Falling off the map

(written in September 2008)

My home is 5 minutes walk from my office, but I don't walk to work most of the mornings. On Mondays we have a partners' meeting from 8 am. As my driver doesn't arrive before 9, and there is no parking space at work these days, I have to walk; even if it is raining. This week, the meeting got transferred to Tuesday. As I was walking to my office, I passed by a newspaper vendor, who sits on the adjacent crossing. As expected, all the frontpage masthead of the papers were screaming about the triple fall - Lehman, Merrill and AIG, and the havoc it did on the stock markets. And what was striking that, it was not only the English dailies, but also all the Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati newspapers as well.

Over next few days, I received quite a few calls, mails, SMS-es, asking me if everything was ok at our end, as news of a local Bank's exposure to Lehman came out in the papers. I told all, that things are not so bad for me; so far. But then, tomorrow's another day.

Few days later, I called one of my best friends in Kolkata. As we talked, I was a little surprised that he did not ask anything about this almost earth shattering stream of events. I asked him if he knows what's happening in the financial markets. He said that he doesn't know and he doesn’t bother as well. I can understand the second part (not that I approve of that), but I could not understand the first part. How could he not know??! Doesn’t he read newspapers?

As I asked around some other friends, who belong to the same milieu in the same city, I found some relief and some answers. I was reassured that my friend has no interest in the world of business, which as I mentioned earlier, was an acceptable (although perhaps slightly perilous) personal choice. However, I also realized that no vernacular newspaper in Kolkata gave any great coverage to the unfolding events. The news items, if reported, were tucked into one of the inner pages, neatly in small unnoticeable two columns. Hence, only the keenly interested reader would get to know about it.

The issue that is always debated is, whether media influences society or is media a reflection of the society? This is the classical poultry conundrum. But it cannot be ignored that, in the short term, media portrays only what sells. Thus, it can be said with some certainty that business, finance and economics, does not sell in Bengal.

It thus remains for anyone to speculate if Mamata is the reason of the fall or is she the outcome of this universal apathy? Is she the disease or is she the symptom? Does Bengal (and Bengalis) understand the need for business and economics and its importance? And if it does not, which is partly portrayed by my example given here, will it get business back to its soil soon?

16 years back, when I gave up my job in one of the largest European engineering giants, to sign up in a prestigious B-School, I had to deal with one of my maternal uncles. Rangamama was once upon a time a dedicated foot soldier of the Communist movement in Bengal, and quite close to some of the people who made to the top of the political hierarchy. Idealist that he was, he could not do the same, and was soon a disenchanted teacher in Durgapur. But he could not jettison his values and beliefs. I can’t forget the look on his face, when I declared my decision to go for a business degree to him. It had disbelief, sarcasm, condescension and almost a pain of having being betrayed. “You are going to study business? Does business require any study?” He had indignation written all over his face. What he did not say but surely thought, “Should a Bengali Bhadralok think and deal about business?”

It seems, 16 years later, not much has changed. And again, we will be falling out of the map.

Oh, talking about maps. Nokia, in India, provides GPS services for some of its handsets. Thus one can download maps of cities and can browse the maps offline or navigate real time through satellite. The cities that it services are: Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur!! (Silence; precious silence)

Looks like we are falling out of the map again. And no Mamata is not the only one to be blamed.