WHY KOLKATA?

Although I am an authentic mache-bhate Bengali, more than half my friends are from South India. Incidentally, many of them have lived in what was then Calcutta for at least a few years; three among them were born there and studied up to primary school to university in the city. One among them, Ramachandran, is the worst Calcutta fanatic I’ve come across. He says Flury’s makes the tastiest pastries in the world, Nahum’s, the richest plum cakes (of course, in the world), and you get the juiciest beef rolls ITW at Nizam’s behind New Market. I have at times wondered why every one of them is such a passionate lover of the dying city where you sweat 24X7 for eight months, a city that routinely goes under water at least three times between July and October, a city that is perennially dirty and overcrowded. … How on earth can you fall in love with her?

I reckoned they are in love with the metropolis because most of them lived there in the 1960’s or before, when Calcutta was actually one of the finest cities in the world. In the late 1950s, and even in the ’60s, every morning when I waited for school bus around five-thirty,  the roads used to be washed with water jets. There was a separate network of pipelines all over the city for drawing water from the Ganga for this purpose! (On our terrace, there was a topless tank to store the untreated river water that was used for cleaning etc.) There were hardly any taller-than-three-storey buildings; the sky was much bigger. Roads were well maintained. Buses were crowded; trams were spanking clean. It was unthinkable to get cheated by a Calcutta taxi driver, particularly if he was a Sardarji.  Hawkers hadn’t taken over the pavements along every major throughfare. The cinemas in upmarket Chowringhee were a treat. Even in the late seventies, you could enjoy a relaxed drink at the uncrowded, beautifully furnished pubs in Globe, Light House, and Metro after watching a John Ford or Clint Eastwood Western. In Metro, we would walk unsteadily (even without a drink) as our ankles sunk in the soft carpet. Usha Uthup used to sing at the Trincas. The television hadn’t arrived.

But all those were merely on the surface. I believe those who knew the city intimately also experienced non-transactional, much warmer one-to-one relationships with the people around, something that might not have existed elsewhere. Also, Calcutta didn’t look down upon the poor. Rather, she had space for everyone. That tradition continues. Presently, in my three weeks stay here, I’ve had a few glimpses of that egalitarian warmth.

In the much better organized city and the tech capital of the country where I spend half my time these days, changing a watch battery costs ₹800+ at the nearest watch shop which happens to be in a swanky shopping mall. Therefore, I was delighted when my Casio watch stopped during our flight to Kolkata.

Next morning, I went to our local watch-man Aseem, who has been running a road-side kiosk for 20 years near my home. Aseem showed me a Maxell battery and put it in the watch for a hefty sum of ₹200. (Before writing this, I checked online. Aseem Banerjee matched the price offered by Jeff Bezos.) Then I sheepishly fished out an Allwyn watch that had been dead for over 10 years. I hadn’t thrown it away only because it was a gift from my beloved (and only) wife. (Those days, the price of a quartz wrist watch was half my monthly salary and more than what she earned as a school teacher in a month.) Aseem opened the case and fished out a black mass. He said he would replace it with a new movement which would cost ₹550 including the battery! … I am sure you will find people like Aseem in less prosperous areas of Bengaluru or Hyderabad, but the difference here is, it’s the norm in Kolkata. But there is a flip-side to the story.

Aseem has been selling his expertise for 20 years. Nothing has changed for him in these two decades except that he has become older.

The next story was narrated by a friend, S. S’s Man Friday Dilip (name changed), who is about 60, suffered a massive heart attack not long ago. After a few hits and misses at different hospitals, S managed to get Dilip admitted to RG Kar Medical College, one of the oldest, largest, and filthiest government hospitals in Kolkata. (As you would know, RG Kar has been in news recently because a trainee doctor was raped and murdered in its premises and the powers that be have been largely successful in burying the case.) My friend said it was past midnight when they reached the hospital which was unbelievably overcrowded and unclean. Stray dogs seemed to have 24-hour passes at the hospital. Lots of patients were in the Emergency ward and outside it. Sitting, lying down, on benches, on the floor. Through the chaos, a group of men and women (more women than men) in white coats ran around, not walked, and treated patients. My friend was amazed to see that the doctors actually treated patients in such an environment. Dilip was admitted and brought back from the brink. (He would have died if medical help was delayed by a few more hours.) Later, a stent was implanted in his heart; he was discharged in a week’s time. The cost of treatment? Zero rupees, as Dilip had been wise enough to acquire a free Sastha-Sathi insurance card from the Government of West Bengal.

The third anecdote too is about sickness, but on a much smaller scale. the main protagonist in this story is a fiftyish woman whose name I do not know. We call her Neera’s ma (name changed). Neera’s family irons our clothes and her mom comes to collect and deliver clothes. She is not a particularly busy person; whenever she comes, she sits down for a chat, which is pretty long when my wife Arundhati (name unchanged) is present. We too love to track the career paths of her three daughters. The first one is a trained nurse, the second, a commerce graduate, packs materials at an Amazon godown for 12 hours every day. The third, Neera, is studying nursing and midwifery. A competent mom has seen to it that her daughters stood on their own feet in a country where millions of graduates are unemployed.

Over time, Neera’s mom has become a family friend. She came in the evening one day and sat down. Arundhati was limping a bit; Neera’s ma quickly diagnosed the problem and before leaving, prescribed what to do.

Minutes later, she came back with a pain spray and said it had reduced her  ankle pain. But, ‘You must take paracetamol along with this.’

Besides reducing Arundhati’s pain, Neera’s mom demonstrated why Kolkata even now is the most charming place ITW.

Kolkata / 21 May 2025

Things India Has that America Hasn’t

An Instagram post of Kristen Fischer, an American mom living in India, has gone viral recently. It has been reported by Business Today, and I presume by others too. Perhaps more relevantly, it has been picked up by BJP’s cyber army and is being circulated by them. I received a WA forward from a patriotic friend before I got the newsfeed. What is there in the 84-second video?

Ms. Fischer records ten reasons why India is better off than the US. Here are the main points. 

• India has a hugely successful Instant Digital Payment system.

• AADHAR and PAN Cards are digital.  

• Autos and rickshaws are cheap and convenient.

• Doctors and medicines available freely; one can choose one’s doctor / hospital.

• Indians are free to hire helps and labourers; in America, it’s far too expensive. 

• Delivery systems – you can get anything in minutes. 

After watching the video, I wondered if Ms Fischer will ever apply for Indian citizenship! Jokes apart, it would be reasonable to think this video will reach millions of Indians and present a perspective that our saffron outfits would love to propagate. (No wonder they are amplifying it.) Therefore, it’s necessary to examine how valid her arguments are.

Of Fischer’s points, the Instant Digital Payment system in India (Paytm, Google Pay, etc.) is a tremendous achievement possibly unmatched anywhere else in the world! Kudos to the government and the engineers who made it possible. But the rest of the comparisons are—for want of a better word—bullshit.

It is beyond debate that the top 5–10% of India has a lifestyle comparable to or better than that of the middle class in the richest countries. India’s problems begin and end with the bottom 90%, who are actually worse of in New India, where investment is on glitzy superfast trains for the rich and not on replacing rickety old trains for the hoi polloi, where higher education is available to the highest bidder unlike in the past when rich and poor had almost equal opportunities as higher education was largely subsidized.

Therefore, Ms. Fischer is comparing the top 10% of India with maybe, the top 80% of the US, where a domestic help drives a decent car to my son’s home to do housework for a wage of $50 an hour. (She must be among the poorest in the US!) In Connecticut, I talked to a plumber in 2009 who charged $185 an hour. He might have been earning more than some high school teachers there. Dear Reader, please compare them with your domestic help and the plumber who fixes your bathroom fittings. 

Forget about the five trillion economy touted by the top guns of the government. The real issue today is fast-tracking income inequality, poverty, and unemployment. It is a good time to be rich in India. Greed is good!

In contrast, in the Global Hunger Index (GHI), India stands at 105th among 129 countries in 2024.[2] This is even after providing free ration to 80 crore people. 

The table above sums it up. Here are the main takeaways. 

1. The country which is 119th in terms of GDP (PPP)[1] in the world has the third highest number of dollar billionaires. 

2. We have more dollar billionaires than what Germany and the United Kingdom, the two largest European economies, have together. 

3. On the other hand, Bangladesh, which has per capita GDP (PPP) not far below India’s, has just one dollar-billionaire, indicating that our neighbour has far less wealth disparity than we have.

To sum up, India is a poor country of grotesque inequalities, where government policies help the super-rich, while a vast majority languishes in poverty and hunger. In any structure, when the top becomes heavier than the bottom, it collapses. What, do you think, is India’s future?

12 March 2025

POSTSCRIPT: What makes our rulers so desperate that they need certificates from sundry Americans? 

*

An explanatory note and the sources of information (All websites accessed on 12/03.2025):

1. GDP (PPP) is the nominal GDP adjusted for the cost of living in each country. India’s estimated nominal per capita GDP is $2,940. But a dollar in India buys about 4 times what a dollar can buy in the US. Hence our per capita GDP (PPP) is about 4 times the nominal GDP. Obviously, the GDP (PPP) is a far more accurate indicator of the actual level of prosperity in a country.]

2. [https://www.globalhungerindex.org/ranking.html]

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_countries_by_number...

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_countries_by_GDP...

Something to cheer about at last!

The morning today brought two pieces of brilliant news, something that happens rarely. Eighteen-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju has become the youngest world champion in chess, a game that was invented in India. The second piece of great news is a sensitive matter, let me quote The Telegraph, Kolkata:

“The Supreme Court on Thursday [12 Dec 2024] restricted courts in the country from passing any orders on disputes relating to places of worship till its next hearing of a challenge to a 1991 law that prevents one religion’s sites from conversion to another’s. … The bench also barred the registration of fresh lawsuits relating to such disputes, at a time when Hindutva groups have been filing cases demanding the handover of the sites of various mosques and dargahs they claim were built after demolishing temples.”

I will come back to Gukesh in a moment, but first, what is the “Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act 1991” and why is it at the centre of our attention today?  

The government of Mr Narasimha Rao (blessed be his soul!) through this act of 18 September 1991 froze the religious characteristics of every place of worship in India as it had been on 15 August 1947. In simple English, if a place of worship was a mosque at the time of our independence, it would continue to be a mosque for all times. It couldn’t be changed, etched in stone! Ditto for churches, synagogues, temples, and so on.

The only exception to the law was the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya because a legal battle about its ownership had begun even before independence. Let us park the sad story of the Babri Masjid and move on.

Thanks to the 1991 law, there was no legal battle to change the status of any mosque, although the Hindutwa brigade claimed  several mosques in North India had been built on the ruins of temples destroyed by Muslim invaders. The law stood as an impenetrable barrier against starting more demands of conversion of mosques into temples. And thus avoided new communal flashpoints. 

This was the situation until 13 October 2022. On that day, our Harvard educated brilliant former Chief Justice of India made an oral observation in an open court that opened a Pandora’s box. He said although that there were laws to maintain the status quo in places of religious worship, there was no harm in checking their history. How charming!

There was no written order, but the oral observation by the highest court was good enough for the saffron brigade to demand “surveys” of many important mosques, from Gyanvapi in Varanasi to Ajmer Sharif in Rajasthan, which had nothing to do with Muslim rulers, but is a tomb of the Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Hasan Chishti (and one of the holiest places for pilgrimage for Muslims the world over).

Recently in Shambal, Uttar Pradesh, one fine morning, a local sundry Hindu leader dreamt there was a temple buried under the 16th-century Jama Masjid, a Mughal-era mosque in the town. Within hours of the “revelation” a local court ordered a survey of the mosque. It led to an agitation by Muslims killing of at least four of them, many arrests, and a communal strife that brought the town to a halt. However, being the law-abiding citizen that I am, I believe the former CJI DY Chandrachud cannot be connected to the loss of four innocent young live in Shambal.

By its proclamation yesterday, the Supereme Court of India Bench comprising of the CJI Sanjiv Khanna, Justice Sanjay Kumar, and Justice K.V. Viswanathan has temporarily stopped the attempt by our ruling party to create endless tension in the country which will offer them electoral dividend maybe, for decades. I do hope the honourable justices will make the stay permanent.

Moving back to chess, Gukesh has achieved something that no great masters could achieve. Even Bobby Fischer, considered the greatest chess player verifiable history, became the world champion at the age of 29. That might help us to put Gukesh’s achievement in some perspective.

Some people might say that Gukesh’s victory in the final and deciding game was scratchy as his opponent’s blunder presented the game to Gukesh on a platter. But isn’t luck a necessary ingredient to every victory in sport? Who cares if the tennis champion got a favourable net cord at a crucial point?

Congratulations Gukesh! After Neeraj Chopra, you will surely inspire Indian sportspersons to become world champions. Actually, you have even inspired this 70+ year old writer to take his work more seriously, to strive for the best. Thank you Gukesh Dommaraju. <>

Friday, 13 December 2024

 

How they beat Vinesh Phogat—The (almost) complete story

 

Since 7 August, I have been sad and angry about what has happened to a young woman who I haven’t met and will never meet: Vinesh Phogat, who was disqualified before the finals of the Paris Olympics freestyle wrestling in the 50 Kg category. Because  she was overweight by 100 grams.

Her disqualification hurts even more because the day before—when her weight hadn’t been an issue—Vinesh made history by reaching Olympics wrestling finals, the first Indian woman to achieve the feat. In a day, she defeated the following wrestlers (scores in bracket):

Yui Susaki, the defending Olympic champion from Japan (3-2),

Oksana Livach of Ukraine, the European champion (7-5), and

Cuba's Yusneylis Guzman, the Pan American Games champion (5-0).

So, Vinesh defeated the champions from three continents. But we will appreciate her feat better if we look at Susaki’s accomplishments. Susaki won gold in the 2020 Olympics WITHOUT LOSING  A POINT; she has been a world champion FOUR times. Wikipedia says: “Susaki lost her first-round bout against Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat, which was her first loss in 95 matches” in international competitions. So, what Vinesh did was like defeating Rod Lever in Tennis, who had won the last two Grand Slams he participated in, or beating the Italian boxer Rocky Marciano, the only undefeated heavyweight boxer in history who had won 47 successive bouts!

Do we now realise enormity of what Vinesh achieved? And yet, just a day later, she would be disgraced and banished to the bottom of the merit list for absolutely no fault of hers!

Let us see what the chief physician accompanying Indian athletes says on the fiasco. Indian Express (8 August) says:

QUOTE Dr Dinshaw Pardiwala, the Chief Medical Officer of the Indian contingent [at Paris], said that following her three bouts on Tuesday, Phogat had to be given some water “to avoid dehydration”. … “We found that her post-participation weight increased more than normal and the coach initiated the normal process of weight cut that he has always employed with Vinesh,” Pardiwala said. “He felt confident it would be achieved.” UNQUOTE

The doctor’s statement is problematic because:

(A) “To avoid dehydration,” what is given is oral rehydration solution (ORS), not “water,” as stated by the doc.

(B) An athlete’s weight does not increase “post-participation,” it increases when she drinks ORS to replenish body fluids lost during a bout.

(C) The Chief Medical Officer seems to have passed the buck to Vinesh’s coach. One would like to know if in such a critical situation the doctor had any obligation to monitor the process of reduction of weight.

Hindustan Times reports* that her weight increased by 2.7 kgs instead of the normal 1.5 kgs. This additional increase couldn’t be brought down, although Vinesh and her team tried their best through the night by making her sweat through vigorous exercise, sauna, and even by cutting her hair.

In a situation like this, Vinesh’s ORS intake would have been carefully controlled. So the doctor’s statement “her post-participation weight increased more than normal” is pure bullshit. The correct statement would be: SHE WAS GIVEN MORE ORS THAN WHAT WAS NORMAL. Her weight could not have increased by 2.7 kgs unless she ingested 2.7 kgs (+ the weight lost in bouts).

Was it a blunder by her support staff, an accident, or sabotage? We won’t know the answer, but the possibility of a mischief cannot be ruled out.

Mischief cannot be ruled out because what happened in Paris looks like the culmination of an asymmetric battle fought by a resolute Vinesh Phogat and her friends against a dirty power elite of India that rules over wrestling. Let me recall the story briefly.

 

THE BACKSTORY

A middle-aged BJP MP, Brijbhushan Sharan Singh was the president of the Indian Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) for ages. Seven female wrestlers, including a minor, alleged that he had been molesting them. The complainants included the leading lights in the sport, including Sakshi Malik (our only woman wrestling Olympic medal winner), Sangeeta Phogat, and Vinesh herself. In the normal course, Brijbhushan would have been arrested. In particular, the complaint of sexual harassment by a minor should have led to automatic arrest. Also, the government of India ought to have responded to the female  wrestlers’ repeated appeals and protected them.

But for BJP bigwigs, rules are different. The minor’s complaint was mysteriously withdrawn by her parents; for the other complaints, after much pushback  by the civil society and valiant protest by the wrestlers themselves (please see below), 2 FIRs were filed in June this year against the WFI president. Quite expectedly, nothing much is heard about the cases.

For the harassed wrestlers, getting justice is still a distant goal; even to get an FIR registered was a long and bitter struggle. As their complaints to the government including the prime minister yielded no result, the wrestlers began a dharna at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi in January 2023 demanding the dismissal sexual predator. They called off the agitation when the sports minister intervened and  promised to resolve their issues.

When the promise seemed hollow, the wrestlers resumed their protest in April. For a month, they ate and slept on the road and used public toilets. The government did nothing.

On the night of 28 May, the government finally took action. Delhi  Police assaulted our peaceful national heroes and Padmashrees brutally, and dragged them into waiting prison vans. In the process, Vinesh and two other wrestlers were injured.

Sadly, after all this BJP couldn’t give Brijbhushan a Lok Sabha ticket in this year’s general elections. So, they gave it to his son, who is an MP now. Also, Brijbhushan had been continuing as the head of WFI without holding election for years. When the WFI elections were ultimately held recently after severe criticism from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Brijbhushan couldn’t become president. ☹ He was replaced by his close friend, Sanjay Singh.

This is what the Indian government and the sports establishment did to protect our star athletes. BETI BACHAO, BETI PADHAO.

However, the WFI election was so murky that even the government was forced to ban WFI in January this year. But hold your breath! There are more twists in the tale.

When athletes around the world were preparing for the Olympics and following strict regimen of diet, exercise, mental conditioning, and practice, Vinesh and her friends were on the roads of Delhi at a sit-in strike that would be ended violently. Naturally, their preparations were seriously dislocated. Among the protesting wrestlers, none except Vinesh qualified. How she did is another sad story.

Vinesh, who was competing in the 53 Kg category for a long time, has a sterling record in that category, including Asian Championship and Commonwealth Games gold medals (2019, 2023), and two bronzes in World Championships (2021 and 23).

How she was pushed out of her comfort zone of 53 Kgs for the Paris Olympics can be the story of a pulp fiction. Another talented athlete, Amit Panghal was selected for the category as she had won a bronze in the previous World Wrestling Championship, held at a time when Vinesh had been injured. No problem there. But here comes the twist. Medal winners in international tournaments are not automatically selected for Olympics. They have to go through a domestic selection process once again. This stands to reason. After all, the nation would like to send the best athlete going by their present form. But for this year's Olympics, the WFI decided THERE WOULD BE NO TRIAL! Vinesh begged WFI for a trial, which was turned down. She even offered to fight Antim Panghal. (Incidentally, Panghal lost her only bout in Paris 0-10.) So, Vinesh Phogat was forced compete in the 50 Kg category, which was way outside her comfort zone. Many experts, including the veteran sports journalist Pradip Magazine, say that was the time when Vinesh Phogat was actually stabbed in the back.

Finally, for the 6 athletes in the wrestling squad in Paris, there are 12 wrestling officials, including the president of the banned federation, Sanjay Singh, who was in charge of the wrestlers there.

He had control over Vinesh Phogat and other wrestlers.

Tailpiece:

Our prime minister, who leaves his mark in everything newsworthy from Ram Temple to cheetahs, was completely silent during the ordeal suffered by wrestlers. Not a word did he say when they were beaten on the roads. But after Vinesh’s disqualification, he tweeted in English (a language she doesn’t speak), which had this unforgettable line: “Vinesh, … I wish words could express the sense of despair that I am experiencing.”

How charming!

11 August 2024

* [https://wwwDOThindustantimesDOTcom/sports/olympics/vinesh-phogats-nutritionist-expected-the-reason-behind-wrestlers-sudden-weight-increase-revealed-101723092671976.html]

 

 

Decoding Brand Modi

The Secret of Survival for 10 years

India Today Conclave, Mumbai 2023

Beloved Modi-ji has been the PM for 9 years and 4+ months, but INDIA TODAY would like us to believe he’s been in power for 10 years. It’s a minor trickery, somewhat counter-parallel to Bata selling shoes for Rs.999.95. In a discussion anchored by Rahul Kanwal (a proud Modi bhakt) and another journalist, a group of marketing / advertising big cheeses laboured  hard for 33 minutes to prove the invincibility of “Brand Modi”. 

In the normal course, I wouldn’t have watched the video, but I did, because a friend sent the link with an intro that read: Sorry for sharing the video so early in the morning. Indian Today anchors are live examples of what described the media during the Emergency: “When asked to bend, they crawled.” In fact, I think it’s more than crawling now. Let me explain why I think so.

In one of his memoirs—I don’t recall which one—physicist Richard Feynman describes the difference between a scientist and a salesman: A scientist, even the most unspectacular one, would invariably mention the downsides of the theory proposed by them, and in what conditions the theory doesn’t work. But for a salesman, hiding the negative aspects of their product is de rigueur, a part of the job. The Indian mainstream media today is more salesmanship than journalism. And for the modern-day marketing executives, who often build a false narrative—sometimes a myth—about the product and call it  a brand, one cannot but feel a little pity. These smooth-talking, smart, and well-informed men spend their life inventing beautiful lies. 

Personally, I hadn’t heard the name of any of the INDIA TODAY panelists except Dilip Cherian, who spoke glowingly about Modi’s event management skills. Watching four of them waxing eloquent about Modiji was a learning experience for me. In the 33 minutes they talked, none of the essential issues concerning Modi and his prime-ministership was touched. If an intelligent being from another planet had watched the video, the poor fellow would imagine India had zero problem with the economy, her social harmony was perfect, her democracy was functioning beautifully with its pillars such as the judiciary, parliament, and media in good health. The conclave sidestepped all the critical issues in the context of which Modi should have been examined. 

Instead, the panelists said something that were both bizarre and startling: 

• Modi rules over the hearts of the people. Evidence: Survey by some unnamed US organisation which found Modi is the most popular national leader in the world with 76% approval rating. (Not a word about the methodology of the survey or the size / nature of the sample they used.)

• BJP doesn’t win elections by creating religious divides, but because of the development they have brought about. Proof: “Religion doesn’t fill stomachs.”

• The panelists talked eloquently about the comparability of Modi and Xi Jinping. They had no problem about the fact that Modi was a leader in a democracy and XI, of the biggest totalitarian state in history. Actually, by making the comparison, they let the cat out of the bag about their own concept of democracy.

• When asked about the weaknesses of the “Brand Modi”, the panelists struggled hard to find an answer. Their innocence was touching; perhaps they hadn’t noticed Modi’s proclivity to take decisions without consulting anyone, his disdain for democratic processes, his shameless hatred for Muslims and Christians, his abject failure to manage the economy of the country, ... his lies. In particular, the panelists seemed to have missed the following.

o The economic distress caused by demonetisation with zero prior study, and ignoring the opinion of RBI.

o Haphazard implementation of the GST by relying on a single IAS officer from—where else but—Gujarat, which caused more damage.

o the enormous suffering of the migrant workers when Modi announced a nation-wide lockdown at 4 hours’ notice, once again without any evidence of planning.

o The delay in introducing vaccines, countless documented instances of people dying because of lack of oxygen, and the bodies floating on the Ganga during the second wave of COVID.

o Muslims attacked and killed in every BJP ruled state with no legal action against the criminals.

o Systematic destruction of Muslims homes, again by BJP ruled states in complete and egregious violation of legal provisions.

During the discussion, Dilip Cherian said that Coca Cola, the most successful brand of the 20th century, contains 30% sugar, but the company doesn’t reveal the fact. (It’s not obliged to?) Similarly, Modi doesn’t have to acknowledge his weaknesses. It’s the brand that matters.

It does seem we have evolved from the idea of the media bending or crawling. From the idea that a leader must be measured against his/her performance. Modi is a brand around which an aura is to be created. Modi has to be marketed, like Coke, whether it’s poison or not. Just as capitalism is value neutral as long as there’s profit, in today’s India, anything that Modi does is fine, as long as he wins elections!

You have to decide if deserves to win the elections in 2024.

08/10/2023

Photos courtesy commons.wikimedia.org

Left: By Prime Minister's Office (GODL-India), GODL-India

Right: By Ralf Roletschek - Own work, Public Domain

Hope or despair? The choice is ours

Can you recall the name of the political party Hitler belonged to? Or Mussolini? Or in our time, Recep Erdogan’s party in Turkey? Probably not. But everybody knows what party Joe Biden belongs to, or Sheik Hasina. Unlike in democracies, political parties don’t play a pivotal role in a dictatorial or fascist state. In these regimes, one man comes to power riding on a party, and over time, he makes the same party irrelevant as he gradually usurps all the powers of the state. I think we have come to a stage in India where BJP and even its ideological big brother, the RSS have become irrelevant. One man calls the shots in India today, Narendra Modi, MA (Entire Political Science).

And this man has basically done two things during his nine years of (mis)rule. 

He has systematically weakened the foundations on which the structure of our democracy stands: the parliament, the judiciary, the election commission, and the agencies that maintain order, like the CBI and the ED.

His other major “contribution” is that his followers and a section of the media systematically spread hatred against minorities, of whom Muslims are the first target. Hate campaigns humiliate them relentlessly. Muslim Indians—most of them don’t have a forefather who ever lived anywhere outside India—are told they have no place in their country. They should go to Pakistan. They are lynched; they are killed in manufactured riots; the culprits aren’t punished. Rather, mass murderers and gang rapists jailed in an earlier regime are released prematurely and feted by the master’s followers. In the states ruled by Modi’s party, the situation is the worst. If you go to Ahmedabad, the laboratory of Hindutwa hooliganism, you will see that all Muslims, from former IAS officers to peons live in a ghetto, where the civic amenities are terrible. In at least three states, UP, MP, and Haryana, for every real or perceived offence committed by Muslims, the state government sends bulldozers to destroy Muslim homes. No notice, victims get no opportunity to defend themselves in court. Bulldozers arrive and demolish their homes. The news is carried in some newspapers the next day and that is the end of it. No legal process, no judge has the courage to call out the grotesque illegality. 

All these monstrosities go unchallenged because a large section of the majority Hindu community has been blinded by hate against Muslims (and Christians). Hatred and anger are a dangerous mix. It makes decent people blind and unable to think rationally. (This fact was seen time and again in history and also proved experimentally by psychologists.) In India today, there are millions who don’t believe demonetisation lead to massive damage to the economy. Millions think if bodies floated in the Ganga during COVID, the Modi government had no fault. Millions believe—without a shred of evidence—that Muslims will somehow become a majority in the country and decimate Hindus. Hindu khatre mein hai!

By an accident of birth, I am a Hindu. And I am ashamed of the poison that many of my friends (or former friends) carry in their dysfunctional brains. If you haven’t succumbed to the poison, please open you heart to your Muslim friends, colleagues, and neighbours. Please tell them you don’t belong to the bigoted, insane lot. It will not change the system, but it will be your contribution to the sanity of the nation.

 There is no sign that the Modi bhakts’ collective madness will be cured anytime soon. No let up in the blizzard of poison. Rather, there’s every sign that Indian politics will become even more poisonous. As things stand today, there seems little chance that Modi will be defeated in the elections in 2024, although a lot can change in politics in the next eight months. And it is more or less certain that if did win next year, he would possibly be able to change the Constitution and convert India a Hindu Rashtra. We are already following Pakistan in a similar path of destruction. If Modi wins next year, we will reach a point of no return.

But however bleak the immediate future may seem, if we gave up hope, it would be our defeat at the hands of autocracy. That cannot happen, despair is not an option for us. We must speak up and speak to anyone who cares to listen. The message must be kept alive. The revolutionary poet from Telangana, Varavara Rao, who has spent many years in jail, gives us hope. Let me close this short note with a few lines written by him.

“Political prisoners know the meaning of hope but they do not know the meaning of despair. Chera called me a frightful optimist for this, and yet I must honestly admit that although I have known pain, suffering and anxiety along with hope, happiness and enthusiasm, never have I been plunged into despair and frustration even in the most trying times. … In personal matters, I felt sorrowful indifference at moments and said, ‘Let troubles and hardships come if they must.’ I have felt detachment, but never have yielded to cynicism even for a moment in my solitary cell.”

Varavara Rao, quoted by Arvind Narrain in his book India’s Undeclared Emergency p199 (Westland Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2021). Varavara Rao’s picture courtesy Wikipedia.

Mexico Diary 1

Mexico City, La Ciudad de México in Spanish (Pronounced LA SIUDAAD DE MEHIKO), is easily one of the most cheerful places I have been to. After reaching there, what you immediately notice about the city is her music. Everywhere you go, on streets, in markets, in restaurants or ice cream parlours, you hear music. Not the slow soulful tunes that remind you of the other world, but the fast, foot-tapping variety that celebrates the present. At a street corner near our hotel, there was an old man continuously winding a music machine that produced the same tune from 11 AM to 11 PM or maybe, later. I guess he is completely deaf, otherwise, he couldn’t have survived the same music for so long. I have no idea how much he earns through such hard work, but he looks seriously malnourished. He was not the only one, another equally thin and old man I saw was playing the saxophone quite beautifully. Also,  little boys and girls sat on the roadside with a pet cat and played a small accordion. The deal is that you listen to her music, pet her cat, and pay a few pesos in exchange. After listening to the music played by the first boy I saw, I understood why he needs a cat to be petted as an add-on attraction. But I gave him a twenty-peso note all the same. The divine smile on his face was worth travelling 3,010 kilometres from San Francisco.

Maybe, to make themselves heard over all that music, Mexicans talk loudly like us Bongs. Close to our hotel in the centre of the city, there is a mosaicked road where cars aren’t allowed (even if allowed, cars would skid on such a surface). So, it was a pedestrian only street with colourful stores and eateries on both sides. On that stretch, even at 11 in the night, there are crowds of men and women in small groups talking noisily and walking aimlessly. For couples, cuddling and kissing on the road is a done deal! Pubs and restaurants (not much difference between the two) are teeming with people, with perhaps more women than men. The city seemed safe for women. It's also possible that young Mexican women are a little tired of men. I saw lots and lots of them in unisex groups of two to six, making merry. And a particular custom of women is perhaps universal. In a group, everyone talks simultaneously. I have thought about it deeply and have come to the conclusion that it is possible only because women are good at multi-tasking. They can talk and listen to at the same time. Incidentally, many women I came across in Mexico don’t spend much on buying the cloth that is made into their dress. Also, they take their nails seriously; there was hardly a young woman who didn’t have long, beautifully manicured nails. One of them was the driver of an Uber cab we took.

You are possibly thinking that this seventy-two-year-old is (still) obsessed with women. Let me change the topic. A wonderful feature of the city is that tequilas, mezcals, and whiskies are sold everywhere, in roadside kiosks, groceries, and convenience stores. That means, people can buy their daily needs like bread, butter, and liquor from the same place. So convenient!

If I have to compare Mexico City with the few other metropolises I have been to, I would say it is a cross between Paris and Kolkata.  Like Paris, the capital city of Mexico too is a fun-loving place, where people enjoy food and drinks at tables laid on the pavements, which are extensions of restaurants. And the merrymaking begins by 2 PM. (In Paris, I wondered when people went to office(!), but I wouldn’t say so about Mexico City because I was there only for three days and visited mostly the touristy areas.) At 2 PM at a roadside eatery near the Frida Kahlo Museum, while we had a forgettable lunch, a gaudily dressed man and woman (the woman, gaudily painted too) entertained us and the passersby with a few dances. And as it happens with Spanish flamenco and possibly most Mesoamerican dances, the long train of ruffles of the female dancer’s skirt did most of the hard work! (“A flamenco dancer’s skirt is stitched with five yards of cloth,” Mr Google tells me!)

Unlike in Paris, people, particularly men, are not immaculately dressed here. And like in Kolkata, there are crowds on the streets, lots and lots of them. Roadside markets thrive. In a way, large parts of Mexico City are an extended bazaar. In a park, I was pleasantly surprised to find painters selling their works. The city takes fine arts seriously, like both Paris and Kolkata.

Economically, Mexico is about five times stronger than India. In 2022—the World Bank website says—the per capita GDP of Mexico was US $ 11,091, while for India, it was US $ 2,389. The five times stronger economy is seen in beautiful, much wider roads, an intricate network of metro lines that seemed as good as the London Metro, cable buses and spanking trolley buses, well-maintained parks and grand mansions, and stores brimming with merchandise. The roads and the pavements are particularly beautiful. But lots of people in Mexico City sleep on the road. (I didn't photograph them for obvious reasons.) And everywhere, from street musicians to traders in roadside bazaars to the  to the artists selling pictures in parks, you come across lots of people who are clearly struggling to make a living.

So, beneath the gloss of an almost middle-income economy, an ugly underbelly of deprivation is plainly visible.

Cupertino, California

13 July 2023

My Second Day at the Bharat Jodo Yatra

There was a damp breeze under an overcast sky when our march began from outside Ballari at 6:30. Our destination was the village of Moka, near the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border. The distance between Ballari and Moka is 19 kilometres. From Santiniketan, where I did college, the district town Suri is 19 kilometres away. I never dreamed of walking the distance. What was unthinkable at the age of 17 is doable at 71. That is the magic of social uprisings. 

As I walked, I heard Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Punjabi, Haryanvi, and an Indian language I could not identify. Among the diverse men and women were qualified professionals, working people, peasants, teachers, and students. That is, people from both urban and rural India, and of all ages. There were lots of young men. In our group of Swaraj India volunteers, two men in their twenties, Suheil and Arunoday were the principal coordinators. 

This picture shows Vinayak Rao Patil and Ganesh. Eighty-one-year-old Vinayak Rao from Maharashtra (Latur) would be one of the oldest civil society activists still walking the path of inqilab in India. He was with the Congress, and later, with Anna Hazare movement, and AAP in its initial phase. Many a time his dreams have been shattered, but he keeps on, undaunted. Ganesh, 21, is a student from Mangalore who supports Congress. He has taken a train to join the yatra at his own initiative. The yatra has brought together Vinayak and Ganesh.

Virendra Bagodia is a political worker who was jailed multiple times for his firebrand activism. He is a landless peasant from Haryana whose son is an engineer, and daughter, and MA. Bagodia ji carries the tallest national flag in the yatra, a flag post is so tall that he has to be careful not to touch an overhead electric wire. Mahendra Yadav, who is with me on a selfie, is from Gazipur, UP. Mahendra ji has literally “do bigha jamin”. Both Bagodia and Mahendra, who are in their sixties, are walking 3,500 kilometres from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. They have been with Swaraj India, the political party led by Yogendra Yadav for many years. Neither has much formal education, but when we talked politics, I was amazed to see how well-informed they are and the clarity of their views. 

Virendra from Haryana, Naushin from Kolkata, and Mahendra from Gazipur U.P.

Mahendra Yadav and me

The 118 “National Yatris” are walking from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Besides, there are state yatris, and others like me. People in the yatra stay together in a community living area, share rudimentary amenities without complaint. Treat strangers as friends. At our camp in Moka this afternoon, I sat between Mahendra Yadav and a handsome young man. When I asked the young man what he did, he simply said, ‘I’m a Congress worker.’ An erudite man, he was a pleasant conversationalist. After the meal, Mahendra ji told me he is the son of a former chief minister. If Congress returned to power in his state, my companion at the lunch table would be a candidate to become the chief minister. 

On both days, I saw local people coming out of their homes to greet the yatris. Waiting for hours to meet Rahul Gandhi. Their goodwill for the yatra and its leader was palpable. They waved at us, smiled at us. It was a new experience to observe such goodwill from people I had never met, nor I ever will. 

Waiting to see Rahul Gandhi

I have written that the distance between Ballari and Moka is 19 kilometres. However, we began outside the town, and we would have walked only about 14 kilometres this morning. The yatra is not a well-knit procession. As people walk at different varying speeds, they get split into small groups. At the head of the yatra is the leader, that is Rahul Gandhi, who walks admirably fast, and the people who can keep up with him, plus the police cordon around them. Behind them are scatterings of yatris for two to three kilometres.  Another procession of high-end SUVs was a pain in the wrong place for the staggered walkers. They belonged to the out-of-shape Congressmen who could hardly walk, but were obliged to show their face to Mr Rahul Gandhi.

As I gradually fell behind, a local person stopped his motor bike and offer me lift. We didn’t have the bond of a common language, but the bond of Indianness was enough. I didn’t have the heart to say No to him, but I didn’t wish to cheat either. So, I got off after about 500 metres. 

On the way, I came across a temporary shed from where villagers were distributing apples, water bottles, tender coconuts etc. to the yatris. I stopped and checked with two men in the kiosk separately. Who organized all this? Congress? The answer was an emphatic “No!” from both. They said villagers had joined together to give some relief to the yatris. When I pointed out at the Congress banner behind, one of them said it was a gift from the local Congress unit. I am inclined to believe them because if a Congress leader had organised it, there would have been large flex banners with the man's portrait announcing his generosity.  

Does the spontaneous expression of love say something? 

Why Bharat Jodo?

Why did I, a person with no political affiliation except for a strong desire to reclaim a liberal democracy join the yatra? In the following lines, I will try to answer myself

Over the last eight years, a poison has taken hold of a lot of Indian Hindus. They believe that Muslims, who are 14% of the population, will somehow destroy the Hindus who are 80%. This is their core belief: Hindu khatre mein hai. Therefore, for their safety, they must pin down the Muslims now. This silly fiction—which has no evidentiary support—has divided India down the middle. It has also divided families and friends.

On one side of the divide are the people who believe they are in danger (the 37.36% of the electorate who voted for BJP in 2019, they are often upper caste Hindus). The group has been created and led by an efficient RSS-BJP machinery. 

On the other side of the line are Hindus who do not buy the “Hindus-are-in-danger” rubbish, along with Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, plus everyone else. The latter have no formal organization / leadership. After every government misadventure like demonetization, or CAA-NRC, or the Farm Bills, the second group protests. They also hope that as their agitations gain momentum, the opposition parties, who have not seriously challenged BJP-RSS, will defeat BJP through the ballot box. 

It will not happen.

Because of the poison I mentioned. The people who support the present regime see the economy tanking, they have seen dead bodies floating in the Ganga during the COVID pandemic, their nephew or niece may be unemployed for years, yet their faith in BJP is unflinching because they think only that party can “save” them from Muslims. Psychologists like Daniel Goleman say when your mind is in the grip of hatred and anger against someone, you cannot think straight. Your baser caveman instincts take hold of you. This, roughly, is the state of mind of the people who abuse Muslims day in and day out. In that state of mind, it is possible for women to garland a gang of criminals who serially raped a pregnant woman, smashed the body of her three-year-old daughter, and murdered her 14 family members for no reason other than hatred against Muslims. 

If we wish to regain our secular India, we must detoxify those people. But we can achieve little by arguing with them. What we need today is affirmative action to bring people together, to spread love.

Democracy is not self-executing. We must make it work, particularly at a time when the forces of hatred, divisiveness, and violence have taken root in our country. Bharat Jodo Yatra is an attempt to precisely do that. <>

16 October 2022

Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY)—My first day

Last evening in about eight hours, we covered the distance of 311 kilometres from Bangaluru to Ballari, a mining town in western Karnataka that was earlier spelt as Bellary. The motley crowd of six yatris consisted of an exceedingly soft-spoken activist politician, an environmental activist and author, a tailor who's doing MA, an engineer, a young college prof, and me. Regarding the age profile, we were between in early twenties and early seventies. The six of us, who speak four different languages at home, have come to join the Bharat Jodo Yatra. As you might have guessed, a tiny bit of jodoing has already happened!

It was 10:30 PM when we reached the KRS Function Hall at one end of the town, our camp for the night Throughout South India, we have marriage / function halls which usually have three main sections: a big hall with a stage on one end, an equally big dining hall plus kitchen, and some bedrooms for people who would stay overnight. The main hall often seats 1000 or more people.

As we walked in, we found an empty ornate sofa on the stage at the far end of the main hall. More than 200 basic beds had been spread on the stage and the floor: cotton mattresses covered with garish bedsheets with designs in all the colours the human eye can see. Columns of plastic chairs were piled in a corner. At one end—somewhat unexpectedly—a large man in a dark T-shirt sat hunched before an equally large 24-inch computer screen, engrossed in work. Enormous fans fitted outside at the ground level blew in air through a grille. Although it was past 10:30, the lights were on. Few had slept. They were the yatris of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the political Kumbh of our time. The men and women would have walked at least 30 kilometres during the day.

The adjacent dining hall had been divided into two parts. Half of it contained a similar array of beds, and the other half, two long rows of narrow dining tables covered with aluminium sheets. We quickly joined the few men and women who were eating. The simple vegetarian meal was piping hot and excellent.

As the halls had been full, we got a small room on the fourth floor. There were five of us in the two-bed airconditioned room with three beds on the floor. Enormously comfortable. 

The breakfast that I had next morning at 5:10 consisted of steaming upma, chatni, and kesar bath. A tall gentleman, who was possibly from the management of the function hall, was supervising the operations; he made us feel we were his personal guests. I silently saluted the famous Kannadiga hospitality and also, the Congress Party, which is organising the yatra. 

*

Inqilabs, that is, revolutions, are “the locomotives of history,” said Karl Marx. According to his most well-known follower Lenin, “Revolutions are the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited.” Nobody knows if the Bharat Jodo Yatra will turn into the locomotive that will ferry us from the present-day dystopia back to a civilised India, but when we were ferried in a van to the starting point of today’s yatra in the tenebrous light before sunrise, I did think I was witnessing a festival of the masses. 

The absolute exhilaration among people was to be seen to be believed. At the beginning of the long procession, local artistes in ceremonial attires—many of them wearing huge masks—presented a pageantry with the accompaniment of drums. They were followed by Congress Seva Dal Volunteers in white. Then came groups of yatris raising slogans. The slogans were surprisingly creative and nonviolent, like, Jodisi jodisi, Bharata jodisi in Kannada (Join, join, join India), or in Hindi: Hum Bhagat Singh ke diwane hai, hum nahi rukhne walle hai (We love Bhagat Singh, we aren't going to give up!) There were NO murdabads, hai hais, or down-downs. 

Except for the Seva Dal volunteers and the performing artistes, the rest of the participants didn’t form two neat columns, as if to highlight that their participation was spontaneous, voluntary, and free from regimentation. A festival, in short. 

My friends Kamlendra Pratap and Jeevan had warned me that when Rahul Gandhi arrived, he would be accompanied by a flood that would throw away anything in their path. The flood arrived soon. 

Rahul Gandhi, who walks really fast, sets the pace and the rest of the people walk / run with him. He has his security men in black safari suits around him and then an outer ring of close associates and registered yatris. Around all of them, state policemen in khaki made a moving cordon with a thick yellow rope and walked along. The mobile yellow ring was the nucleus of the yatra. Beside, in front of, and behind it, there were thousands more walking cheerfully, shouting slogans. 

Can you see Rahul Gandhi? If you can, you'll know how much risk he is taking.

Many of them were local people and curious onlookers. They were keen to get a good glimpse and maybe, a picture of Rahul Gandhi. Some went into the ring and close to Rahul Gandhi after getting a nod from the people in charge of security. Rahul smiled, shook hands, and spoke with each one of them, as people took selfies. But most of his fans were not so fortunate. They would walk as close to the yellow cordon as possible, and try go ahead of Rahul Gandhi to get a good look. 

As soon as the cordon approached where I was, a deluge of people threw me away from the road. And once the deluge went past, Jeevan and I fell back and followed the yatra at a relaxed pace, lending our voices to whoever was leading the slogan near us.  

I got a strong feeling that the yatris aren't going to give up even after the yatra ends. <>

15 October 2022

Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY)—Day Zero

On the way to Bellary with a group of wonderful people. To walk in the Bharat Jodo Yatra.

My participation will mean little to the Yatra, but the yatra should make a world of difference to me. The picture below has been sent by a friend. It is a picture of the Yatra today somewhere in the remote Chitradurga District of Karnataka.

 Let the mainstream media ignore, let the ruling dispensation and their cohorts try to mass-produce hatred, Bharat is joining herself … and erasing ugly lines that have been dividing her children in the recent past.

 Love spreads, quietly, but unquestionably, just as the sapling grows in front of your eyes but without you noticing it. Away from TV studios and troll factories.

 Watch this space for updates.

 

14 October 2022

Little boy with a young mother in burqa

 

Little boy with a young mother in burqa,

Please look at me, I want to talk to you.

You see, I’d be older than your grandpa—

Long ago, my eyes too had wonder

Just like yours, but

That’s not what I wanted to tell you.

Old men often lose their way,

You’ll soon find out.

 

I wanted to tell you that when I saw you,

A vague, overpowering fear gripped me

As I tried to see you ten years into the future.

Will you be in a school that teaches you

To love every human

And hate nothing, except

Selfishness, violence, and blind faith?

 

Will you be in a school

That teaches you to question

What everyone believes is true?

A school where you’ll learn

That humans, whales, and butterflies

Are all made of atoms,

In fact, particles even tinier

That might have been parts

Of stars and galaxies once?

That you and I are no different from

Moondust or the fiery sun?

That is a brief summary of human knowledge,

But please don’t take my words for it.

Read, think, and find out.

 

Fifteen years into the future,

Will you be in a college

Where fools won’t try to teach you

About borders, barbed wires,

And why you must build walls?

 

Fifteen years down the road,

Will you have lots of friends,

And maybe, a girlfriend too,

Whose religions or kinships won’t matter

In the relationships you make?

 

Will you grow up to live

In a middleclass mohalla where

Narayanans, Kalams, Mukherjees, and Murmus

Live side by side? And no college

Bars entry to your sister

Because of what she chooses to wear

On her head? Or maybe, she will

Choose not to cover her head?

 

Little boy with a young mother in hijab,

A vague, overpowering fear gripped me

When I looked into the future

And tried to find you.

In your journey through the years

Will you rediscover the land

Where your grandpa and I lived

Long, long ago?

It was

A highly flawed place even then,

But those days, hatred wasn’t state policy,

And nobody had to wear

An invisible yellow badge on their chest.

 

Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu

15 September 2022

 

 

 

 

 

History however, is ruthless

 West Bengal is at the cusp of a change. Ms Mamata Banerjee and her party have failed the people who pinned their hope on her as opposed to the brutal rule of the aging Left on the one side and the hatemongering BJP on the other. If the news and social media show us the writings on the wall, in 2026, a new government will come to power in Bengal. At least should!

We must try to understand what has been happening in Bengal. Here is an article by a leading public intellectual who has held his head high through the murky currents of Bengal politics, Kaushik Sen. The original was published in Ananda Bazar Patrika on 3 August 2022.

Translated into English by Kaushik Chatterjee

*

A convention was held on the 2^nd floor of Calcutta Information Centre in 1990. It was organised by the Left Front Government. All the intellectuals of the times had converged there. The then Information Minister, Shri Buddhadev Bhattacharya, was also present. It was necessary to convene such a meeting at a time, when, thanks to a few serial events that rocked West Bengal, the credibility of the Left Front Govt had been considerably shaken in the perception of the people at large.  It is now on records, that, quite surprisingly, all the intellectuals present on that day, barring a few exceptions, strongly and concertedly denied any sense of frustration or misgivings majorly troubling the society; rather, they felt, it was after all, the product of an orchestrated anti-left propaganda, of the vanquished crying hoarse or even that of a bourgeois mentality gone paranoid. We come to know that, among others, even Utpal Dutta, with a clear voice and firm conviction, held on to the ground of the majority.

The poet Sankha Ghose was also present in that meeting. He read out from a small chit of paper. Everyone must have listened to him carefully but didn’t quite feel the urge to dwell upon the deeper anxieties voiced by the poet seriously enough.

The enthusiastic readers can easily retrieve the exact contents of the page from where the poet had read aloud in that intellectual-studded convention, organised by the Left Front Government on 11^th September, 1990. All I can say is that all those grim forewarnings which the poet had prophesied in his pithy but insightful write, were the subject of intense discourse and deliberation, following the electoral eclipse of the Left Front Government in 2011—disconnect with the masses, induction within the party of persons of dubious credentials, corruption, criminalisation, etc. The seeds of decay were all there for the people to take note of. But a large majority of them couldn’t or didn’t quite like to.

I am pretty sure if one goes through its contents today, there wouldn’t be any line of distinction between the parties that have been in governance in Bengal. You could easily swap the label of ‘Left Front Government’ with that of ‘TMC Government’ in that piece of paper. The issues of ‘dangerous laxity or irresponsiveness’, which the poet highlighted then, to have led to a series of ignominious incidents thereafter, were no accidents or conspiracies. They were not then and are not now either.

It would be impossible for the reigning TMC government of West Bengal to write off the instance of naked corruption and embezzlement of funds which has recently come to light, as a non-event or even treat it as conspiratorial. It is not possible for one Partha Chatterjee to commit such a ghastly crime single-handedly. The tentacles of the evil are enmeshed within the nooks and corners of the organisation itself.

The month of July of 2022 will either be remembered or consigned to one of the most inglorious episodes of the socio-political-economic history of West Bengal. The relentless agitation of those aspiring for the teaching posts of Classes IX to XII  for more than 500 odd days now, shall too be etched in the pages of history. A whole new set of questions and agitational dynamics would be scripted on the tales of dogged defiance they showed amidst sufferance of so much deprivation and misery. It is time we understood how this heinous crime had affected us all, beyond those who have been directly harmed by it. While complementing the perfectly professional and thoroughbred role performed by the Officers of Enforcement Directorate (ED) in unearthing crores of rupees from the different flats of the accused, it may be a sobering reminder at this stage, that barring, of course, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), none of the mainstream political parties of India are currently breathing free, thanks to the extraordinary clout and sweeping powers commanded by ED. The recent Supreme Court rulings may also add on the anxieties of the principal opposition parties in this regard, for everyone   knows how BJP can effectively weaponise the ED in bringing the entire Opposition to an uneasy standstill. And it is in this context, that the TMC, through this murky Partha Chatterjee episode, had significantly blunted the anti-BJP, ultra-Hindutwa campaign being taken up at the national stage. The recent events have only helped the party in power to get a firmer political foothold in the map of India; the same party, which operating through the smokescreen of whataboutery and subterfuge, has no qualms in defying the constitutional norms, openly threatening to decimate the minority community with bulldozing of their home and property, through a process of selective  targeting.

‘No Vote to BJP’ was the key slogan rallying which most of us openly mobilised ourselves in the last Assembly Elections. Without casting any disrespect on the TMC leadership or their foot soldiers who made a robust electoral show in the last Assembly elections, it may be averred that this inglorious event in the Bengal political chapter is a frontal betrayal of whatever bit of resistance that the apolitical segment of the societal space was trying to organise, in its own way, against the destructive and totalitarian regime of the BJP.

It is to be noted that TMC had cast their chessboard very astutely and expediently, both within the realm of the Parliamentary politics and outside of it, after a thorough calculation of their political payoffs. They had welcomed with open arms all of those discredited and defeated BJP leaders who had spewed communal venom. It is true that the issue of admittance or otherwise of any persons within a political formation is well within the prerogative of concerned political entity; and yet the 2021 Assembly elections in Bengal assumed a different dimension altogether. Most of us didn’t quite perceive it as a mere allocation of seats among different political dispensations. A large section of the citizenry, casting off the colours of political partisanship, had come out in the open and had in their own way, scripted verses, play-acted, composed songs, made intense parleys in both urban and rural locales, unitedly against a dominant political ideology which loved spewing communal hatred. The corruption that has come to the fore is a frontal assault on the generous faith that inspired such a great endeavour. Mere expulsion of Partha  Chatterjee cannot absolve the party of its moral responsibility.

People in this country now flaunt their masculinity in openly valorising Nathuram Godse. In the current year, in the ‘International Press Freedom index’, India is placed among the trailing 30 countries among the 180 contesting nations. The Modi Government had appropriated every means possible to curtail media and press freedom. Even more than its political contenders, the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to be deeply wary of the enlightened citizenry. Most of the alternate political dispensations are in a pitiable shape at this stage... some are suffering from organisational weaknesses, others are rudderless in absence of a decisive leadership, some have turned maniacal in the rush for political power and the rest of them, which raised a semblance of hope in the initial days, are so deeply mired in corruption, that unless some ground-breaking, far-reaching changes are made, it would indeed be difficult to believe that that they would be able to sustain a formidable and credible challenge against the communal forces.

In the realms of parliamentary democracy, it is the underlying urge of every political order worth its name to cling to power as long as possible. The TMC had scripted massive triumphs in the last three Assembly elections. And yet, in the last few elections, be they the assembly/parliamentary by-elections, Panchayat or the municipal, its relentless efforts to keep its political adversaries in check through an open display of muscle power, had raised serious misgivings and sent shivers down the line. And we have the well entrenched memories of how, thanks to the courageous and formidable resistance shown by the current Chief Minister, the entire political architecture of the Left Front and the CPI(M) came crashing from the height of its political brazenness to a nadir of nothingness. No political dispensation has been able to sustain itself in the long run merely scoring on its numerical strength. If the people lose faith, no material or muscular power can ever redeem a political party. TMC too is no exception. History always has a tough call to take. <>

*

You can read the original Bangla article here:

https://mepaper.anandabazar.com/imageview_64859_5412792_4_71_03-08-2022_4_i_1_sf.html