The Clear and Present Change

History is important to gain a perspective, more so when a breeze of change fraught with uncertainty and expectations flow over us, slowly gathering pace and promising to turn into a raging gale within the next few months. As we look forward to exercising our right of franchise by March 2011, we need to look back at our options for ushering in a change in Bengal politics, after a long lull. Let us go back to the history of the three major players and try to understand their ethos. 

On 28 December 1885, the Indian National Congress was founded at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College in Bombay. Allan Octavian Hume's poem 'The Old Man's Hope' published in Calcutta in 1886 aptly captures the sentiment of the founder :

Sons of Ind, why sit ye idle,

Wait ye for some Deva's aid?

Buckle to, be up and doing!

Nations by themselves are made!

Yours the land, lives, all, at stake, tho'

Not by you the cards are played;

Are ye dumb? Speak up and claim them!

By themselves are nations made!

What avail your wealth, your learning,

Empty titles, sordid trade?

True self-rule were worth them all!

Nations by themselves are made!

................... 

 Sons of Ind, be up and doing,

Let your course by none be stayed;

Lo! the Dawn is in the East;

By themselves are nations made!

125 years is a long time in history and INC has evolved from being the usher to the head of the table to the villain of the piece to disintegration to reorientation to back at the helm and so on.  But they have not only survived the test of time but also have been able to maintain her central position in Indian politics for all these years, as we transitioned from being Imperial subjects to a Democratic Republic.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) was formed at the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of India held in Calcutta from October 31 to November 7, 1964. The CPI(M) was born in the struggle against revisionism and sectarianism in the communist movement at the international and national level, in order to defend the scientific and revolutionary tenets of Marxism-Leninism and its appropriate application in the concrete Indian conditions. In the fall of 1962, sharp differences over the question of the party’s attitude toward the Chinese-Indian border conflict arose within the leadership as a result of the heightening of that conflict. Subsequently, differences that had appeared as early as the Sixth Congress of the CPI concerning other questions of party activity—the evaluation of the role of the Indian national bourgeoisie, the nature and essence of the united national front, and so forth—also came to the fore. In November 1964 a group of leading figures left the CPI and proclaimed the creation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a parallel communist party. The direct intervention of the leadership of the Communist Party of China into the internal affairs of the CPI played a fundamental role in the split in the CPI and the emergence of a parallel communist party in India. 

Mamata Banerjee was expelled from Indian National Congress on 22 December 1997. The All India Trinamool Congress (formerly West Bengal Trinamool Congress) was founded on 1 January 1998, consisting largely of defectors from the then Congress (I) in West Bengal. A little bird quietly tells us the background as a precursor to forming the AITC. In the Rao government formed in 1991, Mamata Banerjee was made the Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development, Youth Affairs and Sports, and Women and Child Development. As the sports minister, she protested in a rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata, against Government's indifference towards her proposal to improve sports in the country and publicly announced that she would resign. She was discharged of her portfolios in 1993. In April 1996, she alleged that Congress was behaving as a stooge of the CPI(M) in West Bengal. She claimed that she was the lone voice of protest and wanted a "clean Congress". At a public rally at Alipore in Kolkata, Mamata Banerjee wrapped a black shawl around her neck and threatened to make a noose with it. In July 1996, she squatted at the well of Lok Sabha to protest against the hike in petroleum price, though she was a part of the Government. In February 1997, on the day of railway budget presentation in Lok Sabha, Mamata Banerjee threw her shawl at the railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan for ignoring West Bengal and announced her resignation. The speaker, P. A. Sangma, did not accept her resignation and asked her to apologise. She stayed away from Lok Sabha for six months. Later she came back as Santosh Mohan Deb mediated. 


Not much is found documented about the vision of AITC except what is available on their official website and I quote "In our vain self conceit and ivory tower musings, we have abandoned the path that led us to win our political freedom – the path which could also have led us to our highest spiritual liberty. And what is the price that we paid and still continue to pay? We have become corrupt, narrow and indolent, we have steeped ourselves into all kinds of ignominious acts possible or imaginable. We have lost ourselves! In this hour of crisis, when everything seems to fall apart, how is it that we can turn around and fight our own telling weaknesses and miseries? We can fight by invoking the presence of the Divine Mother who is not only present in the very stuff of the land but also in our hearts and minds; by imploring Her to free us of our weakness and make us great and mighty, not to please our egos, but to make Her great and mighty." Unqoute. Howsoever vague this might be, the one point agenda of Mamata Banerjee aka AITC is anti – Communism, or shall we say anti her bête noire CPI(M).


Let us go back again to the days she was part of NDA. In less than five months, she had threatened twice to withdraw support to Vajpayee's Government. Within the next July, she sprung a unique surprise by ``temporarily suspending'' her party's support to the Government. People understood it as her protest against some action or lack of action on the part of the Centre, but the method remained baffling. Then again, as she pulled out of the coordination committee of the BJP and its allies over the issue of rising prices, she was again making a point but not quite explaining it. In 1999 she had joined the NDA and became the Union Railway Minister in 2000 under PM Vajpayee. She walked out of the NDA in 2001 and allied with the Congress in Bengal to fight the Lok Sabha elections, with disastrous consequences.  She returned to the cabinet in 2004 only to remain the Union Coal and Mines Minister till the elections of 2004.  Then happened the indignation of single MP party in 2005, Nandigram and Singur. The rest as they say is history.

Now that we have a perspective of where the Congress, CPI(M) and Trinamool stand, the one single factor which is common to all of them is this : they are all children of anti establishment philosophies. While the former two, due to their long years in power at the national and state level, have become the establishment themselves, Trinamool does not have any seperate image other than that of Mamata and as Ashis Chakrabarty wrote in the Indian Express way back on Nov 8th, 1998, she has been able to portray herself as a ‘Rebel without a pause - sometimes apparently without a cause too. Revolting against friends and foes alike… And never failing to make her rebellion a spectacle eminently worthy of newspaper headlines. More often than not, her methods of revolt will be quite unconventional. So much so that one keeps wondering which is her message and which the medium. But her people lap it all up because in her they see the girl next door relentlessly fighting the venerable Jyoti Basu. They adore her but also fear her unpredictable turns in mood.’ 

The most interesting bit is what Rahul Gandhi is trying to do now. Congress has not been in power in Bengal for thirty three long years. Irrespective of those tumultuous last years of their rule here, the present electorate does not really have a feel of Congress as establishment and are best seen as reluctant former political allies of CPI(M) due to compulsions of National politics. To position Congress as anti establishment now will bring the party back to the mainstream mindset of the electorate and reposition it as a National party with regional perspective, which Trinamool lacks. There is another factor though, which Rahul will surely bring to the fore as days progress : quality of leadership. The vast experience of the Congress at running successive Governments and Rahul's ability to attract the young, from which future leadership will surely emerge, can actually eat into the vote base that was theirs originally, but later migrated to the Trinamool, slowly and dejectedly, during the last twelve years.

Actually, in March 2011, CPI(M) will not fight any opposition, they will be fighting themselves, as they did in November, 1964. They are now fighting the policies of their  utopian central leadership with more vigour than any opposition can even imagine and they will continue to do so till a clear political line emerges within. The Congress will fight the Trinamool and together they will take on the CPI(M). In the following years, this fight will intensify and one of them will emerge as the principal party with mass appeal. Since Trinamool will be spearheading the Government in Bengal now, Congress may be playing the anti establishment card against them in a run up to 2016. The future is impregnated with possibilities. Rahul probably has already started building up his team for governance. And he knows he can't do that without Congress having a solid political base, the task being easier specially in the states which lack strong National political representation to articulate and influence regional aspirations singularly.   

The Great Divide

The facts first, unearthed by a Parliamentary Committee : between 1997 and 2007, 1.83 lakh tonnes of wheat, 6.33 lakh tonnes of rice, 2.20 lakh tonnes of paddy and 111 lakh tonnes of maize rotted due to either lack of storage facilities or poor maintenance of stocks in the existing facilities. As on January 1, 2010, 10,688 lakh tonnes of foodgrains were found damaged in the depots of the Food Corporation of India, enough to feed over six lakh people for over 10 years. The storage losses of foodgrains in 2009-10 amounted to Rs 228.39 crore and transit losses another Rs 182.46 crore.

Let us look at another set of statistics. The Arjun Sengupta Committee Report in 2007-08 pointed out that while 235 million people are able to take care of themselves, an unbelievable 836 million people still remain marginalised. The National Sample Survey (NSS) data has divided the poor into four groups : 

The extremely poor : average per capita consumption income is Rs 9 per day; 

Those above the poverty line : Rs 12 per day; 

The marginally poor : Rs 15 per day; 

The vulnerable :  above Rs 15 but less than Rs 20 per day; 

Can we, the urbane middle class imagine a family of four or more living on less than Rs 20 per day? Incidentally, the middle income group earns Rs 37 per day and those in the high income bracket earns above Rs 93 per day. In short, the Arjun Sengupta report tells us that 79% of Indians are poor. Let us not forget that the NSS data is based on measuring expenditure and then using it as proxy income, which I personally feel, is the correct way to measure poverty at such a marginal level. 

However, there are divergent views and one cannot ignore the logic behind a different scale for measurement of poverty which assumes that people are earning much more than what is revealed by expenditure alone. Fair enough. Let us then consider a new dimension that has been added by Rajesh Shukla, director of the Centre for Macro-Consumer Research under the aegis of the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER). His recent book, ‘How India Earns, Spends and Saves’ reveals new data at variance with conventional thinking. According to him, 45% of Indians earn less than Rs 20 per day. Great. That means we are less poor than what we thought we were.

Then there is the Government accepted Tendulkar Committee Report that has  estimated poverty figures at 37.2%. While being much higher than the 27% estimated by Centre, Tendulkar's figure is closer to what the states have been claiming. 

Finally, there is the issue of a suggested pilot project to estimate the poor according to recommendations of the N.C.Saxena Committee Report. The pilot project, if taken up, will test the methodology suggested by Saxena. The villain of the piece is Centre's estimation of poverty based on extrapolating sample survey and the BPL census which is based on a door-to-door identification. The key flaw in the NSS survey exercise is that rigid uniformity ignores local concerns which vary from state to state. The questions have to be relevant for socially diverse regions with extremely backward and tribal populations while there is an issue of state-specific minorities against nationally designated ones. The two give divergent results with the Centre sticking with the statistical estimates. Saxena has suggested a method to reconcile the two exercises. The pilot study will test out the efficacy of Saxena's methodology and suggest fine tuning.

The fact of the matter is that we do not know how poor we are, even after sixty years of planning for poverty eradication. Government after Government has set up several committees to figure out how to plan for the poor, both rural and urban. No wonder the Prime Minister is uncomfortable with the Apex Court's directive to distribute the rotting food grain free to the poor as the Government does not even know to whom should they distribute this to! Again, if CITU had those figures, they probably would not have dared to call the nationwide strike they did yesterday. Their constituency is the the organised labour, who are a small minority. It is the millions of unorganised and marginal labour who went without enough food yesterday due to the strike which would surely reflect as an additional anti incumbency factor for the ruling combine in Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. Even INTUC does not seem to realise the effect of supporting a strike at this juncture due to lack of awareness about the extent of need for daily subsistence. 

Now comes the news that the food security bill may be set for a radical overhaul. I guess that is welcome - it can't be worse than the early attempts at drafting one. Take for instance the meeting of the Empowered Group of Ministers held in February. They were to "discuss the enactment of the proposed National Food Security Bill." The first thing the EGoM came up with was this gem. 2.1 (a) "The definition of Food Security should be limited to the specific issue of foodgrains (wheat and rice) and be delinked from the larger issue of nutritional security". Food security delinked from nutritional security? Note that the same line concedes nutritional security is "the larger issue." 


Why then the need to delink the two? Is 35 kg of rice at Rs.3 a kilo (for a section of the population) food security? Are there no other determinants of food security? Like health, nutrition, livelihoods, jobs, food prices? Can we even delink the fuel price hike from discussions on food security? Or from the wilful gutting of the public distribution system? Or from the havoc wrought by the ever-growing futures trade in wheat, pulses, edible oils and more? The truth is the government seeks ways to spend less and less on the very food security it talks about. Hence the endless search for a lower BPL figure. To the government's great dismay, all three officially-constituted committees have turned up estimates of poverty higher than its own.

Hunger is defined not by how many people suffer it, but by how many the Government is willing to pay for. That is the bottomline, really.

The Prince and the Pauper

His Royal Highness had come visiting our part of the country yesterday, which, for the past 34 years, has been to Akbar Road what Wales was to England in the 13th century. HRH, as reported in the media, connected with his people like never before. He breached the barricade, jumped out of his vehicle to shake hands, stood on his bulletproof doorway exposed to the elements and won hearts with his simple, enigmatic smile. He has done this in UP, Tamilnadu and Bihar before. Finally it was the turn of Bengal. However, here his intension is different as, if won over, this is the last bastion which can give him his Crown without the thorn of coalition. He then shall bestow upon all future generation of heir apparents the coveted title of Prince of Bengal, thereby relegating the willow weilding Prince of Calcutta to humiliating wilderness.                                                                    

Internecine struggles and external pressure from the English and later, the Norman conquerors of England,  led to the Welsh kingdoms come gradually under the sway of the English Crown, as we all know. And so would happen in Bengal under HRH, one believes, as he assumes his new assignment seriously. He has promised his partymen of such repeated visits henceforth, that they might grow wary of him. The end of the Roman rule in Wales was followed by incursions by the barbarian tribes from the east like the Anglo and the Saxon, who, inevitably, later became the English. HRH is ready for a repeat of history in Bengal. The transition from the Romans to the Anglo-Saxons have just started to happen, it seems.

The Romans are actually a conglomeration of three parties : The Romans of Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. They are very different in terms of nature, character, lifestyle, culinary habits and appeal. Each one cooks their own fare according to their own taste and serves it the way they feel would have the maximum impact on the discerning. Their Poiltburo, though, has a different skill set altogether. They have this fantastic ability to taste and reject each recipe, after they are served, in true Roman style. They would direct a fellow Roman to be Speaker. Naturally a Speaker, by virtue of the constitution, is above party and is prohibited from being partisan. Then, when the Roman discharges his duty diligently like a model Speaker, the Politburo will order him to be partisan in office, failing which he shall be expelled from the Roman Empire ! Regimented as they are, they have this immense ability to come up with a new non-regimen every time they are nearer to mainstream politics. They did something incomprehensible to one of their very own Patriarchs from Bengal, who was an architect of the Party as well as the Third Front. When it came to becoming Prime Minister, with all Third Front constituents unanimously electing him as their only choice, the Politburo pondered over and said no ! Which Party on earth would not like to propagate their presence in every nook and corner of the kingdom by enacting such an enlightened 'historical blunder' ?  They have done it again to the First Roman of Kerala, who happens to be one of the founders of the Party in that state. This old-world honest Roman has been expelled from the Politburo as he could not tolerate corruption and publicly spoke out in despair ! 

The 'K' factor seems to do more harm than good to everyone except Ekkta Kkapoor. Let's look at the Romans again. The General Secretary was enjoying the fruits of power without any responsibility but suddenly was bitten by the intellectual bug and started nuking the 'K'ala 'K'anoon, the effect of which, from other than providing nuclear generated electricity, no one really comprehends. Maybe the double K had the double effect of loosing considerable bench strength and clout in national politics plus the burden of Opposition uniting in their Bengal stronghold, giving the Bengali Roman nightmares they have not dreamed for a long long time. The 'K' couple in the politburo notwithstanding, the latest 'K' in Bengal, ironically an atheist named after Kali, is a Roman labour leader who gives a damn about the Eid shopper and despite adverse public sentiments, gets ahead with his customary bandh, just a day after HRH finished his whirlwind tour of Kolkata. The 'K' s never participate in elections and therefore is neither connected to nor concerned about popular sentiments. He lives only by what the Book says.

His Royal Highness has gone back with a lot of hope. The Romans are falling and the Anglo-Saxons would inevitably become English, eventually when their Queen fades into oblivion. HRH is concerned in the least about the temporary effect the Anglo-Saxons would have on Bengal's polity.  In 1282, the death of Llywelyn the Last led to the conquest of the Principality of Wales by King Edward I of England. The King had patiently waited for his turn to come and then made his irrevocable conquest. In this case, it is even easier as the Anglo-Saxons cannot assume power on their own without a little nudge from the English. Neither can they stay put in both Governments, if they dare to defy them beyond a certain tolerable limit. HRH drew the line yesterday. You can be Prince if you choose to. You would be a pauper if you cross the line. And the Romans will vouch for this hurtingly but without question.

The differently intelligent

Oh what a relief ! I have found an antidote to the new breed of intelligentsia that is hounding the Bangla talk shows nowadays. Our very own chaiwalla knows a thing or two about the arts, believe me. He can keep a count on the innumerable cuppas that does the round. He can simultaneously keep a tab on all the cigarattes, without which the thinking Bengali fails to stimulate his overworked brains. He does break into a Bhojpuri song whenever he is in his best re-re-brewing mood and can also very aptly transition to a dramatis persona when  need arises to collect money from the upteenth credit seeker (only for the sake of treatment for his long dead father). He has qualities of all the intellectuals put together, either red or green or pseudo neutral, and more. He can actually keep the gossip going by chipping in with his wily bits when the orders for fresh rounds of chai diminishes according to the theory of marginal propensity to consume.

The new breed of intellectuals are mostly indoctrinated, either way. They come in all shapes and sizes, bald and bearded, articulate or abusive, provocative or believing, powerful or power seeking, famous or infamous, in every way one can't envisage them to be. Nowadays they seldom wear that trademarked crumpled khaddar punjabi with a frayed pajama and can suddenly drop upon you like the infamous London drizzle. You don't even have the chance to dodge as you cant differentiate them now sans their traditional course cotton jhola, that unkempt beard and those pearcing eyes staring at your heart from behind thick rimmed glasses. The original ones were available aplenty on the hard benches of Presidency canteen, on the steel chairs of the Coffee House, or on many stimulating staircases and porticos around the city. The alma mater of all intellectuals happened to be the little magazine shelter in the Maidan Book Fair and one was free to experience the Great Thinkers if one did not mind sitting on green grass and enjoy the smell of dried grass all around. They had a air, an aura, a buzz of intellectualism around them, and revered as they were, you had a chance of giving yourself a miss, if you so wished. But they were dogmatic and spoke about their belief without any trace of vengeance. Not any more. The new breed now hound you down to your drawing room, in your bed room, or any other room you may have placed your television in, and try to shout each other down inelegantly, depending on which colour they happen to wear that day. But they do make you think, like they used to even before, a little differently though. Now they are intellectually 'us' and 'them'. If you are with us, you are not them. If you are with them, you are not us. 

Let me get our famed chaiwalla back here as I cant handle so much of intelligence alone. He is partisan too, towards his own art. He is not bothered if his patrons are black or white, high or low. He draws power from his skills and does whatever is required to keep that growing. He is neither vague, nor divisive, only committed. He is a microcosm of the society at large, but equally participative in her macro element by virtue of being the pivot of a binding togetherness. Many new faces surface in the adda every now and then. Some stick on, some don't. Some revel, some get addicted. A whole new social order and space emerges surrounding the steaming cuppas and he seems to hold the mirror to one's face for one to unashamedly see one's reflection over time, and course correct like a shining knight. He is the custodian of our right to argue, right to disagree, right to dissent and still be ever helpful thick friends. He is the one constant in our ever transforming mind game, who does not transgress, yet does not let us regress beyond recognition. He is the true intellectual. And thankfully, he does not need to bang on our head every time to prove he is not. 

Mahanayak

As the screen lit up with a beatific smile, comfortably tugged between my Ma and Kakima, I watched the phenomenon called Uttam Kumar for the first time. And that was many many years ago. That enigma has lived on in my life, and likewise in many lives of my generation ever since, as the yardstick of good looks, good acting and an essential goodness. When he laughed, we laughed with him. When he was hurt on screen, we felt the pain. When he lipped those sweet melodious songs, we hummed along with him. There was never a hero who captured the hearts of million of Bengalis like Uttamkumar did, while he was alive and even now, thirty years after his sudden death. He was the greatest of them all, our Mahanayak. We fashioned our hair after him, emulated his walk, smiled his smile, laughed his laugh and even sang like him, but still could not help feel the pain of not being able to gather his aura and effect. We dreamt of  holding the sensational Suchitra Sen in our arms if only our looks could kill, like his did. Ruefully, we envied him as much as we idiolised and admired him.

I remember buying a commemorative LP record cut by HMV and getting scolded for wasting money on a "cinema-fellow" by one of my holier-than-thou Mama. I had to protest, not because I was unnecessarily being pulled up for no reason, but because my hero was being demeaned. I remember gearing up enough courage to tell my Mama that only the greats like Netaji and Rabindranath have LPs cut in their commemoration , and some peole did not appreciate their true worth, while they were alive. Coming to think of this rebellion now, it needed immense courage for a young boy to stand up for his idol and get into a head on collision course with a no-nonsense elder at that time and age. But I had to fight for the dignity of Uttamkumar, who could not do any wrong, and the end justified the means. We read the gossips, but believed that a creative genius had the right to indulge in what the society may not find proper. What really mattered was what we saw on screen, blown up forty times than normal, and that extraordinary screen presence which had the power to transport us into a make believe world for those few magical hours. With him, went the art of Bengali celluloid. With him Bengalis lost their moments of enjoyable respite. With him, we lost our alter ego, for ever.  

Thirty years have passed by after Uttamkumar passed away. That fateful day in July, when as kids returning from school, we got caught up in the teeming multitude of mourners that engulfed their hero during his last journey, I remember getting up on a tea stall bench at Rashbihari crossing to catch a glimpse of the man many of us never saw in flesh. I also remember the pain, the tears, the grief and the deep sense of loss that the quiet mourning millions felt and shared with each other. It was just not about loosing an actor forever. It was about loosing one of those rare icons that were essentially Bengali, but universal in appeal. With him we lost an integral part of our growing up years, our parents' fantasy, and a bit of being Bengali, that day. 

And then, like our lost childhood, we lost fifty percent of his films during the past thirty years due to our Government' shameless apathy to preserve heritage. Rarely I come across a glimpse of him on television now a days. Maybe it is a song that I have heard a thousand times before or a dialogue I can quote ad verbatim even in my sleep. I stop to greedily steal a private moment with my hero. I rewind subconsciously to my childhood that can never be taken away from me, being quintessential to who I am. The negatives may have degenerated beyond repair. But the reels keep on running in my mind. This film has no end.