1. After Singur and Nandigram, the staunchest of CPI-M supporters have had either nothing to say or have fallen silent. But some people are their usual cocksure selves. For instance, the Times of India. Day before yesterday, it led with a story that screamed, “Battle for Nandigram won.” My questions: (a) Who won the battle? The people of Nandigram or the CPI-M cadres? (b) For whom was the battle won? The people of Nandigram or the CPI-M cadres? (c) Is that something to celebrate? Quite a few of us have not forgotten that Laxman Seth, local CPI-M biggie, declared early this year that 20,000 odd acres would be acquired. It was then that Nandigram erupted, and the affected people formed the BUPC. So, if the BUPC was 'ousted' by the CPI-M, does it call for a celebration? TOI editors think so. This is the newspaper which got the 'Lead India' nautanki on the road recently.
2. If you can, get a copy of tomorrow's Dainik Statesman. The lead story presents the number of people killed during the last 30 years of Left rule: 55,000. And this is according to police records.
3. I think we must institute some sort of an award for fearless reporting and give it to Tara News for being the bravest news channel of India and all its Medinipur and Nandigram correspondents for being as intrepid as they have proved themselves to be. Truly, hats off to them. They smuggle cameras to conflict areas and send footages god knows how.
4. Gopalakrishna Gandhi. Yes, you are the last hope we have. Please take the one step you have been mulling about since the last couple of days. It's time you made the anarchy of this state official.
5. Oh, do remember to keep those apolitical candle light vigils going. As long as you light a candle and strike a pose, it doesnt matter what you do on election day. The movie buff bhadralok at Nandan was miffed because the film fest was disrupted by the Trinamul party. The bhadralok said on TV that though he was very sorry about what was happening in Nandigram, the film fest shouldnt have been disrupted, because the two things were 'different' and 'not connected'. The CPI-M owes a lot to people like him. I wonder what the bhadralok has to say about Mahasweta Devi's vocal presence in any protest relating to Singur and Nandigram. What could a novelist have anything to do with politics, he might wonder.
6. Bengal's fate in the recent past (that is, since the beginning of coalition politics) has been closely linked to the politics at the Centre. Tomorrow the Left and Manmohan Singh meet, ostentatiously for the nuclear deal. And Bengal's politics can go to hell, once again.
10 November 2007
03 November 2007
Music
When I sing, I feel something releasing in me. I deeply miss my music classes with Mrs Sampath. I learnt a bit of Carnatic music from her in Hubli, of all the places. As far as I know, she was the only Carnatic vocal instructor in Hubli-Dharwad, the cradle of Hindustani music in Karnataka. Pure stroke of luck that I found her.
When I first joined the classes, I was about 12; my voice was good, but raw... unused to modulations, to 'bhaava'. Mrs Sampath told us to practise at home at least once a week. Prashanti, the little brat and my music classmate, and I would 'practise' all the way from my house to Mrs Sampath's, a distance of about 15 mins. But the good thing about us was when we began to sing in class, we poured our heart out. And Mrs Sampath would be impressed, and would say, "So, you have practised."
But Mrs Sampath was no fool: soon, she told us that our voices were good and we sang well, but we had no bhaava. Now, what is bhaava, I remember thinking. And then she sang the same kruti that we had just sung, and I began to listen. I heard many sounds in her voice, many ups and downs, many twists and turns, many a thing that made me close my eyes and rock my head. (That's among the many similarities music has with the process of an orgasm: you cant stand or for that matter lay still when you are experiencing either.) And I knew I didnt produce these sounds; at least not then.
So, I began to practise. Not much, maybe an hour or two a day. I also began to listen to more music. One day at class, after I finished singing a pancharatna kriti, Mrs Sampath looked hard at me, as if trying to search for something, and then gave an approving nod of her head. The beginnings of musical insight - that's what she was looking for in me, and she said she found them.
Mrs Sampath was a perfectionist. Weeks used to go by with me stuck on a line. There was no going ahead unless she heard what she wanted to hear. It was excruciating for me because I could see where she was tweaking it a little, but to do that myself made me sweat. There was only one way to sing it the way she did: shut my eyes tight, map out her voice exactly in my mind, and imitate it. And, bingo! If you hear it right, you've got it. This was how I picked up Bengali, too. Works with language and music.
Must find a teacher here. Must practise, must sing, must breathe!
When I first joined the classes, I was about 12; my voice was good, but raw... unused to modulations, to 'bhaava'. Mrs Sampath told us to practise at home at least once a week. Prashanti, the little brat and my music classmate, and I would 'practise' all the way from my house to Mrs Sampath's, a distance of about 15 mins. But the good thing about us was when we began to sing in class, we poured our heart out. And Mrs Sampath would be impressed, and would say, "So, you have practised."
But Mrs Sampath was no fool: soon, she told us that our voices were good and we sang well, but we had no bhaava. Now, what is bhaava, I remember thinking. And then she sang the same kruti that we had just sung, and I began to listen. I heard many sounds in her voice, many ups and downs, many twists and turns, many a thing that made me close my eyes and rock my head. (That's among the many similarities music has with the process of an orgasm: you cant stand or for that matter lay still when you are experiencing either.) And I knew I didnt produce these sounds; at least not then.
So, I began to practise. Not much, maybe an hour or two a day. I also began to listen to more music. One day at class, after I finished singing a pancharatna kriti, Mrs Sampath looked hard at me, as if trying to search for something, and then gave an approving nod of her head. The beginnings of musical insight - that's what she was looking for in me, and she said she found them.
Mrs Sampath was a perfectionist. Weeks used to go by with me stuck on a line. There was no going ahead unless she heard what she wanted to hear. It was excruciating for me because I could see where she was tweaking it a little, but to do that myself made me sweat. There was only one way to sing it the way she did: shut my eyes tight, map out her voice exactly in my mind, and imitate it. And, bingo! If you hear it right, you've got it. This was how I picked up Bengali, too. Works with language and music.
Must find a teacher here. Must practise, must sing, must breathe!
21 October 2007
Dashami morning, etc
(Image and video of the Bagbazar Puja by Lincoln. Thank yee)
Everyone's been about the whole town last night like there's not gonna be another puja. Even the people who sleep on the street are still tucked in in their makeshift beds at ten thirty in the morning. No one wants to wake up. Maybe if you kept on sleeping, the day wouldnt begin and night wouldnt come, and Ma didnt have to be sent away so soon. Well, we do try.
Maybe it's just my imagination, but I find Kolkata quite sad on Dashami mornings. People look wistfully at the pandals, sigh, and resign themselves to another year's wait.
Puja's a good time to introspect. Because, three days of holidays can get a little too much for just going out, sleeping, hogging, etc. So, by Navami or dashami day when I did start to think (yeah, have learnt to stop thinking nowadays. No, not meditate, just stop all thought processes until further notice), I thought of my three pujas in Kolkata, and what has happened in between.
I looked around with wide-eyed wonder the first time round. I was working with a newspaper but had already given notice. Kolkata was still not home then. I was out on all the puja nights and days. Was fascinated most by the dhaak and surprised that the kaamini/chaatim (not sure about the right name. Have got two names for this flower from two different sources.) flower bloomed just in time for the puja. It's like Ma made sure her brand of city freshener was in place before her visit.
A couple of months after the pujas, I took, what many would term, a big career leap. From gigantic mainstream to little-known but purposeful small-time. I've been doin the same thing for about two years now, with a brief gap. (It's been good, but more about my salaried work in another post.)
But the most important thing that's happened/happening personally is developing the guts to take risk. Financial ones, that is. Sometime this year I realised that if I must work my ass off, I'd be better off doin it for myself, ahem, I mean working for myself. Actually, am not really on my own, but working with Linc in his business.
It was one of the most mulled-over decisions in my life, considering that most life-defining ones have been taken in a matter of a few seconds. But I am beginning to think it's perhaps the best decision work satisfaction-wise.
Of course, this has meant a huge cut in salary plus uncertainties that tag along with any business. It has also meant a lot of belief in my self, patience, number-crunching, and daring to dream, oh, what dreams. Also, I love it.
By next Puja, I should have lots more to report. And hopefully, Ma Durga willing, lots of blogging will happen.
16 October 2007
Maybe it'll be a happy Durga Puja after all
Small victory, perhaps, but anything is welcome in such dismal times.
11 October 2007
Silence, not calm
A couple of days ago, the Times of India carried a story on Page 1 on the riots over the public distribution system in West Bengal. It was more an edit than a story. It said something like the calm of 30 years' Left rule in the state is being finally stirred, etc.
I wondered whether it was calm or Silence, the Deafening type.
Just before I joined journalism college five years ago, the Left had won the state elections. And Frontline magazine had attributed the victory to, what else, land reforms. It struck me as weird.
However great or dismal an achievement or event may be, how could it continue to be the trump card 30 years later? Had nothing changed in 30 years in Bengal? What about people who were born 10 years after the land reforms? They would be around 20 now... was there no difference between their and their parents' aspirations? How could Bengal be so different from what was happening everywhere else in the country?
Last year, the Left won again. There was jubilation in my office. I couldnt understand that. Didnt the very fact that one party continued to rule for 30 years in a democratic set-up strike you as somewhat odd? To this question too, I got the same answer: land reforms. And someone also told me: probity in public life.
Let's not talk about the Left and its land reforms. There is only so much their frayed nerves can take. Probity in public life: well, it's all over the papers now. Dont know if national television has picked it up yet (I have stopped watching news on TV; bollywood is better.).
Rizwan-ur Rehman's death is the latest squeak from behind the wall of Silence. No, it's not limited to religion, money and status. It's got everything to do with the state of things in Bengal. The suspect cops have not even been suspended, let alone their being ever punished. Right from Buddha babu to the cops, everyone knows that if they sit mum and sit tight through, say, a month more, it will be business as usual.
They also know that the people who staged a candle light protest against Rehman's death will not see the connection between things.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
I wondered whether it was calm or Silence, the Deafening type.
Just before I joined journalism college five years ago, the Left had won the state elections. And Frontline magazine had attributed the victory to, what else, land reforms. It struck me as weird.
However great or dismal an achievement or event may be, how could it continue to be the trump card 30 years later? Had nothing changed in 30 years in Bengal? What about people who were born 10 years after the land reforms? They would be around 20 now... was there no difference between their and their parents' aspirations? How could Bengal be so different from what was happening everywhere else in the country?
Last year, the Left won again. There was jubilation in my office. I couldnt understand that. Didnt the very fact that one party continued to rule for 30 years in a democratic set-up strike you as somewhat odd? To this question too, I got the same answer: land reforms. And someone also told me: probity in public life.
Let's not talk about the Left and its land reforms. There is only so much their frayed nerves can take. Probity in public life: well, it's all over the papers now. Dont know if national television has picked it up yet (I have stopped watching news on TV; bollywood is better.).
Rizwan-ur Rehman's death is the latest squeak from behind the wall of Silence. No, it's not limited to religion, money and status. It's got everything to do with the state of things in Bengal. The suspect cops have not even been suspended, let alone their being ever punished. Right from Buddha babu to the cops, everyone knows that if they sit mum and sit tight through, say, a month more, it will be business as usual.
They also know that the people who staged a candle light protest against Rehman's death will not see the connection between things.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
22 September 2007
11 September 2007
03 September 2007
Caught out
I got on the tram, reached into my pocket for the fare and looked for the conductor. I extended my hand to give him the fare. He was shocked. He studied me for half a minute or so, and said, "Aapni nischoy Kolkata e thanken na. (You dont live in Kolkata for sure)"
I almost fell of my seat. Was this guy a facereader or something? A tantrik, perhaps? I could only muster a "huh?"
"Ke u tram e uthe shonge shonge taka bar kore na ki! (Does anyone get on a tram and immediately pay the fare!)"
In my three years of living in Kolkata, I fooled each person I met into believing am a Bong, thanks to the Bangla I picked up. But, then, the tramwala had insight. And I hadnt, thank God, absorbed the many push-shove-grab ways of the Kolkatan.
Kolkatans avoid paying the fare till the last moment. Best would be to pay it just before getting off. It's as if they are unwilling to let go of the warmth of the coins for that extra moment.
The queues are not linear here; they are semi-circular. When a person reaches the head of a queue, the 3-4 people behind him will quickly cluster around and lean on him.
People cross the street after making sure the signal is green. After all, they have that hand raised up, you see, that will ward off all evil, even a ten-ton truck.
Yesterday, I'd been to Shyambazar to buy new clothes for the thakur. My ferocious bargaining had to come to an end, thanks to a six-year-old. I just watched with my mouth open and meekly made way as he pushed and shoved and led his mother to the stall.
The tramwala would be proud of him.
I almost fell of my seat. Was this guy a facereader or something? A tantrik, perhaps? I could only muster a "huh?"
"Ke u tram e uthe shonge shonge taka bar kore na ki! (Does anyone get on a tram and immediately pay the fare!)"
In my three years of living in Kolkata, I fooled each person I met into believing am a Bong, thanks to the Bangla I picked up. But, then, the tramwala had insight. And I hadnt, thank God, absorbed the many push-shove-grab ways of the Kolkatan.
Kolkatans avoid paying the fare till the last moment. Best would be to pay it just before getting off. It's as if they are unwilling to let go of the warmth of the coins for that extra moment.
The queues are not linear here; they are semi-circular. When a person reaches the head of a queue, the 3-4 people behind him will quickly cluster around and lean on him.
People cross the street after making sure the signal is green. After all, they have that hand raised up, you see, that will ward off all evil, even a ten-ton truck.
Yesterday, I'd been to Shyambazar to buy new clothes for the thakur. My ferocious bargaining had to come to an end, thanks to a six-year-old. I just watched with my mouth open and meekly made way as he pushed and shoved and led his mother to the stall.
The tramwala would be proud of him.
04 August 2007
WOW
A letter to Prof. Sen
Professor Amartya Sen, Harvard University
By Subroto Roy
Dear Professor Sen,
Everyone will be delighted that someone of your worldwide stature has joined the debate on Singur and Nandigram; The Telegraph deserves congratulations for having made it possible on July 23.
I was sorry to find though that you may have missed the wood for the trees and also some of the trees themselves. Perhaps you have relied on Government statements for the facts. But the Government party in West Bengal represents official Indian communism and has been in power for 30 years at a stretch. It may be unwise to take at face-value what they say about their own deeds on this very grave issue! Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and there are many candid communists who privately recognise this dismal truth about themselves. To say this is not to be praising those whom you call the “Opposition” ~ after all, Bengal’s politics has seen emasculation of the Congress as an opposition because the Congress and communists are allies in Delhi. It is the Government party that must reform itself from within sua sponte for the good of everyone in the State.
The comparisons and mentions of history you have made seem to me surprising. Bengal’s economy now or in the past has little or nothing similar to the economy of Northern England or the whole of England or Britain itself, and certainly Indian agriculture has little to do with agriculture in the new lands of Australia or North America. British economic history was marked by rapid technological innovations in manufacturing and rapid development of social and political institutions in context of being a major naval, maritime and mercantile power for centuries. Britain’s geography and history hardly ever permitted it to be an agricultural country of any importance whereas Bengal, to the contrary, has been among the most agriculturally fertile and hence densely populated regions of the world for millennia.
Om Prakash’s brilliant pioneering book The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal 1630-1720 (Princeton 1985) records all this clearly. He reports the French traveller François Bernier saying in the 1660s “Bengal abounds with every necessary of life”, and a century before him the Italian traveller Verthema saying Bengal “abounds more in grain, flesh of every kind, in great quantity of sugar, also of ginger, and of great abundance of cotton, than any country in the world”. Om Prakash says “The premier industry in the region was the textile industry comprising manufacture from cotton, silk and mixed yarns”. Bengal’s major exports were foodstuffs, textiles, raw silk, opium, sugar and saltpetre; imports notably included metals (as Montesquieu had said would always be the case).
Bengal did, as you say, have industries at the time the Europeans came but you have failed to mention these were mostly “agro-based” and, if anything, a clear indicator of our agricultural fecundity and comparative advantage. If “deindustrialization” occurred in 19th Century India, that had nothing to do with the “deindustrialization” in West Bengal from the 1960s onwards due to the influence of official communism.
You remind us Fa Hiaen left from Tamralipta which is modern day Tamluk, though he went not to China but to Ceylon. You suggest that because he did so Tamluk effectively “was greater Calcutta”. I cannot see how this can be said of the 5th Century AD when no notion of Calcutta existed. Besides, modern Tamluk at 22º18’N, 87º56’E is more than 50 miles inland from the ancient port due to land-making that has occurred at the mouth of the Hooghly. I am afraid the relevance of the mention of Fa Hiaen to today’s Singur and Nandigram has thus escaped me.
You say “In countries like Australia, the US or Canada where agriculture has prospered, only a very tiny population is involved in agriculture. Most people move out to industry. Industry has to be convenient, has to be absorbing”. Last January, a national daily published a similar view: “For India to become a developed country, the area under agriculture has to shrink, urban and industrial land development has to take place, and about 100 million workers have to move out from agriculture into industry and services. This is the only way forward for bringing prosperity to the rural population”.
Rice is indeed grown in Arkansas or Texas as it is in Bengal but there is a world of difference between the technological and geographical situation here and that in the vast, sparsely populated New World areas with mechanized farming! Like shoe-making or a hundred other crafts, agriculture can be capital-intensive or labour-intensive ~ ours is relatively labour-intensive, theirs is relatively capital-intensive. Our economy is relatively labour-abundant and capital-scarce; their economies are relatively labour-scarce and capital-abundant (and also land-abundant). Indeed, if anything, the apt comparison is with China, and you doubtless know of the horror stories and civil war conditions erupting across China in recent years as the Communist Party and their businessman friends forcibly take over the land of peasants and agricultural workers, e.g. in Dongzhou.
All plans of long-distance social engineering to “move out” 40 per cent of India’s population (at 4 persons per “worker”) from the rural hinterlands must also face FA Hayek’s fundamental question in The Road to Serfdom: “Who plans whom, who directs whom, who assigns to other people their station in life, and who is to have his due allotted by others?”
Your late Harvard colleague, Robert Nozick, opened his brilliant 1974 book Anarchy, State and Utopia saying: “Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights)”. You have rightly deplored the violence seen at Singur and Nandigram. But you will agree it is a gross error to equate violence perpetrated by the Government which is supposed to be protecting all people regardless of political affiliation, and the self-defence of poor unorganised peasants seeking to protect their meagre lands and livelihoods from state-sponsored pogroms. Kitchen utensils, pitchforks or rural implements and flintlock guns can hardly match the organised firepower controlled by a modern Government.
Fortunately, India is not China and the press, media and civil institutions are not totally in the hands of the ruling party alone. In China, no amount of hue and cry among the peasants could save them from the power of organised big business and the Communist Party. In India, a handful of brave women have managed to single-handedly organise mass movements of protest which the press and media have then broadcast that has shocked the whole nation to its senses.
You rightly say the land pricing process has been faulty. Irrelevant historical prices have been averaged when the sum of discounted expected future values in an inflationary economy should have been used. Matters are even worse. “The fear of famine can itself cause famine. The people of Bengal are afraid of a famine. It was repeatedly charged that the famine (of 1943) was man-made.” That is what T. W. Schultz said in 1946 in the India Famine Emergency Committee led by Pearl Buck, concerned that the 1943 Bengal famine should not be repeated following dislocations after World War II. Of course since that time our agriculture has undergone a Green Revolution, at least in wheat if not in rice, and a White Revolution in milk and many other agricultural products. But catastrophic collapses in agricultural incentives may still occur as functioning farmland comes to be taken by government and industry from India’s peasantry using force, fraud or even means nominally sanctioned by law. If new famines come to be provoked because farmers’ incentives collapse, let future historians know where responsibility lay.
West Bengal’s real economic problems have to do with its dismal macroeconomic and fiscal position which is what Government economists should be addressing candidly. As for land, the Government’s first task remains improving grossly inadequate systems of land-description and definition, as well as the implementation and recording of property rights.
With my most respectful personal regards, I remain
Yours ever
Suby
(The author is Contributing Editor, The Statesman)
Professor Amartya Sen, Harvard University
By Subroto Roy
Dear Professor Sen,
Everyone will be delighted that someone of your worldwide stature has joined the debate on Singur and Nandigram; The Telegraph deserves congratulations for having made it possible on July 23.
I was sorry to find though that you may have missed the wood for the trees and also some of the trees themselves. Perhaps you have relied on Government statements for the facts. But the Government party in West Bengal represents official Indian communism and has been in power for 30 years at a stretch. It may be unwise to take at face-value what they say about their own deeds on this very grave issue! Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and there are many candid communists who privately recognise this dismal truth about themselves. To say this is not to be praising those whom you call the “Opposition” ~ after all, Bengal’s politics has seen emasculation of the Congress as an opposition because the Congress and communists are allies in Delhi. It is the Government party that must reform itself from within sua sponte for the good of everyone in the State.
The comparisons and mentions of history you have made seem to me surprising. Bengal’s economy now or in the past has little or nothing similar to the economy of Northern England or the whole of England or Britain itself, and certainly Indian agriculture has little to do with agriculture in the new lands of Australia or North America. British economic history was marked by rapid technological innovations in manufacturing and rapid development of social and political institutions in context of being a major naval, maritime and mercantile power for centuries. Britain’s geography and history hardly ever permitted it to be an agricultural country of any importance whereas Bengal, to the contrary, has been among the most agriculturally fertile and hence densely populated regions of the world for millennia.
Om Prakash’s brilliant pioneering book The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal 1630-1720 (Princeton 1985) records all this clearly. He reports the French traveller François Bernier saying in the 1660s “Bengal abounds with every necessary of life”, and a century before him the Italian traveller Verthema saying Bengal “abounds more in grain, flesh of every kind, in great quantity of sugar, also of ginger, and of great abundance of cotton, than any country in the world”. Om Prakash says “The premier industry in the region was the textile industry comprising manufacture from cotton, silk and mixed yarns”. Bengal’s major exports were foodstuffs, textiles, raw silk, opium, sugar and saltpetre; imports notably included metals (as Montesquieu had said would always be the case).
Bengal did, as you say, have industries at the time the Europeans came but you have failed to mention these were mostly “agro-based” and, if anything, a clear indicator of our agricultural fecundity and comparative advantage. If “deindustrialization” occurred in 19th Century India, that had nothing to do with the “deindustrialization” in West Bengal from the 1960s onwards due to the influence of official communism.
You remind us Fa Hiaen left from Tamralipta which is modern day Tamluk, though he went not to China but to Ceylon. You suggest that because he did so Tamluk effectively “was greater Calcutta”. I cannot see how this can be said of the 5th Century AD when no notion of Calcutta existed. Besides, modern Tamluk at 22º18’N, 87º56’E is more than 50 miles inland from the ancient port due to land-making that has occurred at the mouth of the Hooghly. I am afraid the relevance of the mention of Fa Hiaen to today’s Singur and Nandigram has thus escaped me.
You say “In countries like Australia, the US or Canada where agriculture has prospered, only a very tiny population is involved in agriculture. Most people move out to industry. Industry has to be convenient, has to be absorbing”. Last January, a national daily published a similar view: “For India to become a developed country, the area under agriculture has to shrink, urban and industrial land development has to take place, and about 100 million workers have to move out from agriculture into industry and services. This is the only way forward for bringing prosperity to the rural population”.
Rice is indeed grown in Arkansas or Texas as it is in Bengal but there is a world of difference between the technological and geographical situation here and that in the vast, sparsely populated New World areas with mechanized farming! Like shoe-making or a hundred other crafts, agriculture can be capital-intensive or labour-intensive ~ ours is relatively labour-intensive, theirs is relatively capital-intensive. Our economy is relatively labour-abundant and capital-scarce; their economies are relatively labour-scarce and capital-abundant (and also land-abundant). Indeed, if anything, the apt comparison is with China, and you doubtless know of the horror stories and civil war conditions erupting across China in recent years as the Communist Party and their businessman friends forcibly take over the land of peasants and agricultural workers, e.g. in Dongzhou.
All plans of long-distance social engineering to “move out” 40 per cent of India’s population (at 4 persons per “worker”) from the rural hinterlands must also face FA Hayek’s fundamental question in The Road to Serfdom: “Who plans whom, who directs whom, who assigns to other people their station in life, and who is to have his due allotted by others?”
Your late Harvard colleague, Robert Nozick, opened his brilliant 1974 book Anarchy, State and Utopia saying: “Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights)”. You have rightly deplored the violence seen at Singur and Nandigram. But you will agree it is a gross error to equate violence perpetrated by the Government which is supposed to be protecting all people regardless of political affiliation, and the self-defence of poor unorganised peasants seeking to protect their meagre lands and livelihoods from state-sponsored pogroms. Kitchen utensils, pitchforks or rural implements and flintlock guns can hardly match the organised firepower controlled by a modern Government.
Fortunately, India is not China and the press, media and civil institutions are not totally in the hands of the ruling party alone. In China, no amount of hue and cry among the peasants could save them from the power of organised big business and the Communist Party. In India, a handful of brave women have managed to single-handedly organise mass movements of protest which the press and media have then broadcast that has shocked the whole nation to its senses.
You rightly say the land pricing process has been faulty. Irrelevant historical prices have been averaged when the sum of discounted expected future values in an inflationary economy should have been used. Matters are even worse. “The fear of famine can itself cause famine. The people of Bengal are afraid of a famine. It was repeatedly charged that the famine (of 1943) was man-made.” That is what T. W. Schultz said in 1946 in the India Famine Emergency Committee led by Pearl Buck, concerned that the 1943 Bengal famine should not be repeated following dislocations after World War II. Of course since that time our agriculture has undergone a Green Revolution, at least in wheat if not in rice, and a White Revolution in milk and many other agricultural products. But catastrophic collapses in agricultural incentives may still occur as functioning farmland comes to be taken by government and industry from India’s peasantry using force, fraud or even means nominally sanctioned by law. If new famines come to be provoked because farmers’ incentives collapse, let future historians know where responsibility lay.
West Bengal’s real economic problems have to do with its dismal macroeconomic and fiscal position which is what Government economists should be addressing candidly. As for land, the Government’s first task remains improving grossly inadequate systems of land-description and definition, as well as the implementation and recording of property rights.
With my most respectful personal regards, I remain
Yours ever
Suby
(The author is Contributing Editor, The Statesman)
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