Just Curious

India Shining

2011-09-03T03:17:00.002-04:00

Does tell a wonderful story of the shine on India Shining.

Courtesy: The Great India Clearance Sale

The Remembrance of Things Past

2011-04-05T22:08:00.002-04:00

Last week my dear friend in charge of editing this souvenir reminded me, once again, to get my act together and come up with the article I had promised. I was asked, with a generous dollop of sarcasm, if I thought I were Proust. I was also directed by him, in that same (grammatical) breath, to take my finger out of my @#$% and start writing.

I found this reminder poignant, not least because I had decided to write on the lobby; it was one of the places Mr Editor and I hung out for a while to transform ourselves from acquaintances to friends. So, in a true Proustian vein I bought myself some mass-produced madelines from Starbucks to help me indulge in some gratuitous remembering – of things, times and spaces past.

I remember my days well spent at (or, more truthfully speaking, just outside) the Department of English of Jadavpur University. Those days were spent mostly, and most memorably, on a flight of steps just inside Gate 4 of JU that we fondly – very fondly – called the lobby. As far as physical descriptions go, the lobby was a long row of four steps along the main entrance to the JU Arts Faculty building. These steps were intersected at regular intervals by pillars that held up, among other things, the collective weight of learning of the Arts Faculty. At a baser level it turned the long row of the short flight of steps into neat cubicles. It produced for students of the Arts Faculty and beyond, the university’s premier social and socializing space.

And every day, much of the variegated humanity that comprised JU’s students would converge within these spaces. The lobby was for most of our generation at JU a place to chat and argue about the world, its second cousin and the phenomenology of lemon pips in Swapan’s lebu cha. This is where we debated and disagreed; laughed and fought. We played cricket and twenty-nine, adopted stray dogs and indulged in seemingly endless jamming sessions on the steps. We spoke about literature, recited our (often quite terrible) poetry to each other while some of the loons from Film Studies extolled the virtues of “pure cinema.” And yes, we also made friends and found love. These friendships and loves would last us – not all of us, but quite a few – our blessed lifetimes.

And the lobby sure had a reputation. For some faculty members of the English department, this is the closest you could get to the ninth circle of hell. Quite clearly, the “treason” in this equation was one against the attempts at making us discerning readers of literature and culture. (On a different note: hell was close at hand, most materially manifested in the form of the men’s loo in the ground floor of the Arts Faculty).

So there was I, during my first week in the department, trying very hard to make the transition from balancing chemical equations to figuring out if Tess (of the d’Urbervilles) had been raped or seduced – tricky question this. Amidst all this, I was told about the lobby. Not by classmates or seniors but by a stately lady professor who wore her hair in a bun that was almost as big as her head.

“And one final thing,” she announced at the end of a class as she shut her volume of History of English Literature by Legouis and Cazamian, “do not go to the lobby.” We were given a tour de force of the evils that awaited us if we did not watch our steps. It would be drugs, disease and all quite downhill from there. Now which eighteen-year old would not think this a tantalizing introduction?
So off we cantered in that direction to be welcomed with open arms by this alleged space of moral decrepitude. And there we stayed for the full five years of our JU life never ever letting said staid professor(s) interfere too much with our education. This needless to say had been the trajectory of many a student of the JU English department.

But much has changed in JU these days. For starters, the lobby is no more. A few years ago, the JU administration demolished the steps that made the lobby into a beehive of frenetic social activity. The socializing and the activities continue today at a different place with the lobby becoming a piece of congealed memory for many of us. So then let me end with the time-tested cliché: the lobby is no more; long live the lobby.

(Written for the JUDE Reunion 2009 Souvenir).

Public awareness vs profiteering

2011-01-24T14:31:00.009-05:00

Sandeep Banerjee

In November, Indian Telecom Minister A Raja was forced to resign over irregularities in the allotment of the 2G spectrum. Indian journalists were busy patting themselves on the back for having unearthed another scam, and for successfully halting the loot of the public exchequer. A week later OPEN magazine published a series of transcripts of telephone conversations between Niira Radia, the head of Vaishnavi Corporate Communications, and a number of Indian journalists and politicians.

Taped under orders from the Directorate General of Income Tax between 2008 and 2009, the transcripts show Radia in conversation with A Raja and Kanimozhi, the daughter of the powerful South Indian politician M. Karunanidhi whose party, the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), is not only an important Congress ally but has also held the telecom portfolio since the Congress-led alliance came to power in 2004. For the record, Radia boasts among her clients Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani. Since Tata is an important player in the country’s telecom sector, these transcripts were bound to raise a few eyebrows, and perhaps a few questions about the industrialist-politician nexus in India.

But the Radia transcripts caught the national imagination for an entirely different reason. It showed one of India’s veteran journalists (who earned her spurs reporting on the Kargil War of 1999) offering to carry messages for Radia to the Congress leadership at the time of cabinet formation. “What should I tell them [the Congress]? Tell me what should I tell them,” Barkha Dutt – the Group Editor of NDTV – asks Radia eagerly. Another transcript has Vir Sanghvi of Hindustan Times (HT) asking: “What kind of story do you want? Because this will go as Counterpoint [Sanghvi’s weekly column for HT], so it will be like most-most read, but it can’t seem too slanted, yet it is an ideal opportunity to get all the points across.” Sanghvi was ostensibly offering to help mould Indian public opinion for Radia (and her client Mukesh Ambani) as Ambani struggled against his estranged younger brother and industrialist Anil over a gas pricing disagreement.

The transcripts provide some manner of voyeuristic pleasure for readers. They eavesdrop on the whispers and murmurs that circulate in New Delhi’s corridors of power and demonstrate how the cogs of political and corporate power gently move in unison to nudge the Indian state forward. But if there is one point that comes across from these transcripts, it is about the state of the mainstream Indian media. It shows – and in no uncertain terms – the mainstream Indian media as nothing more (or less) than another cog in this giant corporate-political machine.

Barkha Dutt has since appeared on a show on NDTV to answer questions and dispel doubts that may have crept into the minds of her viewers. She fielded queries from a panel of reputed Indian journalists, including Manu Joseph, the editor of OPEN magazine. In her defense Dutt claimed she was simply stringing along her source (Radia) who was providing her information on a huge unfolding story (Congress-DMK negotiations over cabinet berths). She may have agreed to carry messages for Radia as a ruse, but in fact did no such thing. She also claims that if there is anything she is guilty of, it was one of misjudgement, that is, of being naïve and trustful of a source about whom she should have been skeptical. In all this, she did not seem to have a convincing answer for the rather pointed question that Joseph posed to her: why did she not report on the fact that the Tatas’ lobbyist was playing for a certain person (A Raja) to be made the telecom minister? Dutt claimed this did not strike her as a terribly important story.

This is perhaps the misjudgement that Dutt mentions, and it has provoked questions about her journalistic ineptitude on a variety of social and non-profit media. By failing to see the “story” in a corporate lobbyist who works for a telecom company striving to get a certain person appointed the telecom minister, the veteran journalist had spectacularly missed the larger picture. More importantly, she has failed in what remains the essential aspect of the journalist’s job – to keep the public informed about the goings-on in the corridors of power. It is pointless to surmise whether this act of omission was wilful or not; what is moot is that this exemplary member of the mainstream Indian media failed in doing what was expected of her. She failed to highlight the symbiotic relationship between India’s corporate and political classes.

But the mainstream Indian media’s acts of omission are not new. It has failed to take up issues that fall beyond the ken of the great Indian middle-class. For instance, the Indian farm crisis that has claimed the lives of 150,000 farmers in the last ten years has never really dominated news headlines. While they have conducted public campaigns to reduce New Delhi’s electricity bills or sought justice for the murder of Jessica Lall, it has not really spoken out against the ills that plague India’s rural poor especially in this era of neo-liberal capitalism.

At the same television show where she fielded questions from her peers Dutt also claimed that the time was ripe for a broader debate on media ethics. While this is indeed an important point, one cannot help think that these media companies – like any other company anywhere in the world – strive for maximising their profits. The point then is not to debate media ethics but corporate ethics.

The question that needs asking then is this: how should the Indian media reconcile the twin poles of public awareness and profiteering? Or rather, what is the best ethical middle ground that allows the media corporate houses to rake in the moolah while still allowing for some semblance of the media’s original social function? Right now the mainstream Indian is striking this balance by focusing its reportage energies on the urban middle class. It therefore exists at the confluence of neo-liberal capital and a certain class of Indians. It stands for corporatised values that find favour with the globalising Indian. In this process large swathes of Indians (and India) are omitted from its radar.

There is of course another important point. With its publication of the transcripts, OPEN magazine had managed to violate perhaps the most important unwritten law of Indian journalism: never shine the spotlight on yourselves. As a result, the mainstream Indian media – the ever-vigilant watchdog of Indian democracy – is under intense public scrutiny for the first time ever since its existence. This is the moment for soul searching –will the Indian media continue down this path of wilful disconnect or reaffirm its traditional social values?

This article appeared in The Friday Times, Lahore, Pakistan on December 24, . The original article can be found here.

তোমায় দিলাম

2010-09-25T09:24:00.001-04:00

শহরের উষ্ণতম দিনে
পিচগলা রোদ্দুরে
বৃষ্টির বিশ্বাস
তোমায় দিলাম আজ |

আর কি বা দিতে পারি
পুরনো মিছিলের পুরনো ট্রামেদের সারি
ফুটপাথ ঘেষা বেলুনগাড়ি
সুতো বাঁধা যত লাল আর সাদা
ওরাই আমার থতমত এই শহরে
রডডেনড্রন |

তোমায় দিলাম আজ

কি আছে আর
গভীর রাতের নেওন আলোয়
আলোকিত যত রেস্তোরাঁ আর
সব থেকে উচু ফ্ল্যাটবাড়িটার
সব থেকে উচু ছাদ
তোমায় দিলাম আজ |

পারবোনা দিতে
ঘাসফুল আর ধানের গন্ধ
স্নিগ্ধ যা কিছু দুহাতভরে আজ
ফুসফুস খোঁজে পোড়া ডিসেলের
আজন্ম আশ্বাস
তোমায় দিলাম আজ |

শহরের কবিতার ছবি
সব-ই
তোমায় দিলাম আজ |

তোমায় দিলাম |
তোমায় দিলাম |
তোমায় দিলাম |

(Lyrics of a Mohiner Ghoraguli song "Tomaay Dilaam")

A Tale of Two Cities

2010-06-02T09:44:00.011-04:00

In Calcutta, the Indian Museum is my favourite colonial-era building. As a child, I would be fascinated by it, but not only because of the Egyptian sarcophagus or the Gandhara Buddhas in its collection. This grand European building – neoclassical layout, lofted arches, Ionic pillars, sparkling white walls and tall wooden doors and windows the colour of dark chocolate – not only dominated the landscape of the Chowringhee area, it also had a characteristic way of slipping and growing into view every time one approached it. This is what caught my fancy.

If you moved towards the Chowringhee – Park Street crossing from Dalhousie Square, the museum would glide into view from between the trees; it would then grow bigger and bigger (the view, better and better) as you came closer and closer. And because the road curved and curled in a certain fashion, this majestic specimen of colonial architecture would also twist and turn to keep up with you. This was my first brush with magic realism, long before Jorge Luis Borges happened to me. And each time I approached it thus, I felt I knew exactly why we Bengalis call the museum jadughar – literally, the House of Wonder.

Last month when I was in Calcutta, I happened to travel down that much travelled path toward the Indian Museum after many years. As my cab approached Chowringhee I looked out, hoping to see the building do what it had so many times during my years in that city.

I saw nothing. Actually, I saw a gigantic slab of concrete suspended in mid-air. A flyover had grown in between my museum and me.

This is the new Calcutta, one that has dropped magic realism for hard-nosed naturalism. The Communist city is busy telling the world it is reforming; progress has arrived here, cast in concrete and reinforced steel.

As the city reforms, its landscape – and its mindscape – are also being re-formed. For flyovers do more than just add that extra layer to a city’s roads. They alter a city quite fundamentally – the way it looks, the way it feels – and most crucially – the way those living and moving through, relate to it. For instance, generations of Calcuttans will now never experience the Indian Museum doing the shimmy when they come down towards Chowringhee. That visual, and decidedly spatial, experience is lost forever. It’s a relationship (between the city and its user) that could have been, but now will never be. Flyovers are building distances between the city and its people.

The most persuasive exemplar of Calcutta’s progress, however, is a mammoth flyover linking the city’s airport bypass road to one of the bridges across the Ganges. This elevated road, that straddles much of South Calcutta, also happens to pass by the first floor window of Seagull Books, a publishing house run by my friend Sue. Earlier, Sue would look out to a giant neem tree, whose shady branches – apart from strong, black, bitter coffee – helped calm her fraying nerves at the time of desperate deadlines. Nowadays, she relies only on coffee.

Her tree has been felled to make way for the flyover; looking out entails a strange visual communion with stranger commuters in varying stages of animated suspension. Flyovers are engendering new (and perhaps more dramatic) ways of seeing in the city.

I don’t hate flyovers. This lofty concept in urban planning has its uses, especially if you need a quick-fix solution to traffic congestion. But then, not all cities lend themselves to flyovers with effortless ease. Delhi thrives on flyovers, adding a new one every six months or so. Strangely enough, I never seem to mind those flyovers. In fact, I quite like the perspective I get of Humayun’s Tomb while travelling up (and down) the Mathura Road – Nizamuddin one to and from my workplace.

I have often wondered about this peculiar paradox of mine. Why do I loathe flyovers in one city and love them in another? I am now beginning to think it’s not about flyovers as much as it is about Calcutta and I.

Calcutta is my city of memory; the city of my memories – of a group of people and a clutch of places. Like me, most of these people have moved out of the city in search of pastures new. What have been left behind are hazy memories of random conversations in sunlit rooms and porticos; the scent of smoke-filled laughter among cafes and eateries. The places remain, etched in the map of my mind.

Every time I return, the city allows me the comfort of a familiarity that almost never breeds contempt. Calcutta, the physical city, for me is the joy of familiar expectation: of seeing the known, of knowing what one will see and how.

Flyovers do not have a place in that cognitive map of mine. They may be helping Calcuttans drive that bit faster but for me they hinder the unfurling of the remembrance of times past. They disrupt the way I have grown to see and know my city unfold before me. The new flyovers sprouting in Calcutta violate my known ways of seeing the city and therefore my relationship with it. Perhaps I am being selfish, but then I cannot help my desire to cling on to my city of memory; the city of my imagination.

In Delhi I began life as an outsider, mostly in the company of other outsiders. This accorded me the luxury of detached observation. So the city which I thought an overgrown village at first, I now acknowledge mine. And I have grown to love it: its brashness, the rude and abusive residents, the cafes, bars and bookstores, and above all its ability to coexist in history and in the present with an inimitable ease.

But Delhi does not come with this (sometimes oppressive) baggage of nostalgia that I feel for Calcutta. Delhi for me is a city of new beginnings, a city that I am only now beginning to see. The flyovers of this city are little more than the warts and pimples on an acquaintance, an acquaintance who has all the makings of becoming a good friend.

Images: (c) Bibek Bhattacharya - All Rights Reserved

Benares

2009-12-06T11:35:00.001-05:00

False and impenetrable
like a garden traced on a mirror,
the imagined city
which my eyes have never seen
interweaves distances
and repeats its unreachable houses.
The sudden sun
shatters the complex obscurity
of temples, dunghills, prisons, patios
and will scale walls
and blaze on to a sacred river.
Panting
the city which a foliage of stars oppressed
pours over the horizon
and in a morning
full of steps and of sleep
light is opening the streets like branches.
At the same time dawn breaks
on all shutters looking east
and the voice of a muezzin
from its high tower
saddens the air of day
and announces to the city of many gods
the solitude of God.
(And to think that while I play with doubtful images
the city I sing persists
in a predestined place of the world,
with its precise topography
peopled like a dream,
with hospitals and barracks
and slow avenues of poplars
and men with rotting lips
who feel the cold in their teeth.)

- Jorge Luis Borges

(translated by Charles Tomlinson)

Translating Das

2009-12-05T23:30:00.002-05:00

Arijit sent me this poem by Jibanananda Das.

হয়তো আকাশের বুকের গভীরে
কিংবা তার থেকে গভীরতর কোন এক অজানায়
তুমি বসে আছো নিবিড়, অসীম স্তব্ধতার মুখোমুখি |

নিঃশ্বাসে তোমার পাললিক প্রেম
অবিরত মিশে যেতেছে বাংলার মাটিতে,
যেথায় তোমার ক্লেদাক্ত হৃদয়
অবিরত খুজে ফেরে সন্ধ্যার আবির আকাশ |

I have translated it as follows:

In the deep recesses of the sky
Or perhaps in some deeper unknown,
Facing the infinite stillness,
You sit still.

Your breath,
Suffused with alluvial love
Continually infuses Bengal's earth;
There, your weary heart
Looks out relentlessly
For the vermillion sky of dusk.

Translating Tagore

2009-10-19T01:23:00.004-04:00

Arijit Sen sent me this poem by Tagore.

ছবির জগতে যেথা কোনো ভাষা নেই
সেথায় তোমার স্থির দৃষ্টি
যে কাহিনী করিতেছে সৃষ্টি
ঘটনাবিহীন তার বোবা ইতিহাস
ছায়া দিয়ে ছেয়ে ফেলে চিত্ত আকাশ
করুণ বিষাদ করে বৃষ্টি

I have translated it as follows.

Amidst images, in their still silence
You rest your steady stare.
The tale, that unto itself tells,
its own uneventful, mute past;
Clouding the mind's open sky
Lets rain pitiful despair.

Imminent ruin and desperate remedy: Calcutta and its fragments

2009-10-18T23:02:00.005-04:00

This is an excellent article on Calcutta, written by Swapan Chakravorty, Professor at the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Calcutta.

Here is a summary:

Swapan Chakravorty provides an account of his native Calcutta in terms of its political failures past and present. He describes how the failures of the British colonisers to adequately make good on their promise to modernize the city meant that to justify its status, Calcutta (population 15 million) was forced to fall back on its cultural heritage. During the economic crises of the 1960s and 1970s, the Communist government rose to power through the support of the city's poor; today, still governing, it courts Western investors at the expense of those very same people. By sanitising public spaces, by evicting street vendors and stall holders, the government is threatening the city's cultural heritage and vital tradition of urban commons.

You can get the complete article here.

Translating Auden

2009-09-19T16:37:00.028-04:00

From Anthem for St Cecilia's Day

2009-09-19T15:50:00.001-04:00

I cannot grow;
I have no shadow
To run away from,
I only play.

I cannot err;
There is no creature
Whom I belong to,
Whom I could wrong.

I am defeat
When it knows it
Can now do nothing
By suffering.

All you lived through,
Dancing because you
No longer need it
For any deed.

I shall never be
Different. Love me.

- W. H. Auden

Requies-cat in pace

2009-09-11T18:56:00.009-04:00

Jackson was our neighbor's cat. He has been a constant visitor to our house over the past two years. He was all of 21 years and had not been keeping too well in recent times. Today, he was put to sleep.

Jackson. RIP.

This is Jackson. Lording over our porch at 112 Trinity Place.

Image: (c) Sandeep Banerjee - All Rights Reserved

Quiet flows the Ganges

2009-08-30T11:47:00.013-04:00

And the madness of life continues on its banks.
Varanasi. Summer of 2009.

Darkness Visible

2009-08-29T23:24:00.003-04:00

I saw the solar eclipse from Varanasi last month (on July 22). It was quite astounding. As I watched the eclipse this time, I was reminded of Milton's lines from Paradise Lost:

... yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible (I. 62 - 63)

I had seen a total solar eclipse in 1996 but this year's event was grander.

Way more grand.

The eclipse made me realize just how long four minutes can be: that's how long the eclipse lasted. It took place early in the morning. Sometime past 6 am, if I am not mistaken. The birds woke up and before they knew it, it was dark again.

Were the birds feeling a tad jet-lagged from the experience?

There is something extremely awe-inspiring about a total solar eclipse. It is a celestial spectacle. And the sun (and the moon) did put up quite a show.

Take a look.

Images and Video: (c) Sandeep Banerjee - All Rights Reserved

If the one I've waited for

2009-08-24T23:31:00.004-04:00

If the one I've waited for

came now, what should I do?

This morning's garden filled with snow

is far too lovely

for footsteps to mar.

- Izumi Shikibu

Translation: Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani

Lessons in Lovemaking

2009-08-20T13:43:00.015-04:00

I just got back from Calcutta, the city I grew up in. My thoughts on the city shall be for another blog post, but here is a snippet: Oxford Bookstore, Calcutta has a "Sexology" section.

Why sexology and not sex? I don't know and I suspect they don't either. The -logy probably gives the hormones and the carnality a twinge of respectability.

This was on display at the Sexology section of Oxford Bookstore, Calcutta.

What were they thinking? Clearly not a great deal. And it does say something about the city that is desperately trying to give up its ghost.

Image: (c) Sandeep Banerjee - All Rights Reserved

In Memoriam: Naughty Boy

2009-08-18T15:45:00.004-04:00

Those who knew my ground floor apartment (D 735) in New Delhi were well acquainted with Naughty Boy.

Naughty Boy was, well, neither naughty nor a boy. He was the world's coolest tom cat who had allowed my landlord and landlady to take care of him. And he had condescended to let me live in the ground floor apartment. He would of course make sure you knew who was master: during the day, he was often found taking a nap on the bed in the spare bedroom of my flat.

Naughty Boy once had a fling with the road-side tabby. Two incredible kittens came off his exertions. Named Tom and Jerry by my landlord's grand-daughter, they found two extremely caring homes in the ground and first floors of D 735. And after my friend Rudraneil moved in two storeys above, the second floor also became an extension of their home.

This summer in Delhi I learnt that Naughty Boy had left the house one day and not come back. That is how cats behave when they are about to die, Rudraneil explained to me. One of course could expect nothing less from the cat who embodied a wonderful nobility of spirit.

So here's to Naughty Boy: something he inspired me to write a while ago. He made my two years at D 735 very special.

Naughty Boy. RIP.
___________________

A RANDOM CAT MORNING

There are three friendly cats in and around my house.

One is called Naughty Boy.

This is my landlord's tom cat and the most adorable cat in the universe. Naughty boy is big, red, usually scared-shit and not naughty at all. He sleeps at my place sometimes, never behaves badly and from time to time decides he is a decorative piece. At those moments he can be found sitting very still at strange places. Like on top of the bookshelves and such.

Naughty Boy was horny once. The consequence was the other two friendly cats of the neighbourhood.

One of them is a tom, the other a tabby. The tom looks like the mother (black and white) and is everything Naughty Boy isn't. The tabby looks and behaves like naughty boy. She is also incredibly shy. They have been evocatively named Tom and Jerry by my landlord's granddaughter. I do not like these names so I usually call them things like Jagabondhu, Byomkesh, Harinarayan, etc. For those who don't have the context - these are the more extended and extensive names of Hindu divinities. This is in part my Hindu upbringing that teaches me to see the divinity in all things (as also in the beef steak).

Anyway, I digress.

This morning I was woken up by a howling cat. My landlord's granddaughter's Tom aka - depending on my mood - Jagabondhu, Byomkesh or Harinarayan was howling his guts out. Because the little thing was on my neighbour's fourth floor terrace. Head sticking out, it was crying madly. So I roused my landlady Mrs Mitra, who in turn roused roused Mr Mitra - the neighbour, not the husband - and then Mrs Mitra and I set off on our cat expedition.

The terrace door was opened and we found the object of our undying affection on the terrace of the room on the terrace. Hearing us, Byomkesh came and checked us out, still howling away. So I fixed a makeshift ladder and began climbing up on to the terrace of the terrace. And then the cat did what one can expect of all cats. It came up to me. Then went away. And then jumped from the top of the room on to the terrace and ran for its life down the steps. Mrs Mitra and I (standing midway up the frigging ladder) looked on.

A little later I heard from the first floor of my house the voice of admonishment of Mrs Mitra. "Keno gechili? Keno? Kotobar baron korechi na jetey." (Why, why do you not listen to me and keep going outside?). A wonderful communion. Wonderful. Puts the Wordsworthian daffodils to shame, if you ask me.

Then, there was more.

A little later - about half and hour later - I heard two babies crying. I came out to look. It was Naughty Boy and his father. The mews had taken on a cataclysmic pitch as they prepared to launch into combat.

A historiographical digression that may sound straight out of Robert Graves's Greek Myths: Naughty Boy was adopted into the Mitra family as a child because his father had tried to kill him. Naughty Boy has since adopted the best that the civilizing ethic of Bengal has to offer. For instance, when he met his lone male son and heir (Tom for some, Byomkesh, Harinarayan or Jagabondhu among others - depending on my mood - for me) he did what you would least expect a Tom cat (and what you would most expect a Bengali, according to some learned authorities on this subject) to do.

He stuck his snout out.
Smelt him.
And then sprang back twenty paces, either ashamed or frightened (both?) at the outcome of his passionate time out with the neighbourhood tabby.

Rudraneil (some of you know him: my e-mail editor's spellcheck insists he be called Quadrangles. I suppose he should have an opinion on this) and I concurred a couple of days back - over cream and bacon pasta and strange Mediterranean fantasies - that Naughty Boy could not fight. If he were called to fight, he wouldn't and it would be Harinarayan who would do the fighting. This came up as we had spotted a fat grey cat (It must have been Eliot's Mungojerrie) and Naught Boy's dad - terrible, ugly, red and white son of a bitch (I'm being metaphorical here) hovering around our house.

But Naughty Boy proved us wrong.

So where were we? yes, mewing and such like. By the time I figured out what was happening, the two had got into the act. On my cornice, father and son battled it out. Actually, bit and scratched it out. And then they were in a bloody embrace, dad's teeth in son's front paw and son's teeth in dad's left ear. Naughty Boy had entered - with this one act - into the Bagha Jatin Memorial (aka We-Bengalis-despite-being-labeled-non-martial-by-the-Brits-can-also-fight) Hall of Fame.

I am unfortunately a Bong - body, heart and soul. I do not like bloody insurrections. I suspect I would have been a clerk in Calcutta's Writers' Building if I were born under Pax Britannica. So I decided to put an end to this. And like a good Bengali, I wielded the broom screaming "hoosh, hoosh" in my incantatory best.

Hoosh, hoosh be damned.

The bloody balls of fur rolled on. Naughty Boy and Naughtier Boy in bloody embrace still. Then the ball(s) became still. The embrace (and respective sets of teeth) in place. I have seen a trailer of Anaconda on Star Movies (or was it HBO?) and these two looked incredibly like an anaconda swallowing a..a...whatever. Extremely disconcerting to see Naughty Boy - teeth still sunk in dad's left ear - looking me in the eye while lying dead still on the ground.

I then decided to continue the Bong routine. I ran into the kitchen. Filled a jug with water. And ran back and chucked it at them.

Water be damned too.
The rolling continued.

Then, disengagement. But only for a wee while.

They went up the metallic spiral staircase, braving the cold water that lunged at them.

Re-engagement. And how. It was a complete dulce et decorum est pro patria mori moment.

They jumped at each other (just as in the 70s Bollywood films the hero and the villain lunge at each other, including that completely ludicrous jump-lunge just two seconds before engagement).

I go, I go.
Look how I go.
Faster than an arrow,
From a Tartar's bow.

Into my landlord's house they went. Through the back door. And then into my landlord's loo. (For some inexplicable reason, the metallic spiral staircase led to the first floor loo. This mystery I have not been able to unravel.)

Synchronised fighting had now given way to synchronised playing decorative piece. The sets of teeth intact, and inside each other's furs.

As I manoeuvered the broom and jug, I was, even then, struck by my act. A tad matronly, I dare admit. Seeing none of my anythings had any impact on the happenings I called my landlord. He is a sweet and somewhat senile man nudging the eighties.

He came.
He saw.
With Caesarean imperiousness, he entered the fray.
And conquered.

A rap with a clothes beater on the back of daddy cat sufficed. Daddy cat went off, roaring, into the unknown.

It was now time for Communion II.

There was an air of haughtiness, coupled with hurt, disbelief and disgust as my landlord - the sweet, somewhat senile man nudging the eighties said: "Amaar baritey dhukey, amaar beral-key kamracchey!!" (Entering MY house and biting MY cat!!)

We were quite clearly a surreal tableau.

The sweet, somewhat senile man nudging the eighties with a hearing aid in one ear, a beret on his head and a clothes beater in one hand standing on the first floor landing of the metallic spiral staircase. Naughty boy, bloodied, shaken, stirred, his marbles (olives, to keep the metaphor going) intact, his voice quavering at a point in-between a violent miaow and purr. Me, below, green jug in right hand and broom in left. Ready to take on the universe and its second cousin.

Then, Communion III

" Aajkey kom jol esheche. Shamley" (We have got less water than usual today. Be careful)

Elsewhere in the Himalayas

2009-07-08T21:45:00.003-04:00

In and around North Bengal and Sikkim.
With friends.

Tunganath

2009-06-08T19:58:00.005-04:00

This summer I was at Chopta, in the Garhwal Himalayas. From there, I made the short trek to Tunganath (literally: The Lord of the Lofty Heights). Tunganath, at 12,072 feet, is possibly the highest temple (as opposed to shrine) in India. And it is one of the five kedars, the most important of which is, a few valleys away, at Kedarnath.

But Tunganath is exceptional for the views of the neighboring peaks that it allows the visitor. On a good day you can see the Yamunotri, Gangotri, Trishul, Sumeru, Kedarnath and Neelkanth peaks. And all the khambas of the Chaukhamba (lit: Four Pillars: chau: four, khamba: pillar). Thankfully, before the monsoon arrives in the mountains, good days are aplenty.

So this is what the traveler saw.

Video: (c) Sandeep Banerjee - All Rights Reserved

Lord of the Lofty Heights

2009-06-07T21:22:00.004-04:00

Views from (and around) Tunganath.

Freedom Song

2009-06-06T20:39:00.002-04:00

I am fascinated by birds. Flying birds. And every time I trek in the Garhwals, I look at the Himalayan eagles and stare in amazement at that thing that they do.

Image: (c) Sandeep Banerjee - All Rights Reserved

Friends from here and there

2009-06-05T18:59:00.006-04:00

With friends. Among friends.
In the Garhwal Himalayas.

It was absolutely stupendous...

2009-05-17T18:27:00.003-04:00

... to be back among friends.

In Delhi. Summer of 2009.

Kolkata: Book City

2009-02-03T14:11:00.021-05:00

Kolkata Book City: Readings, Fragments, Images is an anthology of essays and sketches on the book culture of Calcutta published by Textualities, Scotland. My essay in the collection is called Epiphany and Exasperation: The National Library.

More details about this book can be found here.

From a decade ago

2008-08-27T23:24:00.001-04:00

Calcutta in winter.
From the Howrah bridge.

World Cup goals

2008-08-27T13:39:00.000-04:00

There's fifty of them in this clip!

From www.youtube.com: the original post can be found here.

Dickipedia

2008-08-26T09:53:00.000-04:00

There is a site that goes by the name of Dickipedia. It calls itself a wiki of dicks! Its a must read.
You can get it here.

Postcard from Kashmir

2008-08-12T08:38:00.000-04:00

Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox,
my home a neat four by six inches.
I always loved neatness. Now I hold
the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.

This is home. And this the closest
I'll ever be to home. When I return,
the colors won't be so brilliant,
the Jhelum's waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love
so overexposed.

And my memory will be a little
out of focus, it in
a giant negative, black
and white, still undeveloped.

- Agha Shahid Ali

THE LEFT PARADOX

2007-05-04T10:29:00.006-04:00

Sandeep Banerjee

For generations of Calcuttans, the Blue Fox at 55, Park Street was the last word in continental fine dining. Fashioned out of blue neon lights, the restaurant’s logo — a giant fox, its snout nearly touching the tail — has, for decades, marked time over one of Calcutta’s most fashionable streets. Over the years, the Blue Fox has seen much change; it too has changed much. It had shut down for a while owing to labour union-management troubles. It revived and there were plans to turn it into a chaat shop. In March this year, came the final transformation — on the thirtieth year of uninterrupted Communist rule in West Bengal, Blue Fox became Calcutta’s first McDonald’s outlet.

The arrival of Maharaja Mac in the city is more than just another gastronomic option before the average Calcuttan — it’s perhaps the most telling signal that Bengal’s Communists have made peace with American capitalism.

Key to this truce is the Bengal Left’s reassessment in recent years of the role of private capital in the state’s economic development. The state government wants Bengal to industrialise rapidly, arguing that this is the only way to generate jobs and lift the population out of poverty. The West Bengal government is keen to turn the state into a manufacturing hub as that sector generates both skilled and unskilled jobs. The latter is crucial for absorbing the surplus labour the agriculture sector jettisons every year. Setting up factories, however, needs money and that’s not something the state government has in abundant supply. This leaves it with little option but to woo private investors, both domestic and foreign.

So, the Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, once the Left’s Cultural Commissar, has now metamorphosed into the poster boy of economic reforms. Having candidly acknowledged at various fora that his party — the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) — has erred on the issue of private capital, he is now asking industrialists to set up shop in Bengal to help him rectify those mistakes from the past.

These efforts have met with more than moderate success with a number of companies jumping on to the Bengal bandwagon. Tata Motors is in the process of setting up its small car factory; Jindal Steel has proposed a Rs100 billion investment to build a steel plant while both Videocon and Indonesia-based Salim Group are keen to set up Special Economic Zones in the state. Even Reliance has plans: taking a leaf out of the Walmart-China relationship, it wants to turn Bengal into the sourcing hub for its agri-retail business.

But the Bengal Left’s active soliciting of private capital puts it at ideological loggerheads with the Left of the Centre. In New Delhi, where their help is crucial for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to remain in power, the Left is usually making sure the UPA refrains from pursuing ‘neo-liberal’ and ‘anti-people’ economic reforms. While the Buddha line of wooing industrialists may well presuppose the primacy of private investment in the process of industrialisation, the CPI-M’s central leadership still remains keen to convince the UPA that the path to true economic salvation is paved with public investments.

The contradiction between the Bengal Left and its counterpart at the centre stretches well beyond just this. The central leadership has been frowning on the state government’s eagerness to acquire land for the companies that were keen to invest in the state. For them, this meant a decisive shift away from the ideology that inspired the CPI-M’s land reforms programme in the state in the late seventies. Those reforms, which consolidated the CPI-M’s grip on rural Bengal, were two-fold: it provided security to sharecropping tenants through a process of registration popularly known as Operation Barga while ceiling-surplus and other vested lands were acquired and distributed among the landless labourers and farmers. The state government, however, contends it’s crucial for them to step in and acquire land as neighbouring states like Orissa were dangling the land acquisition carrot to lure away potential investors.

Of course, the land question across India has now reached a stalemate since the tragic events at Nandigram, much to the relief of key members of the party’s politburo.

Bengal is also trying to woo Information Technology (IT) majors such as Infosys and Wipro to set up Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) centres in Calcutta. At the same time, the CPI-M’s trade union wing has been harping on — much to the horror of the chief minister and the IT industry — the fundamental right of these BPO workers to form unions and strike work.

In New Delhi, it’s this stark contrast between the Bengal line and the one taken by the CPI-M at the centre that is cited by the UPA to silence its Left critics. In fact, speaking to McKinsey a couple of years ago, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took an uncharacteristic dig at his Left allies. On being asked about the progress of economic reforms in India, the man behind India’s economic reforms quipped, “Our role is to convince their national leadership that what is good for West Bengal can also be good for the rest of the country. I haven’t given up hope.”

Dr Singh’s persuasive skills perhaps haven’t quite worked their intended magic on India’s Left Front. Even today, this schizophrenia remains the hallmark of the relationship between the CPI-M’s central leadership and the West Bengal government the party heads.

Recently, I asked one of my acquaintances at the CPI-M headquarters in New Delhi about this abiding paradox of his party. I got a rather illuminating reply: There was no contradiction — The West Bengal chief minister was doing his job of running his government; the politburo doing its job of pushing for a greater role of the state.

The West Bengal government, I was told, could not ask its citizens to wait for the people’s democratic revolution before proceeding with industrialisation. They were hamstrung because all states had to work within the capitalist framework provided by the centre. This, of course, wasn’t the best way forward and things would change if the CPI-M came to power in Delhi.

The Left Front currently has fifty-nine MPs in the 545-member Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament. This is also their best electoral showing since independence. So, it will be a while before the party can paint the capital red.
_____

This is the final part of a three-part series published in Daily Times, Lahore on May 4, 2007. The original article can be found here.

RESPONSIBLE INDUSTRIALISATION

2007-04-27T10:12:00.001-04:00

Sandeep Banerjee

Last week, while announcing the annual supplement to the Foreign Trade Policy, India’s commerce minister, Kamal Nath, declared that Indian exporters would be exempt from paying service tax. This declaration will undoubtedly make Indian goods and services a little more competitive in the global arena. It would also help push the country’s exports a notch closer to the government’s articulated target — 1.5 percent of global merchandise trade by 2009. But the significance of the announcement lay elsewhere; it once again underlined the government’s reliance on tax incentives to promote economic activity in the country.

Tax breaks have been around in India for quite a while. Nowadays, however, politicians and policymakers of all hues are debating the pros and cons of tax incentives given to industry. This, ever since Special Economic Zones (SEZs) became operational in the country. And there’s good reason for such debate: the SEZ Act of 2005 conceives of these industrial enclaves as specifically delineated duty-free zones, deemed to be foreign territories for trade operations as well as duties and tariffs.

So, these enclaves get a slew of direct tax breaks that are staggered over a fifteen-year period. SEZ units pay no tax on export profits for the first five years; fifty percent of their export profits are eligible for tax exemption for another five years and there are no taxes for a further five years on fifty percent of their reinvested profits. There are benefits on the indirect tax front too — SEZ units can procure, duty-free, all their requirements of capital goods, raw materials, consumables, spares, packing materials and office equipment from domestic sources. Of course, these exemptions are applicable only if the manufactured product is exported; all relevant duties — customs and excise — are levied if the product is sold in the domestic tariff area.

The direct tax breaks granted to the SEZs are now being criticised by various non-governmental organisations (NGOs). They say the central government is indulging in doublespeak — invoking the mantra of fiscal prudence to prune the food subsidy bill while simultaneously doling out tax incentives to industry. They also contend that while the government is ready to lose tax revenue for the SEZs, it is not serious about addressing the questions of displacement and loss of livelihood that are almost always necessary corollaries to industrialisation.

In political circles, similar concerns are being raised by India’s Left parties whose support is crucial for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to hold on to power in New Delhi. In its many missives to the commerce ministry, the Left has repeatedly asked for a paring — if not a complete scrapping — of direct tax incentives given to units in the SEZs. They also object to the government extending tax benefits to developers who build the physical infrastructure in these enclaves. Their contention: instead of foregoing revenue, the government should collect the taxes and spend them on social-sector schemes for rural India. Interestingly, in their quest for an equitable taxation order in India, the Left has the most unlikely of allies — the country’s finance ministry.

India’s finance minister, P Chidambaram — a man who loves to wear his reformist credentials on his sleeve – and the Left rarely see eye to eye. But the SEZ issue is perhaps that exception which proves the rule. Almost echoing the Left’s stand against tax rebates to SEZs, the finance ministry has repeatedly voiced its concern about loss of tax revenue. In fact, the ministry projects revenue loss of Rs1.76 billion in direct and indirect taxes between 2005 and 2010. The Left has often cited these figures to Commerce Minister Kamal Nath and his ministry officials to bolster their argument.

But the commerce ministry has its own counter-logic. It contends that the finance ministry’s revenue loss figures are notional; the exchequer would eventually earn far more from direct and indirect taxes owing to increased economic activity than the estimated tax loss. As regards concession to developers, the commerce ministry argues such incentives already exist for the infrastructure sector. They also maintain that without sops, no developer would come forward to invest amounts in the range of Rs 20 billion to set up SEZs.

Despite the Left’s opposition and the finance ministry’s tentativeness, the commerce ministry’s line has prevailed in the cabinet. The government sees SEZs as a fast-track to industrialisation. They are crucial to India’s strategy of export-led development that seeks to accelerate economic growth and generate jobs. Within this context, tax incentives are central to the success of SEZs in the country.

But there’s more to tax concessions than meets the eye. They can be extremely effective instruments for promoting equity if used judiciously and with ingenuity. As India industrialises further, the government of the day will be required to tap into this aspect of tax sops to evenly spread the dividends of economic reforms.

Currently, India has opted to industrialise in clusters. These clusters are, more often than not, located near large urban agglomerations. While industries situated near urban clusters have certain locational advantages, the government must also encourage corporates to set up factories and SEZs in less developed areas. Since companies are motivated by little else besides making profit, tax breaks could be an effective way of promoting corporate social responsibility as well as spreading the good cheer of industrialisation. This would ensure that no part of the country falls completely out of the development map in the days ahead.
_____

This is the second part of a three-part series published in Daily Times, Lahore on April 27, 2007. The original article can be found here.

TWO WORLDS, TWO WORLD VIEWS

2007-04-20T15:40:00.001-04:00

Sandeep Banerjee

Last year as West Bengal prepared for assembly elections, the Communists — led by the reformist Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee — went to the people soliciting political support for their drive to re-industrialise West Bengal. Calcutta’s street corners saw a curious manifestation of this canvassing; the state government put up hoardings that carried a rather uncharacteristic message: Agriculture is our basis, industry our future.

The Communists held on to their bastion, winning the mandate to rule the state for the seventh consecutive term. But amidst the din and euphoria of a landslide victory, they missed the prescience of their own campaign line. By alluding to the agriculture-industry dialectic, the Communists had unwittingly hit upon the critical issue — the question of land — that would overwhelm India’s policymakers a year later.

These days, it’s this land question that is keeping India’s politicians and policy-makers preoccupied. It informs the rather lively agriculture versus industry debate in the country today, especially after Special Economic Zones (SEZs) became operational in India.

SEZs are India’s way of pressing the fast-forward button towards industrialisation. They are industrial enclaves with direct and indirect tax concessions that the government hopes will not just accelerate economic activity but also augment India’s industrial capacity. The main objectives of these SEZs are to attract both domestic and foreign investment, develop infrastructure, boost exports and services as well as create more jobs. So far, this grand plan seems to be working. According to India’s Commerce Ministry, the 150-odd SEZs have so far brought in about US$3.2 billion worth of investments and created 18,500 jobs. By the end of this fiscal, SEZs would have created one million jobs and investments are likely to cross US$13 billion.

But there is a hitch — these enclaves need land to be set up. Since land is a scarce resource in India, the SEZs often end up acquiring (or trying to acquire) land that has been traditionally agricultural. With money and power equations skewed towards industry, rural India views any takeover of farmland by industry — even with more than adequate compensation — with intense suspicion. This feeling is further aggravated when state governments step in to procure land for corporates.

In India today, there is intense competition among the states to industrialise and seek foreign and domestic investments on their soil. The Land Acquisition Act of 1894 allows the states to acquire any land they want by invoking the ‘public purpose’ clause. Further, a 1984 amendment to this Act allows state governments to procure land for companies. As the states pitch for investments, it’s these powers that come handy — land acquisition by the state becomes a lucrative sop to attract the potential investor and outwit rival states.

But this paradigm of industrialisation has now changed considerably because of a violent episode in West Bengal’s Nandigram village.

In January this year, residents of Nandigram blockaded the area after the leak of a government plan to acquire 8900 hectares (22,000 acres) of land for Indonesia-based Salim Group to set up a petrochemical hub there. Last month, when the state police tried to force their way into the village to re-establish the rule of law, they were attacked. In the police firing that followed, 14 villagers died.

It was a situation imbued with a sense of cruel irony — the vexed question of land had come to haunt the purveyors of land reforms in their home turf. Nandigram also propelled the land question into the nation’s consciousness. Indian politicians were reminded that — unlike China — policy decisions forced from above come with a political price-tag.

So when the central ministers met in Delhi to decide on the SEZ approvals, they announced a new set of guidelines. Reposing faith in the SEZ route to industrialisation, the ministers forbade states from procuring land and the developers were asked to buy land directly from the landowners. The centre also made it clear that SEZs could not be more than 5000 hectares (12360 acres). Nandigram also forced the centre to wake up to its welfare role, the government announcing that the Rural Development Ministry would soon draft a comprehensive Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy for the country.

But despite the hurried attempt at addressing the land question, one can’t help but feel that much of this controversy — as well as the bloodshed and its attendant trauma — could have been avoided if the government had done some effective forward planning. But Indian policymaking happens in its own quirky way, a way that is more often than not, post facto.

Despite making its intentions known, the rehabilitation policy hasn’t been formally unveiled yet. For a government among whose earliest public pronouncements was the pledge to pursue reforms with a human face, the rehabilitation policy is perhaps something that it should have prepared way back in 2005 — along with the SEZ Act itself — especially since displacement is almost always a necessary concomitant to industrialisation.

In India, the state has withdrawn from a number of activities it had undertaken in the past. The government of India does not make bread any more and it shouldn’t either. But the state must not abdicate its responsibility towards the welfare of its citizens. On the issue of land, it is indeed best if states stay out of the actual process of acquiring land but they must remain a party to the transaction, at least in a regulatory role. A farmer in India does not have the wherewithal to negotiate with the industrialist and the state must ensure he is not cheated in any way.

The government also needs to approach the question of rehabilitation more creatively than has been its wont. Traditionally, compensation has been handed out only to the landowners. It is time for the government to factor in the sharecroppers and daily wagers — who often do not own the land they work on — into their calculations. For these groups, the loss of land is not just one of livelihood but the fading away of a way of life. Promising them jobs in the new industrial venture has little meaning — you cannot expect a paddy cultivator to become a foreman and in any case, factories don’t exactly come up overnight. Again, it is imperative for the state to find durable answers to the loss of sustainable livelihood question.

No one disputes India’s need to industrialise. In fact, factories — Nehru’s temples of modern India — are now needed more than ever to create jobs, generate wealth and drag people out of poverty. With the Indian workforce poised to become one of the youngest anywhere in the world, the need to industrialise and reap this demographic dividend will become even more urgent in the days ahead. But India cannot grow at the cost of its farmers and Indian policymakers must now strive, more than ever before, to come up with the right policy mix that will sustain agriculture while stimulating industrial growth.

India today straddles two worlds, two worldviews — one fading and the other desperately seeking to be born. At this crucial juncture in India’s history, the country’s politicians and policymakers have the enormous task of ensuring a smooth transition from the old order to the new. Much depends on India making this transition successfully.
_____

This is the first part of a three-part series published in Daily Times, Lahore on April 20, 2007. The original article can be found here.

Obituary: Anthony David Nuttall

2007-02-28T15:12:00.007-05:00

At Oxford, I wrote my M.Phil. thesis on the antinomian elements in the poetry of William Blake under the supervision of Tony Nuttall. He was an exceptional tutor and, as one of my friends memorably commented, the Funes Memorious we had known. I still remember him quoting passages from the Aeneid during his stupendous lectures on the roots of (European and British) Romanticism.

I was introduced to Nuttall some years before I actually went up to Oxford. My teacher at Jadavpur University - after an engaging conversation on Herbert's poetry - had lent me Nuttall's book Overheard by God. I was a compelling read that made a fascinating argument about Puritan poetics. Few years later, within the confines of his office at New College (and with a dash of embarrassment), the author himself would recommend his Alternative Trinity: Gnostic Heresy in Milton, Marlowe and Blake to me. It was an intellectual thriller. It was the start of one of the most intellectually stimulating phases of my Oxford student-life.

I remember Tony Nuttall from my Oxford days as a demanding tutor who expected me to fight him "with [my] intellectual sleeves rolled up" (his words). And he was extremely generous with his learning.

In many ways an epitome of the idea of an Oxford don, Nuttall was a staunch humanist who stood apart from the dour exemplars of human erudition for his extremely quirky sense of humor. For instance, not many Oxford dons would - to drive home the point about the Gnostic elements in Blake's poetry in an academic publication - compare the poet to Hugh Heffner. Or veer off from a passionate discussion on antinomianism with his student to deliberate whether the Ranter Abezier Coppe preached in Oxford fully clothed or in the buff?

Tony Nuttall passed away on 24 January, 2007.

These are his obituaries from a few UK newspapers:
The Guardian
The Times
The Daily Telegraph
The Independent

GIVE TRADE A CHANCE

2006-11-16T15:31:00.001-05:00

Sandeep Banerjee

A couple of years ago, the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline was the policy issue in India and provided a subject for endless editorials as well as relentless debate in political and diplomatic circles. Pakistan had cleared the proposal but the United States had made clear it was not too keen on this tripartite arrangement. So when Indian journalists met the visiting Pakistani commerce minister in New Delhi, they were curious to know if the US wanted Pakistan to opt out. Pat came the reply from Humayun Akhtar Khan: “Jab mian bibi razi, to kya karey ga kazi.”

This was an unusual articulation of South Asian unity. It didn’t mean India-Pakistan relations had reached a state of conjugal ecstasy but simply that the pipeline made good business sense for both Pakistan and India and they were responding to a sound business proposal. But even though they seem to agree more when they use their economic faculties, India and Pakistan seldom talk business. The political crowding out the economic, Indo-Pak talks almost always end in political rhetoric. And political rhetoric — used to negotiating the semantics of ‘boundary’ and ‘self-determination’ — is incapable of addressing issues like duty structures or non-tariff barriers. The net result is dismal trade figures: Indo-Pak direct trade stood at a little over US$600 million in 2004–05. Compare that to Sino-Indian trade of over US$17 billion in 2005–06.

But to be fair, official India-Pakistan trade data doesn’t paint the complete picture. There is a huge volume of illicit trade as well as trade in goods which originate in either country but are imported through a third country. The most conservative of estimates puts unofficial trade at three to four times that of trade through formal channels. Supplementing official figures with this data would show that despite unfavourable conditions, there exists substantial (though unofficial) trade between India and Pakistan. Indian and Pakistani establishments acknowledge this fact; they now need to code this reality into their actions.

In the past, opportunities to uncouple economics from politics haven’t succeeded in negotiating the rough terrain of India-Pakistan relations. Take, for instance, the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) that proposes a free trade area in South Asia. As Pakistan notified the agreement, it issued a positive list for trade with India, citing the old faithful — security concerns. This meant that the goods that could be traded were spelt out. The international norm is to trade on the basis of a negative list (trade is allowed in all goods except those listed). In response, the Indian Commerce Minister Kamal Nath has written to the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) secretariat claiming Pakistan is sabotaging the SAFTA, a claim that is not without merit.

Some say it is difficult to love thy neighbour, especially if you have fought three wars with each other and have a territorial dispute that goes back six decades. But then, India-Pakistan relations would do well to follow the Sino-Indian paradigm. Like Pakistan, China too has a boundary dispute with India; China and India claim portions of each other’s territories as their own. They also fought a war in 1962.
But they still manage to trade. And even speak of Free Trade Agreements.

In fact, Indian commerce ministry projections show China could be India’s largest trading partner (surpassing USA, and a figure of US$20 billion) by 2008. The contentious issues — of boundary and territory — haven’t been forgotten. It’s just that they don’t impinge on business.

Today, as we speak of globalisation, the global economy and the global village, we say capital has no nationality or race. This world-view is constantly undermining the older ethic of nation and of political boundaries. That is the nature of the world we live in and political establishments the world over are only gradually grasping this new radicalism. China and India — by de-linking politics from economics — perhaps show they have not just imbibed the message of globalisation, but have also internalised it.

Chinese and Indian embrace of globalisation isn’t a matter of simple ideological predilection. These countries are home to a huge chunk of the world’s poor. The performance of these two economies — dubbed the Asian powerhouses — are gradually lifting their populations out of poverty and giving them a better life. This is not just a function of welfare. There is a deeper political import. Economic prosperity essentially leads to durable regimes and consequently, stable countries. And in that, there is perhaps a message for Pakistan.

With the dialogue process once again chugging, there is need to reassess the old salients. Progress on Kashmir need not be linked to movement on commerce; cross-border terrorism cannot be the reason for a lull in cross-border trade. Pakistan needs to bring enlightened moderation to the table. India, with the balance of trade hopelessly in its favour, simply needs to be more gracious about trade concessions.

Pakistan and India are home to over 1.4 billion people. The governments of these countries owe it to their citizens to help them lead better lives. And there really is no substitute for economic activity to generate more jobs and fight poverty. India and Pakistan have been trying, for long, to give peace a chance. It is time to change tack and give trade a chance. The rest will follow.
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This article was published in Daily Times, Lahore on November 16, 2006. The original article can be found here.

SELECTIVE AMNESIA

2006-09-20T15:16:00.002-04:00

Sandeep Banerjee

Pope Benedict XVI is 'deeply sorry.' Sorry, because some bits of his speech – on violence, jihad and Islam – at the University of Regensburg have offended Muslim sensibilities. So the Pope apologised in person; a rather gracious act, no doubt.

What exactly does this apology achieve? It probably helps the aggrieved forget the wrong. The Pope's sorry also allows for a selective appeal to memory, helping the individual and the collective negotiate history effectively.

Negotiating history is tricky because it requires skilful use of memory, of forgetting. So when the Holy Father in his speech quotes a Byzantine Emperor Manuel Paleologus as saying that 'violence is incompatible with the nature of God,' one cannot but help think that Papa Ben is indulging in some gratuitous forgetting of his own.

The Big Ben forgets, perhaps conveniently, that violence too is coded into the fabric of Christianity – it was Jesus (according to the Gospel, Matthew) who said, 'He that is not with me is against me' long before George W. Bush made this line his own.

As for the history of the Catholic Church: The Spanish Inquisition could lay claim to being one of the bloodiest chapters of human history, scripted by the Vatican's Holy Office of the Inquisition. Today this is called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, an office the current Pope headed before his elevation. The Holy See also blessed the cleansing of the indigenous populations and cultures of the Americas. And the silence of Pope Pius XII as Hitler performed his danse macabre, wasn't exactly golden, was it?

Being German, the Pope knows the importance of forgetting since Germany stands at a curious psychological juncture of memory and amnesia. That country wants to forget its murderous Nazi past, Europe doesn't – because to forget murder is to absolve the perpetrator. Remembering the holocaust is to perpetuate guilt.

But in Germany, even remembering isn't an easy task. Ask Gunter Grass. After insisting that his countrymen must never, ever forget, he has just chosen to remember his own past in his forthcoming autobiography – that he was a member of the Nazi SS.

A snippet from his autobiography: As a prisoner of war in the Bad Aibling camp, Grass came across a shy 17-year-old boy called Joseph. Grass wanted to be an artist, Joseph wanted to go into the church. Grass can't remember if Joseph is Pope Benedict XVI though Papa Ben admits he was indeed a prisoner of war in that camp.

Strange, indeed, are the ways of memory.
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This article was published in the editorial page of the Times of India, New Delhi on September 20, 2006. The original article can be found here.

OXFORD, ROUGHCUT

2001-08-07T15:14:00.009-04:00

Sandeep Banerjee

Oxford, one of my friends once suggested, was a town that had pretensions of being a picture postcard. I never argued with his evocative turn of phrase. After all, it is an exceedingly pretty university town.

The buildings showing off their gothic splendour in the afternoon sun, the chimes from the university chapel, the blossoming cherry trees, the swans on the Thames (or the Isis, as it is called in this part of this island) all affirm the picture postcard nature of the town. And then there are the gargoyles too, smirking at the tutorial ravaged Oxford student and the Big Mac chomping American tourist alike. One could then sum it all up in one word - idyllic (minus the tourist, of course).

While idyllic it is for most of the week, come Friday night and Oxford strives to transcend itself: to put its more exotic facets on display. What is possibly most striking about Oxford on a Friday evening is the panache with which its male residents, Townies and Gownies alike, set about relieving themselves - post beer binging at the pubs - in public.

On one solemn occasion, as I was entering the hallowed precincts of University College, I managed to get my shoes wet, courtesy some enthusiastic Englishman who had taken the steps of the college to be his personal flower-bed. This, I confess, was not a novel experience for me. I have had similar experiences with cows in the narrow gallis of Varanasi. But then they, quite understandably, never wished me 'good evening' like my Oxford benefactor.

And then there are the public phone booths. On weekends, they are a strict no-no as they usually bear the full brunt of the Friday excesses. The exceedingly brave-hearted often have to navigate a sea of beer-induced urine within the booth to then find the much sought after handset covered in - ummm … let's phrase this delicately - puke, de profundis some fellow Oxonian.

You might want to call these reality checks that are coded within the grand Oxford experience which unflinchingly champions the establishment of the mens sana in corpore sano. And indeed, while it remains perpetually etched in popular collective memory as the 'sweet city with her dreaming spires,' there is an Oxford that is far removed from the rarefied atmosphere of the university. It exists only in an oblique relationship to the gowned students and the manicured lawns of the colleges.

This urban reality - rendered more shockingly real owing to the contrast to its 'fairytale-ish' counterpart, the universally acclaimed brand name - is the one inhabited by the tramp, relentlessly chanting his beer-drenched and marijuana-inspired: cud'ya spair sum chainge mait; and the young Bosnian mother who asks the passer-by for money to feed her child on a pram.

I think back to my pre-departure orientation that was organised by the British Council before I left Calcutta. It was an extremely helpful exercise that ensured, among others, that we did not get lost in the dazzling maze of Heathrow. We were also warned against this peculiar entity called 'culture shock' and I was on the lookout for it the moment my feet touched Her Majesty's realm.

And when I did finally encounter it, I have to admit that I was taken aback just a little bit. I had not been told that the young Bangladeshi mother begging for her child at the traffic light on Calcutta's Park Street would re-invent herself for me in Oxford. The garish saree had given way to a pair of jeans and T-shirt, the bangal accented Bengali had become English with a distinctly Eastern European twang and stutter. And yes, she was much more self-assured than the familiar face from back home.

No, I am not being perverse. Nor am I pushing the soft nationalist line of the mera Bharat mahaan variety. Oxford can be brutally real at times, something that adds a refreshing dimension to this medieval English university town. And being the humanities student that I am - hopelessly so, I would argue - I just like seeing parallels even where none apparently exist.
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A revised version of this article appeared in The Statesman, Calcutta in 2001.