English language newspapers are all political? Even CNN and Fox News are sometimes accused of having rival political strings attached. But can you think of the US government boycotting them?
Dr Buroshiva Dasgupta is a veteran journalist, columnist and a media academic. He has been a practising journalist for over 25 years with major Indian newspapers like The Statesmen, The Times of India, The Economic Times, The Indian Express and The Financial Express. He writes extensively on politics, economy, environment, culture and contemporary Indian life. As a media academic he is associated with the Manipal Institute of Communication, the University of Asmara in Eritrea and many other Indian educational institutes of repute. He did his PhD on New Media and New Poetics: the changing interface from the Calcutta University, and is the founder-editor of the Indian Edition of the Global Media Journal. He has compiled a book named, ‘Market, Media and Democracy’.
Trivialising Poverty
Listening to the debate on poverty in the Indian parliament, I was reminded of my visit to the slums of New Delhi while covering elections in India. India aspires to be a superpower in the 21st century. I wonder whether this national aspiration has anything to do with the people who live all their lives in the squalor and filth right at the heart of the national capital.
Listening to the lawmakers shedding crocodile tears for the poor, I was reminded of the people I met in Bengal's Murshidabad district, who lost their homes, schools and livelihood to the river and the government didn't do enough to stop the land erosion.
I was reminded of the people who lost their limbs as a result of arsenic contamination of drinking water and yet didn't know where to go to seek help.
Do these people aspire to be part of a nation which wants to see itself as a superpower in the post-US world order?
For a change the Indian lawmakers, went beyond discussing scandals and the triviality of blame game and political upmanship to discuss poverty. However, to my mind, all the parties - the lawmakers, the national planning commission, the intellectuals and the media - who were engaged in the debate on redefining the poverty line in the country were busy in a trivial exercise of futility.
I am not an economist but as any ordinary person would say, the objective of studying poverty is to improve the standard of living of the poor people so that they can lead a healthy life and aspire to fulfil their lifetime ambitions. One should not be too occupied with the academic discourses so as to lose sight of the final destination, which is to free India from abject poverty.
Those who know the Deputy Chairman of the Indian Planning Commission Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia well will possibly agree with me that, ideologically he is a firm believer of the 'Trickle Down Hypotheis', i.e. if the economy grows then its positive effects percolate from the top to the people who are at the lower levels of the economy. Since India is on a growth path ranging from seven to nine per cent annually, there is an ideological obligation on the part of people like Dr Ahluwalia to claim that poverty level is coming down, which is probably true but not enough in a country which houses almost two-third of the world's poor people and with such stark economic disparity.
There are empirical studies to justify and negate the trickle down effect, but as an ordinary man I think that the social, economic and political architecture of our society has become so complex now that it is almost Utopian to assume that the hypothesis works in its entirety.
Rather than assuming that the trickle down hypothesis works, both the central and state governments should make targeted efforts to bring people out of poverty. Large scale poverty alleviation programmes may lead to leakage by way of corruption and bureaucratic mismanagement. Targeted programmes may also suffer from such menace, yet it may be proportionately less as the number of people involved will be less.
In the final analysis though, whatever the path, poverty alleviation will be possible only if there is good governance, the system is transparent and the responsible and the powerful have impeccable integrity. The country may debate in a million voices, there may be thousands of legislation and hundreds of anti-poverty programmes, yet the poor may find themselves caught in the poverty trap for generations to come.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
Listening to the lawmakers shedding crocodile tears for the poor, I was reminded of the people I met in Bengal's Murshidabad district, who lost their homes, schools and livelihood to the river and the government didn't do enough to stop the land erosion.
I was reminded of the people who lost their limbs as a result of arsenic contamination of drinking water and yet didn't know where to go to seek help.
Do these people aspire to be part of a nation which wants to see itself as a superpower in the post-US world order?
For a change the Indian lawmakers, went beyond discussing scandals and the triviality of blame game and political upmanship to discuss poverty. However, to my mind, all the parties - the lawmakers, the national planning commission, the intellectuals and the media - who were engaged in the debate on redefining the poverty line in the country were busy in a trivial exercise of futility.
I am not an economist but as any ordinary person would say, the objective of studying poverty is to improve the standard of living of the poor people so that they can lead a healthy life and aspire to fulfil their lifetime ambitions. One should not be too occupied with the academic discourses so as to lose sight of the final destination, which is to free India from abject poverty.
Those who know the Deputy Chairman of the Indian Planning Commission Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia well will possibly agree with me that, ideologically he is a firm believer of the 'Trickle Down Hypotheis', i.e. if the economy grows then its positive effects percolate from the top to the people who are at the lower levels of the economy. Since India is on a growth path ranging from seven to nine per cent annually, there is an ideological obligation on the part of people like Dr Ahluwalia to claim that poverty level is coming down, which is probably true but not enough in a country which houses almost two-third of the world's poor people and with such stark economic disparity.
There are empirical studies to justify and negate the trickle down effect, but as an ordinary man I think that the social, economic and political architecture of our society has become so complex now that it is almost Utopian to assume that the hypothesis works in its entirety.
Rather than assuming that the trickle down hypothesis works, both the central and state governments should make targeted efforts to bring people out of poverty. Large scale poverty alleviation programmes may lead to leakage by way of corruption and bureaucratic mismanagement. Targeted programmes may also suffer from such menace, yet it may be proportionately less as the number of people involved will be less.
In the final analysis though, whatever the path, poverty alleviation will be possible only if there is good governance, the system is transparent and the responsible and the powerful have impeccable integrity. The country may debate in a million voices, there may be thousands of legislation and hundreds of anti-poverty programmes, yet the poor may find themselves caught in the poverty trap for generations to come.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
Jaundiced eye can't see true colour
A maverick Mamata Banerjee has the rare ability to make and unmake peoples' political fortunes. Mukul Roy, who is no different from an average Bengali, is now tipped to be the next Railway Minister of India. If Banerjee has her way then Roy will preside over the largest railway network in the world. There are many others who have made political fortunes riding on Banerjee's popularity.
On the other hand, veteran politicians like Somen Mitra, Subrata Mukherjee and Sudip Bandyopadhyay have been pushed to political insignificance by Banerjee. Mitra, who presided over the expulsion of Banerjee from the Congress, had his political rehabilitation at the mercy of the Trinamool Congress supremo. Similarly, Mukherjee and Bandyopadhyay, who revolted against the whims and fancies of Banerjee during the KMC polls and the Lok Sabha elections respectively, were reduced to being paper tigers as they got re-elected only with the blessings from Banerjee.
Dinesh Trivedi, whose railway budget anguished Banerjee, was the Trinamool Congress supremo's point man in the corridors of power for a very long time. Now that he has drawn Banerjee's ire, doesn't change his political credentials. Yet he has been upgraded to the position of a martyr, as if he has dedicated himself for a noble cause.
An astute politician and an MBA from the University of Texas, Trivedi, however, worked out his exit strategy well. He didn't pretend to be a revolutionary as Mitra, Mukherjee and Bandyopadhyay tried to be, rather his pragmatic business plan acknowledged the fact that without Banerjee's support he cannot continue in the government or in the party. Trivedi, therefore, made it amply clear that he would step down the moment the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his leader Banerjee would want him to do so.
The brand of politics as practised by Banerjee is often quite rightly brandished as bad economics. She is not the only one though to take that path. Given a choice, a majority of the Indian politicians would tread the populist path as they simply do not care for any form of accountibility in public life. Fiscal prudence might be the buzzword of India Inc but that does not necessarily mean that all Indian politicians are enlightened about the the virtues of presiding over a state in good economic health.
Even those who understand the benefits of good economics do not necessarily do what is necessary to ensure that. People like Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram have been in charge of the Indian exchequer for quite a long time, yet they often do not practise what they preach.
Trivedi is turned into a martyr as he claimed to have worked towards making the Indian Railways economically healthy. Those who are shouting in his support are often overlooking some glaring facts which testify the fact that not enough is being down to ensure the health of the national economy or to provide the necessary support to those who have been left out of the story of shining India.
The government of India offered Rs 4.6 lakh crore in tax exemptions and incentives to industrialists, compared to Rs 1.54 lakh crore in subsidies to the poor and farmers. If this piece of statistics is true then one needs to raise the question as to why the industrialists are favoured at the cost of the poor people. The common argument is that the industrial sector creates jobs, but they also make profits and what about their corporate social responsibility. Moreover, the government has a responsibility to look after the poor and work towards reducing economic inequality.
That apart, the subsidies given to the large (rich) farmers, the huge non-planned expenditure and the non-taxation of agricultural income (many Indian politicians own agricultural land to avoid taxes) point towards the hostile attitude of successive governments towards the poor.
So Banerjee is not the only one to be blamed for the economic mess the country is in. This, however, does not in any way justify her action of demanding Trivedi's resignation following the presentation of the Railway budget. The way Banerjee is being projected in the social networking sites and the Indian media is that she is holding the nation and good governance to ransom. If that is the case then the politicians with high political acumen and experience need to do a lot of answering about their ability to diffuse crises.
It is funny that people close to the CPI-M are also bestowing martyr hood on Trivedi, the man who till recently was Banerjee's man Friday in the corridors of power and thrashed the Left on every available opportunity. To hold the Indian politicians to account the people of the country should learn to shun the partisan attitude of assessing every event. They should stop seeing things with a jaundiced eye.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
On the other hand, veteran politicians like Somen Mitra, Subrata Mukherjee and Sudip Bandyopadhyay have been pushed to political insignificance by Banerjee. Mitra, who presided over the expulsion of Banerjee from the Congress, had his political rehabilitation at the mercy of the Trinamool Congress supremo. Similarly, Mukherjee and Bandyopadhyay, who revolted against the whims and fancies of Banerjee during the KMC polls and the Lok Sabha elections respectively, were reduced to being paper tigers as they got re-elected only with the blessings from Banerjee.
Dinesh Trivedi, whose railway budget anguished Banerjee, was the Trinamool Congress supremo's point man in the corridors of power for a very long time. Now that he has drawn Banerjee's ire, doesn't change his political credentials. Yet he has been upgraded to the position of a martyr, as if he has dedicated himself for a noble cause.
An astute politician and an MBA from the University of Texas, Trivedi, however, worked out his exit strategy well. He didn't pretend to be a revolutionary as Mitra, Mukherjee and Bandyopadhyay tried to be, rather his pragmatic business plan acknowledged the fact that without Banerjee's support he cannot continue in the government or in the party. Trivedi, therefore, made it amply clear that he would step down the moment the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his leader Banerjee would want him to do so.
The brand of politics as practised by Banerjee is often quite rightly brandished as bad economics. She is not the only one though to take that path. Given a choice, a majority of the Indian politicians would tread the populist path as they simply do not care for any form of accountibility in public life. Fiscal prudence might be the buzzword of India Inc but that does not necessarily mean that all Indian politicians are enlightened about the the virtues of presiding over a state in good economic health.
Even those who understand the benefits of good economics do not necessarily do what is necessary to ensure that. People like Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram have been in charge of the Indian exchequer for quite a long time, yet they often do not practise what they preach.
Trivedi is turned into a martyr as he claimed to have worked towards making the Indian Railways economically healthy. Those who are shouting in his support are often overlooking some glaring facts which testify the fact that not enough is being down to ensure the health of the national economy or to provide the necessary support to those who have been left out of the story of shining India.
The government of India offered Rs 4.6 lakh crore in tax exemptions and incentives to industrialists, compared to Rs 1.54 lakh crore in subsidies to the poor and farmers. If this piece of statistics is true then one needs to raise the question as to why the industrialists are favoured at the cost of the poor people. The common argument is that the industrial sector creates jobs, but they also make profits and what about their corporate social responsibility. Moreover, the government has a responsibility to look after the poor and work towards reducing economic inequality.
That apart, the subsidies given to the large (rich) farmers, the huge non-planned expenditure and the non-taxation of agricultural income (many Indian politicians own agricultural land to avoid taxes) point towards the hostile attitude of successive governments towards the poor.
So Banerjee is not the only one to be blamed for the economic mess the country is in. This, however, does not in any way justify her action of demanding Trivedi's resignation following the presentation of the Railway budget. The way Banerjee is being projected in the social networking sites and the Indian media is that she is holding the nation and good governance to ransom. If that is the case then the politicians with high political acumen and experience need to do a lot of answering about their ability to diffuse crises.
It is funny that people close to the CPI-M are also bestowing martyr hood on Trivedi, the man who till recently was Banerjee's man Friday in the corridors of power and thrashed the Left on every available opportunity. To hold the Indian politicians to account the people of the country should learn to shun the partisan attitude of assessing every event. They should stop seeing things with a jaundiced eye.
All comments are personal.
Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
Saturday
Custodian of decency and determination
Some people do not believe in springing any surprise. For them the only route to success is hard work and determination. Not everybody has the charisma but Rahul Dravid has proved that one can still steal the show through dedication, not only in cricket but also in other things in life.
Much has been written about Rahul Dravid as a cricketer. Someone with a track record as enviable as Dravid's deserves such a standing ovation on his exit from the glamorous world of cricket. The glamour though, never lured him from the gritty determination that he nurtured all his life. Such was his dedication for cricket that, as a fellow cricketer says, Dravid would be seen shadow-playing a faulty shot that got him out even in the dining room.
The man who literally built his innings putting one brick after another with acute precision and purpose never allowed his emotions to reign in over rationality. In his long cricketing career, anybody has hardly seen Dravid burst into the level of emotions that doesn't measure up to his neatly organised and disciplined character.
In a world dominated by superficiality and pomp, Dravid was modest, meticulous and detailed not only in his thinking and actions in the field but also outside. The Bradman Oration, first by any cricketer from outside Australia, that he delivered in 2011, is a testimony to the depth of his knowledge and understanding that transcends beyond the world of cricket.
A well known cricket correspondent once told me that books were an essential part of Dravid's luggage, on trips both in India and abroad, and he would use them to keep himself focused ahead of any match.
I came across him only once in 2000, when he was probably the vice captain of the Indian side and was playing English county cricket for Kent. While travelling in the District Line of the London Underground, I soon discovered that none other than Dravid was my co-passenger, sitting literally opposite to me. Realising that I was watching him, arguably one of the most confident batsmen of his time, who faced many great bowlers with straight bat, looked utterly embarassed that someone has noticed him in a London train. On our way out of the Temple tube station, when I wished him, saying, "Hi Rahul", the shy person in him couldn't offer anything more than an unassuming and nervous smile.
For him the fame attached to being a worldclass cricketer was never bigger than the game itself. Dravid not only epitomised dedication and determination, but was also known for his decency and dignity. With his retirement, the world of cricket will miss a gentleman cricketer who never believed in any short cut to success and had the rare ability of thinking his way through both on and off the field.
All comments are personal. Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
Much has been written about Rahul Dravid as a cricketer. Someone with a track record as enviable as Dravid's deserves such a standing ovation on his exit from the glamorous world of cricket. The glamour though, never lured him from the gritty determination that he nurtured all his life. Such was his dedication for cricket that, as a fellow cricketer says, Dravid would be seen shadow-playing a faulty shot that got him out even in the dining room.
The man who literally built his innings putting one brick after another with acute precision and purpose never allowed his emotions to reign in over rationality. In his long cricketing career, anybody has hardly seen Dravid burst into the level of emotions that doesn't measure up to his neatly organised and disciplined character.
In a world dominated by superficiality and pomp, Dravid was modest, meticulous and detailed not only in his thinking and actions in the field but also outside. The Bradman Oration, first by any cricketer from outside Australia, that he delivered in 2011, is a testimony to the depth of his knowledge and understanding that transcends beyond the world of cricket.
A well known cricket correspondent once told me that books were an essential part of Dravid's luggage, on trips both in India and abroad, and he would use them to keep himself focused ahead of any match.
I came across him only once in 2000, when he was probably the vice captain of the Indian side and was playing English county cricket for Kent. While travelling in the District Line of the London Underground, I soon discovered that none other than Dravid was my co-passenger, sitting literally opposite to me. Realising that I was watching him, arguably one of the most confident batsmen of his time, who faced many great bowlers with straight bat, looked utterly embarassed that someone has noticed him in a London train. On our way out of the Temple tube station, when I wished him, saying, "Hi Rahul", the shy person in him couldn't offer anything more than an unassuming and nervous smile.
For him the fame attached to being a worldclass cricketer was never bigger than the game itself. Dravid not only epitomised dedication and determination, but was also known for his decency and dignity. With his retirement, the world of cricket will miss a gentleman cricketer who never believed in any short cut to success and had the rare ability of thinking his way through both on and off the field.
All comments are personal. Tirthankar.Bandyopadhyay.Blog@gmail.com
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