West Bengal - mat poochh ke kya haal hai mera tere peechhe

An NRI friend recently asked a question on a social media group about relative backwardness of West Bengal. In order to address that, I am paraphrasing the question from a rather colloquial one to a formal one.

The question is, “If all Indian politicians are similarly culpable for bad governance and corruption, then how some states are ahead and why some states, especially WB are behind?”

The answer to this, as understandable, is not a simple one and interpretations of historical events and overall perspective will vary across the board. Thus I do not proclaim, that what I write here is the only veritable truth. It is just an attempt of an afternoon to explore some answers in a rather objective but perfunctory manner.

In my opinion, the reasons are in three categories: 1) Post independence political and economic history, 2) Regional Political Culture 3) Socio Cultural construct.

Firstly, resource rich eastern states, like Bihar and Odisha and even parts of Bengal, suffered from the early policy of freight equalisation scheme - a policy, for which I dock some serious points from my favourite PM, much hated Mr. J L Nehru. This policy, stemming from some warped sense of fairness, took away the competitive advantage of the zone, which could have helped it steal a march ahead of others, or at least be on the same step. This set the zone back easily by two decades of lost gross state product. The scenario was then exacerbated by bad politics.

The political culture of much of the North and WB was about politics and not economics. Most leaders, CMs and other leaders, have been busy about political ideology, to a small extent, and about perpetuating and concentrating political power, to the larger extent. But to what avail, has never been clear to them. Lot of people talk of Laloo Yadav’s corruption. From my personal understanding, Laloo Yadav, corrupt and megalomaniac that he is, made far less money than even a small fry like Suresh Kalmadi or a ‘cleaner’ politician Nitin Gadkari, leave alone biggies like the king of corruption Sharad Pawar or Amma or Yeddyurappa. Reason is that, be it Laloo Yadav, or Gautam Deb (creator of syndicate raaj in the Rajarhat area), they did not have a clear understanding of economics, its global trends nor a large economic vision. For them, the corruption was just a small political action, and not a large economic vision. Pawar, did yeoman’s job in his constituency of Baramati and Pune, and parts of Maharashtra where his writ ran large. But how did it run? - By economic largesse; not through the sly brainwashing (CPM type) or blatant violence or threat (Anubrata or Shahabuddin type; although CPM was no less in this). Pawar was like a private equity investor. He took cuts in every economic activity, saw to it that it reached fruition and with the enormous wealth (ginormous, actually) that he created from that, he ensured a trickle of economics to his loyalists. This is a culture and model which has been adopted by politicians in the West (NCP, Congress, BJP, Shiv Sena in Maharashtra) and South (Bangarappa and Yeddy in Karnataka, Amma, Karuna, Marans etc. in TN, YSR – Jagan, Chandra Babu, and KCR in AP and Telangana). Not all of them are getting it fully right, because all of them don’t have same level of intellect or people focus. Take Jayalalitha, who is a success in this. She is an amazingly competent woman. Had a traumatic childhood. Did not go have proper uninterrupted education. Didd not go to college. Was exploited as a child star by many people, perhaps including MGR. But have you heard her speaking?!! I know people who have been in closed door business/policy meetings with her, and she dazzles in her brilliance, understanding and articulation. Of course she is bitter, ruthless, insecure, corrupt and power hungry. But she knows that sustainable political power can come from sustainable and growing economy. This, unfortunately has been absent in the East. Nabin and Nitish did a great job. Nitish reduced the emphasis on monopolizing the political power through surrogate (CPM type) or violent (CPM/TMC type) means and thereby improved law and order scenario in Bihar. And Nabin, focused on development policy, while managing his party well, so that everyone understands what is the golden goose - economic welfare of people. However, I am not sure if this can be sustained in Bihar and Odisha. It is not doing well in Jharkhand. And I am coming to the reason of this. It is the people and their culture.

This brings me to the great man – Modi, who gets a lot of credit for doing good stuff in Gujarat. Part of this credit is due. For, like Amma, he has come from the bottom and evolved a lot. He has visions and he articulates them well.  He has some execution focus, which now, is getting diluted unfortunately, as all he is doing is, launching un-thought-through policies and playing to the gallery. But let me keep that aside. While part of the credit, especially for turning around ailing state companies, or for building infrastructure, was due to him, one has to keep in mind that Gujarat has always had a robust business, economic and industrial culture, and had successful enterprises in petrochemicals, textiles, pharmaceuticals etc. Gujaratis (some castes, not all) are world famous for their entrepreneurship. One may ask why Rajasthan has not benefitted from the Marwaris. Not an easy question, but my guess is that the reasons are, Rajasthan is a resource poor desert state, and not entirely run by Marwaris but a host of other communities as well. Moving on to the cultural context of entrepreneurship and understanding of business, this entrepreneurial attitude is also present in another community, that is the coastal Andhra Telugus. Ethically a bit wobbly, Coastal Andhra people are big dreamers and risk takers and thus always trying to build big, which propelled state ahead on the road of development.  The case of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra is about a work ethic, based on diligence and not so much of personal discretion and debate. Unfortunately, the eastern states, especially WB, for various reasons, have had a very bad work ethic, which has been largely fostered by the Left Front. It does not respect hard work and customer’s interest. It believes in entitlement (i.e. “center/ management/ party/ other people are responsible for my well-being”). The people are opinionated, without the knowledge base or diligence, and thus quarrelsome, and prone to violent volatility. Individuals lack the courage to stand up for anything. But the underclass, thanks to three decades of union type training by the Marxists, and present continuing dispensation, quickly organises itself into a mob and tries to derive collective benefit, which are thoroughly undue and unfair, and at times extortionist. [By the way, did anyone see the intimidating pronouncements of the families of the accused of the Sourav Gupta murder case in front of the local court?!! This was a criminal mob, consisting of the female members of the criminal family.] Thus East, particularly WB, suffers from a vitiating social culture not conducive to economic development but for volatile politics only. The people of West Bengal has inherited and fostered a culture that is not conducive to development and growth, but regression and insularity. And nobody is telling them so.

Thus, IMHO, my friends, the problems of WB and some parts of east are very deep rooted. The issue is a multi-headed hydra, which will not go away just by lambasting the non-bhodrolok mohila, to whom most of your main resistance comes from your class consciousness. And it came even before she came to power as most of you are ashamed to be represented by her. Best part is, the Marxist bhodroloks turned out to be the most class conscious, sniggering their upturned nose at this representative of the lumpenproletariat, a class, they only taught to disrupt and pull back an entire state for three decades. The solution to this issue will not come through denial, but through painful acceptance and catharsis. The solution will not come soon. Before that, there will be some more anarchy.

The above analysis, if I am allowed to call it so, is a very simplistic take on a very complex question of political and economic history. I have not talked much of the Congress sin, nor about the fact of the communal problem, that has been raising its ugly head of late. But I have tried to provide my take on what I think are among the main reasons for the backwardness of West Bengal, given that lack of clean and good political leadership is not unique to this state only.

All disagreements and comments are welcome. What is not, is hatred.

Angry about Anger - Thoughts on Kolkata Flyover collapse

The immensely tragic collapse of the under-construction flyover in Kolkata, has predictably opened up a huge vent for the emotionally and politically hyper people of West Bengal, most of whom also possess poetic and literary aspirations and illusions, which are divorced from their sub-mediocre reality. (The amount of bad, actually fecal, poetry I have received on WhatsApp on this incident is not funny at all!!)

Juxtaposed with the coming election, the sensational and bottom of the barrel media personnel, and disgustingly opportunistic political posturing, the noise has become unbearable. I have been following the stuff on media and a bit on social media. And I'm seriously disturbed by the discourse - public, political and media. Fault finding, blame game, political mudslinging. This, is a very regrettable condition! The politicians and politically unbiased people have their own vested interest in the coming elections. Media has its own commercial interest. None of these justify the din.

But, educated public? Why are they so gullible? Why do they seek simplistic answers when there's none? Why do they add to the noise and clutter? Why are they in a hurry to fix a quick blame and do some hanging? Why have the people of WB become the lynch mob of the country in last 4-5 decades?

Anyway, in the face of the public hunger for a simpler narrative of getting justice and closure, by finding and hanging some people, I supposed that I will put my thoughts on paper to explain the complexities of the issue. And I decided to do that in a dry corporate-legal style, thereby shunning emotions and biases and sticking to experience and rationality and theses based on that. The objective is to make ‘educated common people’ who are caught up in this frenzy, get to know and understand the issues, in, not simple, but not also complicated terms.

1.       IVRCL – Let me start with the contractor itself.

a.       IVRCL was a leading infrastructure player (EPC contractor and BOT project owner) in the country, till the financial crisis started hitting the sector very hard

b.      So, I guess there was nothing grossly wrong in CPM/ left front awarding the contract to them through a competitive bidding

c.       IVRCL, is not alone to suffer humongous financial setback since global financial crisis.  Yes, IVRCL was one of the most aggressive players, with political contacts with Maha and AP politicians, and thus had a very leveraged balance sheet. But barring the likes of L&T and Mahindras and probably Simplex, nobody can claim clean sleeves in this sector and leverage as hurt some of the best real asset players in the world.

d.      Some of you would know the issue of non-performing assets in the banking sector.  You should also know that this is part of large business/ economic cycle that takes place. At the time of growth and inflation, companies incur capital expenditures or inventory buildup expecting demand growth. And when that does not happen or slows down, the debt trap happens.

e.      Moreover, contrary to the less-informed Mallya narrative of mass media, it is the infrastructure and capital goods sector which has suffered most. The names are innumerable, but Jaiprakash, Gammon India, HCC, Patel Engineering, GVK, GMR are to name a handful few. And yes, IVRCL is one of the worst affected among the lot.

f.        IVRCL’s bankruptcy is post 2009, and is not a reflection of its technical competence. I do not have the details of the railway issue that got highlighted, but it suffices to state that government departments, from time to time, take punitive measures against contractors, for correct and contractual reasons but not always meriting this kind of stigma.

2.       Now, about the project delay –

a.       Public construction projects get delayed for various reasons and they get delayed all over the country and all the time.

b.      The reasons mostly come from the issues of land acquisition, regulatory clearances and timely fund release by the government. 

c.       And in case of very rare contractors, there may be sheer technical incompetence, which is not the case of most like IVRCL.

d.      Occasionally, the contractor is culpable of diverting the money to other projects and then not being able to bring it back and thus suffering liquidity crisis. Or having liquidity crisis because of over extending itself over many projects. This may be the case of IVRCL.

e.      In Mumbai, the Santa Cruz Chembur Link road and the Chembur overpass remained half built for many many years. And Bandra Sea Link is epic in the annals of project delay.
(The last one had angles of political corruption as well, as the project cost got inflated by a large multiple over all those years – this is a model reportedly designed and used by a former Maharashtra CM in many public projects, to amass enormous wealth, to the tunes of twenty/ thirty thousands of crores. Bengalis and Bengali politicians are thankfully not up to this level of sleight.)

3.       Cancelling the contract

a.       This is a very tricky issue. Having seen and having indirect knowledge of funding both the large contractors and their customers (public and private), I realise that cancelling an EPC contract in the midst of the project is close to impossible, and some of the key reasons are:

                                                               i.      As mentioned, most of the time, the delay is because of reasons beyond the control of the contractor and rather that of government or the contracting customer

                                                             ii.      A contract is generally terminated on “non-performance” (this phrase, like the “act of god” is a legal term and has deeper connotation than what normal understanding supposes). And it is extremely difficult to prove non-performance in any court of law.

                                                            iii.      Lastly, a cancellation of a project in the middle, especially by a government, means almost shelving the project, as most of the design and technology has been provided by the contractor and governments (especially backward states like WB) do not have the wherewithal to carry it through with another contractor in a reasonable time frame.

4.       About corruption and its implications
The usual refrain under such circumstances, is that corruption is responsible for these incidents. Possible. But not mandatory.

a.       First, be aware, that the award of public projects has been fraught with the risk of corruption by public officials for a very very long time. There are plenty of stories of British officers making a fortune during pre and during war construction boom in India.

b.      Question is, why corruption and what is the impact of this corruption, if any?

                                                               i.     Reason for corruption Most people who are allowed to bid for these projects have to be pre-qualified by various track record and experience. The driving force behind corruption is unfair advantage in the face of equal competition and NOT to construct something below par.

                                                             ii.      Lowering of the quality of the construction – this used to be and still is the case for simple road repair, or even open sewerage, where the downside risk is minimal. However, for critical stuff like bridges and power plants, such is almost never the case. The risk to the companies and the officials and legislators are too high. So, what happens….?

                                                            iii.    Increase in cost – So, to cover the cost of the corruption, contractors do cost escalations, which are approved by the people who have been on the take. That does not seem to be the case of Vivekananda Flyover. It must also be kept in mind that all cost escalations are not because of corruption. If a project gets delayed by many years, then one has to keep in mind the effect of inflation as well.

5.       Hurrying up the project

a.       Firstly, it is important to ask, if it is mala fide to expect and ask for a quicker completion of a project which has been stuck for a long period of time?

b.      Secondly, it is needed to examine if such requests/ or instructions were made, and on account of that if some act of negligence took place
(More later on reasons for the accident)

6.       So what should be done now? - 

a.      Of course the first thing to do is to take care of (treat, rehabilitate and compensate) the affected parties, to the best of the ability of the government and even greater public

(In fact it is rather bemusing to note that a normal and usual action of announcing monetary compensation has been met with such bitter and (bad) poetic vehemence, in this case.)

b.      Then a neutral and objective investigation should be done to find the reasons behind the collapse

c.       And take prompt appropriate punitive and/ or corrective action

7.       Now, what could be the possible reasons for such incidents.

a.       Well, I am neither an expert nor chronicler of such incidents. But by some experience and method of abstraction, my guess that the reasons generally would fall among the following:

                                                               i.      Act of God
First a good definition – “In common law, an overwhelming event caused exclusively by natural forces whose effects could not possibly be prevented (e.g., flood, earthquake, tornado).  In modern jurisdictions, "act of God" is often broadened by statute to include all natural phenomena whose effects could not be prevented by the exercise of reasonable care and foresight.”
Now it is also important to differentiate accident and Act of God. Accident is the event, Act of God is one of the many reasons leading to such event.

                                                             ii.      Human Error
Human error is easy to understand. “Human error means that something has been done that was not intended by the actor; not desired by a set of rules or an external observer; or that led the task or system outside its acceptable limits."
Anecdotally, one junior and very efficient person in my investor relations department, had, by mistake sent an investor bulletin and put all e-mail ids in cc: instead of bcc:, leading to some commotion. (My CEO twisted herself about it and made me fire the person against my vehement opposition, because she saw spectre of sabotage). Now this was a human error.

                                                            iii.      Negligence
is “unintentional failure to exercise the care toward others, which a reasonable or prudent person would do in the circumstances, or taking action which such a reasonable person would not without any intention to harm. Negligence is accidental as distinguished from "intentional torts" (assault or trespass, for example) or from crimes…”
Now, in the above anecdote, if there was a checklist or an SOP (standard operating procedure) which that person had ignored, possibly in hurry, then it would be a case of negligence.

                                                           iv.      Criminal/ wilful negligence
Criminal negligence is negligence where there is an intention involved and/ or the ramifications of negligence is huge, like drunk driving. But there has to be a ‘mens rea’ to prove criminal negligence. “Mens rea is a legal phrase used to describe the mental state a person must be in while committing a crime for it to be intentional. It can refer to a general intent to break the law or a specific, premeditated plan to commit a particular offense.”

                                                             v.      Malafide action, including sabotage or subversion
This does not need much elaboration.
This angle needs to be checked as the company has raised an insinuation. But my guess is that it is a desperate ploy by a legal counsel to divert such unpleasant attention on an already troubled company.

b.      In most cases, the real reason falls between human error and negligence. The corrective actions thereafter are about strengthening the process by all parties to avoid such events in future.

c.       In case of criminal negligence, or even corruption with knowledge of impending risks, if proved, strong punitive measures, as per the law of the land, should be taken.

This is not a comprehensive and full researched article and thus carries its own risks of simplification and generalisation. And I will be grateful to engage with anyone who would like to enrich the content towards the goal of objectivity and not of media and public trial and vengeance.

I also know that this is a futile exercise. The ethos of West Bengal, the immense unawareness of its educated public of economic governance, volatile nature of its politics, the irrationally passionate character of the people and its penchant for violence and vengeance has made WB a basket case. And for them, emotionless facts, information and issues, which cannot be converted into poetry (good or bad) or films (sleek, lush, ad-like, like the new generation hits), do not make any sense. For them, if you cannot blame and lynch someone, then it is a non-issue. I am not sure how many of my friends and acquaintances, coming from the lineage of "famously voracious Bengali readers", will even read this full article, especially as soon as they realise that I am not going to hang their chosen political adversary, whoever that is.

This does not give me any pleasure, because wherever I am and whatever I do, I cannot and do not intend to deny my identity of a Bengali and that West Bengal is my home. But a home I am very terrified to return to.

Am I a Hindu, or am I a Hindu?

(Posted on Facebook on November 3, 2014, addressing a distant FB friend)

Dear Kaushik,

Since you made your last comment on my post a few days back (a very humorous article by Shovon Choudhury), I have been pondering about responding to you. I guess it is now an unavoidable imperative for me to articulate my position on matters that you have often rambled about, on some of my posts.

Kaushik, we do not know each other personally. It seems you are known to a schoolmate of mine, whom I have physically met only once (or was it twice?) in last 31 years. How you and I became friends on FB is another matter, and need not be discussed now. But, it is safely presumable that we do not know enough about each other.

In case you had followed my last post on Ben Affleck - Bill Maher - Sam Harris issue, then you would know that I would like to describe myself as someone who is irreligious, deeply spiritual and intensely liberal. But these are just labels. Allow me to give you a glimpse of my interest in matters that you talk of at times, especially religion and Hinduism.

As a young student in a school run by Ramakrishna Mission, I was exposed to Indian philosophies at an early age. That body of knowledge came under an academic topic titled “Indian Culture”, not as “Hindu Culture” or “Hinduism”. And that is not the only reason for my avoiding referring to the Indian body of work in philosophy and epistemology as Hinduism. It is also important at this point to note that religion, spirituality, philosophy and epistemology are all closely related but distinct topics, and I have a spot of interest in the ground that these cover between them.

Anyway, I believe, the seed that was sown more than 30 years back, took its shape in various manners within all of us who were so exposed. Alike the institution that is Ramakrishna Mission today, some of my friends have hardened their stance on their Hindu identity, some have stayed true to credo of “joto mot, toto poth”, i.e. “as many ways as creeds”, while some have strayed totally away from religious discourses, but stayed philosophical and at times spiritual. For me, it has taken a shape of a search (rather random though) – a search for meaning, for reason beyond apparent rationality and lastly for a well-lit path, if there is any. And this search has taken me reasonably extensively through various texts of Indian philosophy in last decade or more. While I had exposure to Vedanta and Upanishads, thanks to what we read in school (and that included very captivating and stimulating stories), I started reading up more in recent times. I obtained a reasonable sense of the structure of the six schools of Indian philosophy, namely Vedanta, Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika and Mimamsa. I have not studied much about the two schools of syllogistic epistemology and cosmology, namely Nyaya and Vaisheshika, and the hermenuetics and exegesis based Mimamsa. Among the other three, which have more spirituality than the former three, I have studied Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra at length and few versions of it, and its lucid treatise “Raja Yoga”, by Swami Vivekananda. Between Vedanta (including Upanishads) and Yoga came Samkhya (which is a dualist but almost atheistic philosophy and enumerative epistemology). Although I have not yet been through the Samkhya Karika of Isvara Krishna or the commentaries of Gauda Pada, I have a decent insight of the Samkhya enumeration, thanks to a brilliant and detailed introduction in one of the most comprehensive treatise of Patanjali that I have come across. Also on my wish list is, Badarayan’s Brahma Sutra and Adi Sankara’s Bhasya of the same, because I want to deepen my understanding of Vedanta, when I can. I have also not covered the totally atheistic and materialistic philosophy called Charvaka, which was apparently contemporaneous with Buddhism and Jainism. I am a big fan of Adi Sankaracharya as a poet-spiritualist of monumental talent and spirit, and I am quite infamous in the family for quoting his brilliant Nirvana Shatakam or breaking into the Carnatic musical version of Bhaja Govindam (aka Moha Mudgar) at the drop of the proverbial hat. Lastly, I carry all the time in my bag, a very elegant (textually) version of Bhagavad Gita, which I think of as perhaps the best text of spiritual philosophy ever written.

Now, my dear stranger, the reason I wasted some precious time on a Sunday morning (that’s when I started writing this piece) in outlining my philosophical readings, is not to look like an immodest humbug (which I am surely looking like by now), but to let you know that in the multitude of Mumbai or for that matter, in urban India, I perhaps stand slightly on the right hand side of the normal curve, in terms of some understanding of Indian (aka Hindu) philosophy and epistemology. And, if you choose to call that Hinduism, I have absolutely no problem. Let me now enumerate my positions on various related topics:

1. My Indian (and perhaps Hindu) identity is not based on a vision of pantheistic, deistic, ritualistic, casteist and most importantly Islamophobe Hinduism
2. Pride is not my dominant behaviour, but push comes to shove, I am and would like to be a proud Indian, because of its ‘lasting’ achievements, namely:

a. The profound philosophies that India has contributed to the world and that I have mentioned above

b. The achievements Indians have attained in science, literature, art, sports, business etc. in the modern world

3. I am not proud of some imagined scientific achievements, which were mentioned in semi-fictional mythologies (extremely well written ones), which has no remnant in the present world, to lend any credibility to such imaginations. I respect Dwaipyana Vyas as an author and a spiritual giant for writing Mahabharata and Gita. And I respect him for his vivid imaginations, as much as I respect Jules Verne and Isaac Asimov for their own. But even science fiction, at the end of the day, is that only – fiction.

Now comes my position on Islam, Muslims and related matter. Firstly, an admission. My knowledge of Islam as a religion is not as strong as my knowledge and understanding of Hinduism. It is much lesser than my awareness of Buddhism and even lesser than Christianity as well. Interestingly, I find that this particular profile of awareness is shared by a large swathe of the educated urban upper middle class Hindus of the country. This, kind of reflects, how we have looked at Islam and Muslims, in spite of its and their presence in the country over a millennium. Having said that, and given my interest in these matters, I had taken some shots in reading up about the religion and its scriptures and structure of its philosophy and epistemology. I must admit that on the latter measure, I found it to be rather scant. In fact in that respect, all Abrahamic religions are rather low on epistemological content. Much of western thought today is a sum and product of Hellenic philosophy and Christian ethics. And Greeks were not Christians.

But Kaushik, I believe that your area of interest is not Islam as a religion, but how its followers behave; rather, how they have been behaving in last half a century, i.e. our life time, and how pseudo-seculars, or sickulars, like me, have pandered to that. On that, I have to state the following:

1. Wielding broad brushes about religion and political behaviour is fraught with extreme perils, biggest of which is being unfair to a vastly silent majority and of alienating communities
2. Having said that, I do believe that Islamic world and Arab world (not the same, although, there are linkages) are going through a serious crisis
3. I would also grant, to a limited extent, that prevalent Islamic theology has had mildly adverse to intensely devastating effect on certain societies, countries and geopolitics
4. If you follow my posts (which you seem to do), I do occasionally share related matters about which I am quite critical. Examples being my post on ISIS, or my post on Ben Affleck which I mentioned in this piece as well, and about Muslim PETA people being harassed for protesting against mass slaughters during Eid etc.
5. I do somewhat believe that Islam, as the newest of the major religions, has to travel a lot more and reform itself drastically.
6. But I do strongly opine that criticisms by complete outsiders like me, who have very little or no clue, either of the religion, or of the history or of the sociological underpinnings of the troubled regions, can achieve very little. All changes, in any entity, be it an individual, or society, or a body politic, can work, only if it is from within. Thus my critical posts on Islam or Islamic issues are not as prolific as on other matters. And for the same reason, I would like more discussion within Islamic societies in the world, which postures like Affleck’s, might stifle.
7. I do also believe that the minorities also have their responsibilities, like all citizens, to be unquestionably law abiding and to have appropriate expectations to be treated equally, and not extremely exceptionally. (N.B - Article 370 is not included in this, as that arises out of a political contract and is a separate matter of discussion.)
8. I am totally against any unfair and/or unlawful, explicit or implicit, mollycoddling or pandering to any interest group, including religious minorities. You would have missed my exasperation and condemnation, when Mamata Banerjee refused to meet Nancy Pelosy because some Muslim groups in Kolkata did not want her to meet Pelosy.
9. However, at the end of the day, in a civilised society or country, I believe that the onus is on the majority to assure the minority of its safety and equality. And this is not held true at times in many countries, including ours. And I resent that.

Kaushik, I will not go on forever, but would like to leave just two points:

1. My understanding of Hinduism or the Sanatana Indian Way, is different from yours or of those, whose flags you seem to be bearing now in a far country
2. And at the cost of immodesty, I would like to speculate, that my Indian or Hindu identity stands on far stronger foundation than yours to feel endangered so easily

Lastly, I won’t say that it is not personal. I am writing to you and as a response to your occasional comments. So you may certainly feel affronted. But I must add that this is also about many who share your views, and often spar with some of us, who stand on the very narrow ground in the middle. Thus it is rather a communiqué to a larger audience, and please try not feel very bad about it.

Best,

Culture of Bengal - violence?

The longest poll season in the largest working democracy came to an end and the nation heaved a sigh of relief. The tempo and temperature started coming down. One vocal and articulate leader from the potentially victorious party, paid a back handed tribute to the departing prime minister, some people unblocked some others on the Facebook and I came to watch a news channel after a month or so.

While I avoided all the cacophony and vitriolic debates that dominated these channels, I did not miss out the essential information regarding this very important national process, thanks to some selective reading of newspapers and few websites. And one thing disturbed me the most.

Over the long and antsy period of a month and five days of Lok Sabha election, there was only one state from where news of electoral violence flowed in continuously. Before the elections, the infamous riots happened in Muzaffarnagar. While everyone poltically discerning enough, knows that it was orchestrated clearly with the election in the view, it was not around the voting process and it had more the tag of a communal riot, than a political skirmish. A comparatively marginalised Bodo faction massacred Bangla speaking Muslims in Assam, which again was less about the Lok Sabha election than the age old ethnic and migrant strife peculiar to Assam. And then, after the polls were over, the tinderbox of Meerut had a few unfortunate sparks around a water tank. Lastly prennially sensitive Hyderabad witnessed a burnt religious flag and tragic loss of few lives this evening, two days after the voting has stopped.

But across all five phases of the longest election season ever, violence seemed to be the order of the day in my home state, West Bengal. Not the usual Bihar or Uttar Pradesh, but West Bengal. All varieties of it.  Intimidation, heckling, rigging, booth capture, mob attacks, group and finally on the last day a bomb was hurled in Posta, in the city of Kolkata and three lives lost elsewhere in the state. SHAME!!

The history of political violence in Bengal, perhaps goes back to an incident that did not take place in present day Bengal, but in a town which was part of what was the undivided large province of Bengal, and is now part of Bihar. On the evening of April 30, 1908, Khudiram Bose, along with his senior accomplice, Prafulla Chaki, hurled, what was probably the first bomb, during the violent independent struggle of India.  The seed of militant struggle for independence was sown that day and continued with the likes of the trio of Benoy, Badal and Dinesh, Surya Sen of the famous Chattagram Armoury raid, Bagha Jatin and the mysterious master of disguise, Rasbehari Bose. Now, that strife was against the colonial occupier of the land, the British oppressors. It was covered with patriotic glory, sacrifice and not small amount of romanticism.

Then came communism. Formed in the twenties, Marxist movement in India had strong foundational links to Bengal and the armed struggle for independence. M N Roy and Abani Mukherjee, two of the founders of Communist Party of India were from Bengal and were deeply involved in violent anti-British struggle. Post independence, first signs of people's movement emerged - both from the mills and the farmlands. Oppressed by the erstwhile colonial rulers, and then forgotten by the new rulers, capitalists and landowners of their own ilk, farmers and mill workers sought their redemption in the ideology of Karl Marx, which always had an association with violence. In 1967, in a village of North Bengal named Naxalbari, police fired on a posse of protesting tribal farmers. The movement had the backing of a breakway faction of the CPI(M), which itself was a splinter of erstwhile undivided Communist Party of India (CPI). CPIM, or CPM, was very strong in West Bengal and had already replaced CPI in the region. Led by Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal, this movement soon captivated the minds of the educated youth and spread as a violent ideological struggle all. Naxalbari movement thus became post independent India’s first armed insurgency, having wide presence in Bengal. The provincial Government also retaliated with its might and human rights were soon relegated to oblivion. Violence engulfed West Bengal in the late sixties and early seventies.

Meanwhile, as a continuation of the pre independence scenario, mainstream communists continued to be persecuted, although by now they had entered the parliamentary process. The engagement between communists and the government and other parties remained very acrimonious and physical violence became a tool to settle disputes and territorial issues. In 1970, came one of the darkest days in the political history of Bengal, a blot which has still not faded totally and has been exhumed recently. In the communist dominated agrarian town of Bardhaman, a family of Congress sympathizers was slaughtered by a large number of cadres of CPM, in the middle of the night. The gruesome details of the massacre ringed all across the state. But it also became the lingua franca of Bengal politics.

In 1977, the Marxists came to power, and stayed there for over three decades.  Soon violence and intimidation became the standard implement of the ruling forces. Equipped with the well oiled and widely spread cadre network, CPM and its allies, took control of all aspects of the province. The separation between party and administration were totally obliterated and the party became arbiter of all disputes and conflicts – political, social and even familial. Economic situation deteriorated, gradually but in a sure and secular trend.  This translated into despair and soon anger became the prevalent emotion in both private and public discourse, and in group or bilateral engagement. A minor vehicular incident involving a private car and a lesser vehicle or a pedestrian on any street of Kolkata, would invariably degenerate into a mass outrage against the private vehicle as it epitomized prosperity.  Battles between neighborhood soccer teams would see swords being pulled out and blood being spilled and even lost lives. This is still the urban or the semi urban story. In the villages and small towns, total reigns of terror loomed large. Hooligans, backed by political patronage, aggrandized economic benefits, intimidated communities, violated women at large and killed at will. While the leaders at the top looked away, these elements delivered election after election, and this went on, as if never to cease.

In 2011, after decades of strife, Mamata Banerjee and her party finally broke down the left hegemony and came to power amidst slogan and hopes of change, “poriborton”.  Some people who had ears to the ground, had already foreseen this. As they say, when a ship sinks, it’s the rats who abandon it the earliest. Similarly, people who are cognizant of grassroot politics and polity of Bengal, witnessed the changing colours of the lumpen elements, on whose misdeeds rode the CPM juggernaut.  By the time the new government formed, the new party in power, which was anyway very akin in ideology (if it had any) and style to the one they conquered, acquired all these elements.  For a while, the Trinamool leader talked of how there will be no violence or vengeance. But a violent culture which has evolved and emerged over almost half a century is not easy to be done away with, especially if the leadership is not sincere about eradicating it altogether.  Thus sporadic violence continued and showed its ugly face during the Lok Sabha elections. In the backdrop of the longest and perhaps one of the most peaceful parliamentary elections, West Bengal stood out like the proverbial sore thumb with its wide spread incidents of violence.

But it is gone now. On the aftermath of it, lie a centrally decimated Congress, an almost extinct CPM and regionally supreme Trinamool. The leadership of each of these parties has to introspect and act, if they sincerely wish to completely exterminate the language and use of violence and redeem some esteem for the state.  The central leadership should ponder if it is worth maintaining a base, simply based on one strongman, Adhir Choudhury, whose past and present is marked with use of force.  CPM, if at all they would like to remain relevant, should first repent and regret the total subversion of the state machinery and institutions that they did, and did it with force and violence, and make public and corrective actions. And finally the victor should publicly condemn all use of force, bring all perpetrators, including from its own ranks to justice and spread a language which is civil and rational and not angry, rabble rousing, uncouth and inciting.

Civil Obedience

Recently I was watching a video where Matt Damon reads Howard Zinn, and starts off by saying that world's wealth needs to be reallocated. The video got a lot of attention on social media, because everybody thought that those were Matt's own words. I liked it. Not because I like Matt Damon, which I do. But I liked what he quoted. Particularly, the place where he quoted Zinn to say that our problem is not Civil Disobedience but civil obedience, he got my memories working.

When I was young, I used to think of how to make things more equal for people. That was not in the intense way the previous generation dreamt of. I did not dispute or discredit their dreams. But I saw around me, how the philosophy, they thought would bring equality to mankind, failed to do so, and fostered authoritarianism on the other hand. I also realised that market forces are inescapable like nature. But I knew that the answer from the market place couldn't be a sacrosanct one, because the market existed before the Marxist philosophy and brought about huge income and wealth difference and exploitation; and it continued to do so, even after Marxist/ Socialist system of political governance gave away to 'capitalism'. I had dreamt of a new system that will acknowledge the market forces but will have checks and balances that will allow uniform opportunity and improve basic living standards of multitudes who were still at the bottom of society.

But more importantly I was willing to raise my voice for that. I also realised that I was much more muted than my previous generation. But we did rebel and disobey.

Now, I see a large section of the present generation to be totally conformist and harbouring half digested dogma about 'capitalism'. A host people in their late 20s and early 30s, that I know directly or indirectly, display this. I have seen on FB and otherwise, how these people foment majoritarian views, and are hoping for one authoritarian capitalist messiah to deliver their redemption. I find this rather sad. Even the clamour for Lokpal was just a rather ignorant and half-passionate act of incrementalism; the protests were neither sustained nor did they call for any deep understanding of the issue nor personal sacrifice. This was so different from what we knew of our previous generation, and even from our generation. Very few, among the young educated upper middle class is now taking personal risks to bring about a change. And the more one is comfortable in his or her cushy life, bestowed by Mammon, the God of Capitalism, more vocal one is of majoritarian and often repugnantly oppressive social views.

I know that the life I chose, was different from what many from the previous generation chose. I know that I made compromises, when I dreamt of a change without much disruption. In a way, I have started questioning myself and my generation for walking this path, where we just conformed, hoped someone else will bring the change and thus paved way for the next generation, which is steeped into civil obedience and hedonistic selfishness.

My friends, NaMo's friends

(Posted on Facebook as a note on 7 April 2013 at 17:29)

Every time I speak or exchange opinions with people in my milieu in this maximum city, who are in favour of Narendra Modi becoming the prime minister, I become despondent, sad and angry.

Now, first let me acknowledge and admit a few things. I don’t like Modi. And I think that he is a great user and abuser of statistics and the best political PR machine this world has seen since Joseph Goebbels. But that is not the crux of my admission. I do grudgingly admit that he has been a better administrator than most of the present crop of heads of provincial governments or most of the ministers and cabinet members at the central government. And that I do not have substantial reasons to believe that he has an economic rent seeking side, which is now par for the course for almost everybody in public service (aka politics/bureaucracy in India).

In today’s India, having these two qualities, is a compelling qualification. And I do agree that these two are almost sufficient for one to be chosen as the head of a province or for that matter a country, if of course there are no other serious disqualifiers. Now, about probable disqualifiers of Modi, I wish to maintain a bit reticence, on this occasion. My apprehension about Modi is a hunch arising out of his authoritarian demeanour and my reading of the history -history of Germany after WW I and rise of Hitler, history and popularity of Mrs. Gandhi and her emergency and its oppressive excesses and lastly history of Sharad Pawar and institutionalisation of rent seeking politics. And please note that I am have not mentioned Godhra but for this sentence.

While what the examples of Hitler and Indira Gandhi point to, is not difficult to comprehend, but it will suffice to say that both the leader were loved by the middle class and their contemporary constituencies, to emerge as dictators and oppressors later. But I think I should elaborate the Pawar analogy a bit. Growing up in the eighties, in an Eastern province, infamous for phlegmatic response by government, I often heard paeans about this Chief Minister in Maharashtra, which went like, "Sharad Pawar is a great administrator! While he takes bribe, the job gets done."  The business class and common man, completely fed up with the lethargy of the state and bureaucracy of the 70s and early 80s, welcomed this model, whereby a legislator, a representative of citizenry, a head of a province can seek and obtain huge financial gratification. The seeds of wide spread rent seeking which was blessed by the privileged class then proliferated across the country and manifested in Bangarappa, Jayalalitha, Mulayam Singh Yadav, YSR, Yeddyurappa and Gadkari to name a few, sparing no political hue at all.  I suspect that the people who are rooting for Narendra Modi today are ignoring this historic lesson. And hoys, I am told Hitler was not corrupt, as if that is the only evil human beings are capable of.

Another problem of speaking out against Narendra Modi, as the projected leader of the country is the fact that Congress has become completely indefensible in recent time. So, for the time being, I will have to suppress my opinion about him. But the lack of an alternative, between an out of touch, failing (and falling; everyday) and dynastic party which is in a state of total disarray, and an extreme right wing party led by clearly a potential autocrat, is the reason I feel pretty despondent.

But the reason I feel partly sad and partly angry, because over a period of time I have observed the people among urban upper middle class (and unfortunately Hindu) who support Modi as the rightful candidate for the head of state, and I have discovered a set of some common beliefs they hold, which they either express explicitly or imply through winded logic. From this correlation, of commonality of a set of rather pernicious beliefs and approval and patronage of Narendra Modi, I suspect an underlying causality, which points to a severe polarisation of this milieu. For me that is a big loss. Loss of friends, not as friends but as fellow thinkers. To me it is another perilous step in the continual shrinkage of that narrow space that is left for social and economic liberals in this country. And that makes me sad and angry.

As I write this, I realise that I will end up sharing this with some people. And I think that I owe it to them for them to know what these common set of beliefs that I have discovered among those who support Mr. Modi as the next prime minister. Without any further ado I start enumerating them:


NREGS was a rank bad idea because one, few or all of the following,

• People got money without doing work and that is not right
• All the money, or most of it was pilfered away
• It took away cheap labour from city construction sites, their homes and Punjab’s fields
• NREGS did nothing to bring back or save the economy during the slowdown; (Lord Keynes, you faggot, eat your heart out!)

All pro-poor subsidies are bad,because one, few or all of the following,

• Subsidies are evil
• Subsidies foster laziness and inefficiency
• Subsidies never reach the people
• Subsidies are the only reason we have deficit, not tax evasion

Poverty:

• Most poor are responsible for their economic plight, and neither the state, nor citizens who are better off,should 'sacrifice' anything for them.
• Poverty is still largely caused by high population and the tendency of poor people (and Muslims) to procreate indiscriminately. We must have strict China-like rules to contain this (same people, for all you know, are making presentations about demographic dividend of India to their Board and Investors. And ironically, they forget that the Congress that they hate so much, had propagated this thought during Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi era.)

Casteism and affirmative action:

• Casteism is not relevant anymore
• People from lower castes are responsible for their economic plight
• There is no correlation between caste and poverty
• Reservation should be totally abolished; there is no case for affirmative action based on Caste
• Upper caste Hindus are actually economically more hard up now

Muslims:

• Muslims are responsible for their economic plight
• All or most Muslims are planning to raise large families to change the ethnic profile
• Muslims have been unduly pandered by all non-BJP parties
• Muslims are 'mostly'anti-Indian

Privatization is panacea:

• Education should be fully privatized.
• Healthcare should be fully privatized
• The air we breathe, should be privatized (well, not yet, but perhaps not too far)

Corporatization is a panacea and everything can be solved through that

• Country, state, cities,government all should be run as a company
• Politicians should be"incentivised and attracted to this 'sector' ", by large salaries and thus they will not be corrupt (this view is courtesy one Mr. Chetan Bhagat, whois a fiction author parallel to bollywood in quality and popularity, and a commentator on anything under the blue sky, patronised by the Tabloids of India)

Other issues:

• All or most civic problems in Mumbai and NCR is attributable to illegal Bangladeshi Immigrants
• Dual income, less than forty,financial services professionals, having own house in south or central Mumbai,worth more than a million dollar, are true representatives of Indian middle class
• Capital punishment is just and should not be abolished
• They all tend to 'like' one Republican canard going around on the FB about how Obama's 'socialism' is equivalent to giving equal and average grade to everybody in the class and howthat will take the country/ society down. They can be forgiven their ignorance that Obama is not a socialist. But this preference suggests that they believe their socio-economic privilege is entirely on account of their merit and the social milieu they are born into has nothing to do with it. This is why they are against any sort of subsidy, reservation and they believe that the poor are responsible for their plight.

Narendra Modi & Gujarat:

• Befor Narendra Modi, Gujarat was a backward state
• The inherent entrepreneurship of Gujaratis, has nothing to do with Gujarat's growth
• Narendra Modi has not done anything wrong and cannot do anything wrong
• You can't criticise Narendra Modi because Congress is rank bad even if you are not a Congress supporter(what a sterling peace of logic that is!!)

Culpability of Sonia Gandhi/ Narendra Modi:

• In spite of various evidences,statements by senior police personnels who have been in Gujarat those days, the state of Muslim settlements in Ahmedabad and interim pronouncements by various committees and commissions, Narendra Modi is innocent as he has not been declared guilty by any court or the SIT.
• Sonia Gandhi is downright corrupt and has made anywhere between 10 to 100 billion dollars and no court verdict is required for them.

This is not a complete list, but almost complete. I know that the moment I put this out for public consumption, I will have people among the supporters of Modi screaming hoarse "I don't endorse point number 2, 3 and 7, or 1,6 and 9 etc.!!!" Sure. I am not claiming 100% correlation. But, if any of these supporters claim that they do not, in the heart of their heart, support or endorse most or all of the above,then they are lying.

And that is sad.
This piece is not about a choice between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi. This piece is actually not even about Narendra Modi, although he embodies the underlying issue. This is about the fundamental beliefs of those who are favoring Modi, and for us to ponder about what that portends.

Of Panagariya and Pappu

If Panagariya was a scion in Congress party, and someone in media got hold of his seminal paper “The Myth of Child Malnutrition in India”, the headline would have been "Panagariya Pappu says there is no child malnutrition in India.” (I have the pdf file of the paper and can share on request; anyway it is available on Google). But then Panagariya is an academic with cultural background of a commercial community, spouting ultra right wing economic theories in the domain of the dismal science and thus the darling of the baby faced urban right wing Hindu middle class.

But we can’t blame Panagariya. He says what he believes to be true.  In our new found devotion to rationality, we think that emotions and cultural influences do not and should not matter. But the fact is they do, and they do more than reason and rationality. Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes about a set of economic theorists in his celebrated Fooled by Randomness, “They believe in reason and rationality – that we should overcome cultural impediments on our way to become a better human race – thinking we can control our nature at will….”. The fact remains we cannot ignore the overwhelming and all pervading influence of our cultural background.  Thus Panagariya believes that child malnutrition is not an issue because that is what he has learnt from his childhood and/or has inherited as a legacy from his forefathers.

Thus Minhaz Merchant (whoever he is), writes in ET calling Amartya Sen an ayatollah of secularism, “Profs Bhagwati and Panagariya ‘rightly’ argue that economic growth, allied with welfare schemes which build productive capital assets (rather than the NAC-Sen-Dreze formula of handouts which create dependencies) is the most efficient development model for India.” Of course, if your father went to University of Berkeley in 1950 with a future head of state, (when mine was a fatherless youth in Bhagalpur with just a school degree living on one meal a day, with no decent clothes and absolutely no footwear, and rest of the country is in dire poverty) you will surely say so. You are culturally wired to do so. You do not believe your privilege as an act of randomness but rather a right.

One may say that in his paper Panagariya has established through data and reason, the thesis that he has posited. People who take that path are not aware of the academic ways. They are not aware how any term paper, dissertation or thesis is written.  Any such academic work starts with the thesis itself. In case of the work of a younger academic, the idea often comes from her guide or mentor.  In case of a senior academic like Panagariya, the idea starts within, shaped almost entirely by his own cultural influences and his past line of work, which again was chosen because of his background and his psyche. After the thesis is chosen, then goes the data and logic to substantiate it. Thus just because there is data and analysis in an academic paper does not make it unbiased and universal truth.

I agree with much of Dr. Jagdish Bhagwati’s works on trade and globalization, although he pays only lip service to ‘making the human face of globalisation more agreeable’.  I agree with his trade theories perhaps because it resonates with the fact that my father was a sailor and traveled the world and my thoughts are shaped by those stories (there goes my influence). And my own training in the normative sciences and simplistic non-science called “management studies” also shaped my beliefs to develop a liking to those theories. But that is beside the point. I note that Dr. Bhagwati was born in 1934, which makes him exactly the same age as my father. And that he went to Cambridge in the fifties. Now, I would not really like to repeat the gloomy melodrama of what my father was doing in the fifties, but I note with keen interest that in a rough biographical sketch on one IMF website ( http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2005/09/people.htm) Bhagwati’s family is mentioned to be ‘modest in means’. His father, in pre-independence India was a Chief Justice and they lived in the heart of glamorous-even-then city of Bombay. My grandfather, around the same time, had just left the family profession of land owning and tilling in rural Bengal, and got himself a job in some coal mine in Central India, because the income from the land was not enough to feed 8 children (just one more than the Bhagwati family), let alone sending them to colleges with names of Englishmen in big cities or even abroad.  My daughter, who goes to a school, on the tip of South Mumbai, teaching international curriculum, rightly thinks that we are poor, as most of her friends’ families have more than luxury sedans like Mercs and BMWs, most of them carry expenseive cellphones which neither me nor my wife carry or perhaps will carry and they have around 2-3 holidays abroad each year, not counting the short shopping jaunts to London or Dubai.  But living in West-Central Mumbai, paying a monthly rent that can sustain two families comfortably in an Indian village, I have no such misplaced perception. Thus, if my daughter becomes a celebrated economist like Dr. Bhagwati (no such signs within a lightyear yet) and promotes neo-classical economics while citing ‘childhood of modest means’ I will not be surprised at all. (I am not even mentioning that Bhagwati also comes from a linguistic community famous for their prowess in business and entrepreneurship, knowing that Nagar Brahmins will jump on me, although there are more Nagar business people than there are in my home state across all caste.)

Thus, my point, my friends, is very simple.  Our world views are almost totally shaped by the cultural influences that we have, our upbringing, our socio economic background etc. It is also shaped by some deep rooted biological self interest, which is not exactly the explicit variety of petty selfishness, but more reflexive responses in our overall demeanor and discourse.

We should, thus make no mistake that today’s socio-economic-political debate is just a healthy debate in a plural society.  The virtual world in India, the social media that is, populated extensively by the upper middle class urban and semi urban people from the majority community, is clearly tilting to one side. It is not a debate. It is a war call of the ‘haves’. It is the return of the vested interest, which have been vested not explicitly over a lifetime but seeped in and took roots over generations. It is very clearly the sabre rattling of the powerful for what they think is their claim. It is the assertion of the privileged of what they think is right (as Merchant pronounces in his article in ET) in the economic arena. It is the muscle flexing of the majority community in the political arena, which wishes to reclaim the middle ground lost to secularism, by attaching the prefix of pseudo to it to denigrate it thoroughly into an epithet. But I can’t blame them. It is almost biological and much deeper rooted than they can imagine and thus have no control over them.

Even after me doing an MBA (can you f****ing believe it!!!) and being in the business of money for two decades, I think some at my place of work harbours deep distrust and mild detestation towards me as I am considered an intellectual (which is a serious expletive around here), which I think largely comes from the racial association she makes, and perhaps rightly so. So when Panagariya writes child malnutrition is not an issue, but growth and trade is, we need not blame him, or look into his various degrees and papers, we just need to look into where does he come from and pardon him, as he is just another soldier in this battle being fought on many fronts.