WOE CALCUTTA !!!
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i am cut=pasting an article i chanced upon, written by Vir Sangvi about the political plight of Bengal.
Calcutta chromosome / Vir Sanghvi
There is no city in India where the level of cultural sophistication is as high as it is in Calcutta. And there is no community in India that is as warm, as affectionate, as straightforward and as genuinely decent as the Bengalis. In all the years I lived in Calcutta, I was constantly struck by the contrasts with other cities: with Bombay, where it only matters how much you earn, and with Delhi, where they only care how powerful you are. In Calcutta, none of these matter. Instead, people care about things that should really matter: culture, intellectual refinement and human decency.Which, of course, leads to the obvious question: why has Calcutta lost its rightful position as India's greatest city? Amartya Sen has famously pointed out that in 1947, there were two great cities in the East: Calcutta and Singapore. And of the two, Calcutta was thought to be far, far ahead. Over half a century later, that comparison seems so absurd as to be scarcely comprehensible.
Wiser men than myself have offered well thought-out and complex explanations for Calcutta's decline. They have grappled uneasily also with what I call the Bengali paradox: take a Bengali out of Bengal and he is disciplined, hardworking and the perfect worker. Put him back in Bengal and everything falls apart.My own, admittedly half-baked, theory about the decline of Calcutta-and indeed, of Bengal in general-is that the Bengalis have been ill-served by their politicians. Of course, all states get the politicians they deserve-after all they elect them, themselves. But in Bengal, the politicians have flourished by appealing to only one side of the Bengali character. And that, alas, is not the hardworking, disciplined, intellectually sophisticated side. It is, instead, the traditional Bengali propensity to complain, to moan, to groan and to find a hundred reasons for not doing something that could be done so easily in a second or so.When I moved to Calcutta in 1986, I was briefed by long-term non-Bengali residents of the city.
One Bengali, they said, was a chronic complainer. Two Bengalis were a trade union. And three Bengalis were two trade unions. This was less funny than it was accurate. At the publishing house where I worked (though this was a long time ago and I'm told that things have now changed), the slogan was "Hobey na". Ask for anything to be done and you would be told why it was impossible. And even when you did point out that it was not just possible but also easy enough to accomplish, a new slogan took over: never do tomorrow what you can do day after.For most of us who've ever lived in Calcutta, all of this is a given. We've despaired of things ever getting better. But suddenly the whole subject of the Bengali mindset and the political culture that has so blighted the future of this once-great state is the biggest issue in Calcutta. The immediate provocation is a court judgment on the rallies that make living in Calcutta a nightmare for its residents. There was a time when what Bengal thought today, the rest of India thought tomorrow. Sadly, over the last two decades, Bengal has made only one contribution to Indian political life. And that is the single file demonstration.No matter where in India we live, we are used to political marches, morchas, dharnas, rallies or whatever we want to call them. Generally, a large group of people march through the centre of town, carrying banners and shouting slogans. They are escorted by the police, hustled across roads and prevented from causing too much disruption.Not in Calcutta, though.In Calcutta, the point of a demonstration is to cause disruption. Thus, even if the organisers can rustle up only 40 people for the cause of the day (which could range from 'Why they are giving us DA at lower rate than last year' to 'Why food is not being sent to poor people of Comrade Castro's Cuba'), these 40 will be told to march in single file. Worse still, they will ensure that there is a space of at least six feet between each of them. Thus, a demonstration that would disrupt traffic for say, three minutes in Delhi, will stop all movement on the roads for a minimum of half an hour in Calcutta. If the demonstration is larger - say a hundred people - then the disruption lasts for two hours. And if there are 200 people, then the city shuts down.
This extraordinary - and peculiarly Bengali - state of affairs is sought to be justified on the grounds that people have a democratic right to protest. When communists start talking about democratic rights (enough provocation in the old days for Chairman Mao to have them taken out to be shot or for Comrade Stalin to have sent them to a Gulag) it's time to get sceptical.But it isn't just the CPI(M) that uses this argument. Even the principal opposition party in Bengal - Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress - bases its entire appeal on its ability to disrupt the lives of ordinary people. The point, of course, is that the Bengali argument for disruption is based on a complete misunderstanding of the principles of liberal democracy. The basic principle is this: I have total freedom to do what I want only as long as my freedom does not conflict with yours. Thus, my right to free speech ends where your reputation begins - that's why we have defamation laws. My right to have a drink ends when I get behind the wheel of my car because I'm then endangering your freedom to drive safely on the roads. And so on.Even a child should be able to grasp this basic liberal principle and to conclude from it that Mamatadi's right to protest ends where my right to get to work begins. But no, you'd be amazed by the number of otherwise intelligent Bengalis who will defend the chaos and disorder in their state as a manifestation of the people's essential democratic rights.This basic misunderstanding of the nature of democracy and the complete lack of respect for the greater good (who cares if the entire city shuts down as long as I can organise a demonstration complaining about the shifting of a railway siding to Bihar?) seems to me to sum up the sorry state of Bengal today.Politics in Bengal is no longer about substance or about improving the lot of the people. It is about noisy, disruptive and ultimately pointless gestures. The CPI(M) has been in power since 1977. During that period, Bengal has slid further and further down the tubes.
But still, all the party can do is organise disruptive demonstrations and find new things to protest about.My friend Mamata Banerjee was offered a historic opportunity to enter the mainstream of national politics when the NDA came to power. But she threw it away with a series of silly and pointless gestures: resignations, sulks, tantrums and fits of mad moodiness. Even her opposition to the CPI(M) - and at one stage we thought she could actually win power in Bengal - has become no more a state of permanent, noisy protest.As Bengal's politicians waste their time - and mortgage the future of their state - on these pointless protests, the disconnect between Bengal and the rest of India has grown. Few professionals from elsewhere in the country are willing to shift to Calcutta, despite the warmth and friendship of the Bengali people. Industry has been driven away by the Left trade unions. The Marwari businessmen who gather periodically at the Taj Bengal to felicitate the chief minister have all moved the bulk of their businesses out of the state.And Bengal's politicians can only cope with this flight of capital with more empty gestures. When I lived in Calcutta, I would notice with amazement that Jyoti Basu would depart each summer for a most agreeable vacation to such havens of capitalism as London. Each year, he would declare that he was attracting investment to Bengal.
Each year, no investment would come. But the following year, Jyoti Basu would rush off again on the same sort of trip. Jyoti Basu has retired, his reputation as the world's greatest living Bengali intact. (Though God alone knows what this is based on. It certainly can't be based on his destruction of this once-great state.) But his successors seem unable to change the Bengali political mindset.For all this talk about democratic rights, the traditional Communist contempt for democratic institutions is much in evidence. Justice Lala of the Calcutta High Court who passed the order against disruptive demonstrations has been described by the Left Front's chairman as "an unwanted person in Bengal" and on Wednesday, the CPI(M) demonstrated its contempt for the court by organising a massive demonstration to assert the God-given right of politicians and their followers to disrupt the lives of ordinary people.How sad that the brightest and nicest people in India, the Bengalis, should have the worst politicians.
Under the CPI(M) and Mamatadi and her cohorts, Bengal has gone from being India's leading state to becoming one of its most backward. It is now, alas, no more than a better educated version of Bihar, a sort of Jharkhand with the added benefit of Rabindrasangeet.
Courtesy: Hindustan Times, (9/10/03)
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i am cut=pasting an article i chanced upon, written by Vir Sangvi about the political plight of Bengal.
Calcutta chromosome / Vir Sanghvi
There is no city in India where the level of cultural sophistication is as high as it is in Calcutta. And there is no community in India that is as warm, as affectionate, as straightforward and as genuinely decent as the Bengalis. In all the years I lived in Calcutta, I was constantly struck by the contrasts with other cities: with Bombay, where it only matters how much you earn, and with Delhi, where they only care how powerful you are. In Calcutta, none of these matter. Instead, people care about things that should really matter: culture, intellectual refinement and human decency.Which, of course, leads to the obvious question: why has Calcutta lost its rightful position as India's greatest city? Amartya Sen has famously pointed out that in 1947, there were two great cities in the East: Calcutta and Singapore. And of the two, Calcutta was thought to be far, far ahead. Over half a century later, that comparison seems so absurd as to be scarcely comprehensible.
Wiser men than myself have offered well thought-out and complex explanations for Calcutta's decline. They have grappled uneasily also with what I call the Bengali paradox: take a Bengali out of Bengal and he is disciplined, hardworking and the perfect worker. Put him back in Bengal and everything falls apart.My own, admittedly half-baked, theory about the decline of Calcutta-and indeed, of Bengal in general-is that the Bengalis have been ill-served by their politicians. Of course, all states get the politicians they deserve-after all they elect them, themselves. But in Bengal, the politicians have flourished by appealing to only one side of the Bengali character. And that, alas, is not the hardworking, disciplined, intellectually sophisticated side. It is, instead, the traditional Bengali propensity to complain, to moan, to groan and to find a hundred reasons for not doing something that could be done so easily in a second or so.When I moved to Calcutta in 1986, I was briefed by long-term non-Bengali residents of the city.
One Bengali, they said, was a chronic complainer. Two Bengalis were a trade union. And three Bengalis were two trade unions. This was less funny than it was accurate. At the publishing house where I worked (though this was a long time ago and I'm told that things have now changed), the slogan was "Hobey na". Ask for anything to be done and you would be told why it was impossible. And even when you did point out that it was not just possible but also easy enough to accomplish, a new slogan took over: never do tomorrow what you can do day after.For most of us who've ever lived in Calcutta, all of this is a given. We've despaired of things ever getting better. But suddenly the whole subject of the Bengali mindset and the political culture that has so blighted the future of this once-great state is the biggest issue in Calcutta. The immediate provocation is a court judgment on the rallies that make living in Calcutta a nightmare for its residents. There was a time when what Bengal thought today, the rest of India thought tomorrow. Sadly, over the last two decades, Bengal has made only one contribution to Indian political life. And that is the single file demonstration.No matter where in India we live, we are used to political marches, morchas, dharnas, rallies or whatever we want to call them. Generally, a large group of people march through the centre of town, carrying banners and shouting slogans. They are escorted by the police, hustled across roads and prevented from causing too much disruption.Not in Calcutta, though.In Calcutta, the point of a demonstration is to cause disruption. Thus, even if the organisers can rustle up only 40 people for the cause of the day (which could range from 'Why they are giving us DA at lower rate than last year' to 'Why food is not being sent to poor people of Comrade Castro's Cuba'), these 40 will be told to march in single file. Worse still, they will ensure that there is a space of at least six feet between each of them. Thus, a demonstration that would disrupt traffic for say, three minutes in Delhi, will stop all movement on the roads for a minimum of half an hour in Calcutta. If the demonstration is larger - say a hundred people - then the disruption lasts for two hours. And if there are 200 people, then the city shuts down.
This extraordinary - and peculiarly Bengali - state of affairs is sought to be justified on the grounds that people have a democratic right to protest. When communists start talking about democratic rights (enough provocation in the old days for Chairman Mao to have them taken out to be shot or for Comrade Stalin to have sent them to a Gulag) it's time to get sceptical.But it isn't just the CPI(M) that uses this argument. Even the principal opposition party in Bengal - Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress - bases its entire appeal on its ability to disrupt the lives of ordinary people. The point, of course, is that the Bengali argument for disruption is based on a complete misunderstanding of the principles of liberal democracy. The basic principle is this: I have total freedom to do what I want only as long as my freedom does not conflict with yours. Thus, my right to free speech ends where your reputation begins - that's why we have defamation laws. My right to have a drink ends when I get behind the wheel of my car because I'm then endangering your freedom to drive safely on the roads. And so on.Even a child should be able to grasp this basic liberal principle and to conclude from it that Mamatadi's right to protest ends where my right to get to work begins. But no, you'd be amazed by the number of otherwise intelligent Bengalis who will defend the chaos and disorder in their state as a manifestation of the people's essential democratic rights.This basic misunderstanding of the nature of democracy and the complete lack of respect for the greater good (who cares if the entire city shuts down as long as I can organise a demonstration complaining about the shifting of a railway siding to Bihar?) seems to me to sum up the sorry state of Bengal today.Politics in Bengal is no longer about substance or about improving the lot of the people. It is about noisy, disruptive and ultimately pointless gestures. The CPI(M) has been in power since 1977. During that period, Bengal has slid further and further down the tubes.
But still, all the party can do is organise disruptive demonstrations and find new things to protest about.My friend Mamata Banerjee was offered a historic opportunity to enter the mainstream of national politics when the NDA came to power. But she threw it away with a series of silly and pointless gestures: resignations, sulks, tantrums and fits of mad moodiness. Even her opposition to the CPI(M) - and at one stage we thought she could actually win power in Bengal - has become no more a state of permanent, noisy protest.As Bengal's politicians waste their time - and mortgage the future of their state - on these pointless protests, the disconnect between Bengal and the rest of India has grown. Few professionals from elsewhere in the country are willing to shift to Calcutta, despite the warmth and friendship of the Bengali people. Industry has been driven away by the Left trade unions. The Marwari businessmen who gather periodically at the Taj Bengal to felicitate the chief minister have all moved the bulk of their businesses out of the state.And Bengal's politicians can only cope with this flight of capital with more empty gestures. When I lived in Calcutta, I would notice with amazement that Jyoti Basu would depart each summer for a most agreeable vacation to such havens of capitalism as London. Each year, he would declare that he was attracting investment to Bengal.
Each year, no investment would come. But the following year, Jyoti Basu would rush off again on the same sort of trip. Jyoti Basu has retired, his reputation as the world's greatest living Bengali intact. (Though God alone knows what this is based on. It certainly can't be based on his destruction of this once-great state.) But his successors seem unable to change the Bengali political mindset.For all this talk about democratic rights, the traditional Communist contempt for democratic institutions is much in evidence. Justice Lala of the Calcutta High Court who passed the order against disruptive demonstrations has been described by the Left Front's chairman as "an unwanted person in Bengal" and on Wednesday, the CPI(M) demonstrated its contempt for the court by organising a massive demonstration to assert the God-given right of politicians and their followers to disrupt the lives of ordinary people.How sad that the brightest and nicest people in India, the Bengalis, should have the worst politicians.
Under the CPI(M) and Mamatadi and her cohorts, Bengal has gone from being India's leading state to becoming one of its most backward. It is now, alas, no more than a better educated version of Bihar, a sort of Jharkhand with the added benefit of Rabindrasangeet.
Courtesy: Hindustan Times, (9/10/03)