USHA PARINAYA.an ankia drama

We had been to a cultural function, a drama performance by second year students troupe of national school of drama, Delhi. It was held at Rabindra Bhawan. Beautifully enacted on the basis of Madhab Kondoli's ankia nat Kumar Haran. Enjoyed the performance immensely.We were four Krishna, Nina, Shamik and myself. while returning home we were very happy pondering over the promise offered by such fusion drama.28th evening remains memorable.

IN THE SHADOW OF FAMINE

A little before the Pujas of 2006 my daughter visited us in Kolkata. She decided to go for a dinner Bengali style in a much advertised Bengali eatery "Bhajahari Manna". We were seven or eight there. My wife, son, his wife and little daughter, my daughter, myself and another family consisting of a widowed mother and her son and daughter, very close to us from the days of my political activism. The eatery, an extremely cramped outfit with a list of elaborate delicacies of Bengali cuisine on a blackboard hung up on the wall. No printed menu is presented. Occasionally a man gets up and wipes out with a duster an item or two which have been devoured by the eaters already. Two French ladies were sitting beside us on the narrow seat, apparently enjoying hugely the food and the ambiance. Everything was perfectly Bengali. Noise, light, crowd everything.

I suddenly had a desire to find out my bearing. My school days, a part of it, was spent in this neighbourhood. It was 1944 .The shadow of famine, destitution, the Second World War, sandbagged baffle wall, overwhelming black-out nights... were in a deep embrace with Calcutta’s (now Kolkata) life. In the midst of this came world’s most devastating famine. Five million perished within less than two years. The eatery where all this eating was going on in great gusto where after a week Kolkata’s one of the grandest Durga puja, Ekdalia Ever Green club’s Puja was going to be performed, there existed a patch of triangular green fenced off with iron spikes with a small opening. There were a couple of swings and a few wooden benches. People, particularly the elderly and the children used to spend sometime here in the afternoon. Then from some where people started pouring around this what was then called Temporary Park. Some already dead, some were dying. A few who could manage to move, went out routinely for begging, not rice, but for "fan" the slightly starchy water that's released when rice is cooked. People, generally had lost the generosity of parting with a fistful of rice. It was durviksha or famine, when beggars are driven away. Hordes of people, indeed mere processions of skeletons wrapped in skin were moving about in search of food. A mature woman and a man were indistinguishable from secondary sexual features, because there was none that was visible. Everyday they were dying around Temporary Park, every where, in all places. All such places were reeking with a strange smell that only can emanate from dead and drying human bodies. I had a feeling this smell was there all over the country. It was years afterwards that I could forget that particular smell.

Never again I saw such a sight in my seventy-odd years of life. Kolkata was roaring around with American left-hand drive open-hood jeeps, well fed US troops, African-Americans among them a remarkable sight at that time. Gariahat as well as other Kolkata markets were also well stocked with food. Middle and upper class Calcuttans were collecting their requirements with wallets full of war-time paper currency. Only, mindlessness had climbed to a horrible height. As if these deaths and destitution were of no consequence. Famine became only a word for academic discussion. Such things will pass was the attitude. But, although small, a determined band of people were fighting this degeneration. With whatever they had, they plunged into famine relief work. Jainul Abedin’s famous drawings and paintings, Sunil Jana’s wonderful photographs, Bijon Bhattacharya’s plays, Nabanna and others, Jyotirindra Maitra’s Nabajibaner Gan and a plethora of other works tried with steeled determination to stave off demoralization. Then there was the flower of India’s humanism -- Indian People’s Theater Association (IPTA), Progressive Writers’ and Artists’ Association. It is true that with only relief, songs and dramas you cannot reverse this massive torrent of famine and deaths. But yet this effort galvanized into a robust movement for restoration of self esteem, dignity and whatever that was still good within us. It had a highly humanizing effect. Outstanding political individuals, singers, artists, photo journalists, all came together. Their songs, plays, poetry sessions, speeches, wonderful posters prepared inexpensively but with deep passion traveled across cities, villages, and everywhere. The great tragedy had united all shades. In the backdrop was the worldwide antifascist unity of humanity. It was a golden time. People were ready to give every bit of best things they had.

I did not see the Indian freedom movement-era Dundee March, Non-cooperation or Civil Disobedience movements. But what I saw in this resurgence remained the abiding resource throughout my whole life. Just when the independence movement was getting into full throttle culminating into revolt in the Royal Indian Navy, that glorious feeling was snapped. Vicious communal riots cast its shadow all over the country. Horrible slaughter, history’s largest exodus, the country parted into two hostile entities. The moment of glory came within attainable reach and departed without anybody regretting it. Life became mundane with basketful of convoluted philosophies. For the middle classes there no longer existed any noble agenda.

Big degree, big job, big money. The ashes of burnt dreams filled up the air.

Well, at the restaurant we visited, meanwhile the food had arrived. Lovely boneless pieces of Hilsa steam-cooked in mustard paste and mustard oil garnished with green chillies. The aroma of Dehradun rice filled the air. A glass of whiskey would have been very satisfying .What else? Memories still lingered.

Photo from Internet. See economist Amartya Sen's book on the topic: http://books.google.co.in/books?id=FVC9eqGkMr8C&dq=amartya+sen+famine&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result

RATAN TATA's OPEN LETTER-A FEW THOUGHTS

Ratan Tata’s open letter (http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081017/jsp/frontpage/story_9980686.jsp) to the citizens of Bengal, published in most of the dailies of West Bengal on 17th October last has definitely created an interesting situation. After the stun wore off it was found that most of the few reactions that came out were of mute sort. Let us not worry much with the contents of the letter. At different times Ratan Tata made many such statements. What is remarkable this time is Ratan’s frank show of interest in West Bengal’s politics. Very few people in this country who roam around the world of high capital find this activity interesting. Ratan Tata apparently belongs to this minority group. Ratan Tata heads world’s one of the most important capitalist organizations. It can hardly be expected that he would unnecessarily indulge in infantilism of getting pleasure from letter writing. He is one of the most erudite businessmen of India. He spent lots of years at one of the best universities of the USA, entry to which is not governed by donations from paternal inheritance, maternal uncle’s pull or Arjun Singh’s Scheduled caste quota. Entry to which is very strictly on merit. It is to be noted that on the same day Cornell University’s web site came out with the news that Tata Education Trust has donated to Cornell University a grant of 50 million dollars. 25 million for a research in depth on India’s food production problems, nutritional problems and problems related to hunger in India. Other 25 million for enhanced scholarship and assistance to Indian and other deserving students joining the university. Mr. Tata was an outstanding alumnus of Cornell.

Here no paean is intended for Mr. Tata. Let us take a look at the things from a classical angle. By all parameters Ratan Tata is a bourgeois. A bourgeois is the representative of the newest mode of production, capitalism has thrown up .Let us be very clear bourgeois is not an abusive term, as some half baked Marxists with a dismal sense of history wants to suggest. Whatever science and history we are dabbling with are the results of six hundred years of bourgeois development. Abut a decade or two back I suddenly had a feeling that different editions of Communist Manifesto bore the subtle signs of predilections of the individual editors in different editions. Not major occurrence, but very important to take note of. After the words “hitherto existing society” (page 2, paragraph 1) some editions do not care to bear the footnote mentioning Morgan’s reference to primitive communistic society. In some editions in the concluding paragraphs there are lines suggesting that confronted with the insoluble contradictions presented by the existing mode of production some sections of enlightened bourgeoisie may cross over to the cause for a change as demanded by the working class. In some editions we do not find such lines.

There is a possibility that there were some such lines. It does not compromise the contentions of the manifesto. There are myriad sections of capitalists who keenly follow the developments in the workers’ movements. We read in Howard Fast’s Being Red a few American industrialists who were in the same ship while sailing to England asking Howard Fast whether he followed the Wall Street Journal regularly. While Fast confessed that he did not they tell him that they regularly followed the Daily Worker the mouthpiece of the American communist party? Even in this age of bourgeois decadence there are elements of bourgeoisie who could be concerned about the future of mankind. And Mr. Tata could be one of them who are concerned about West Bengal. There is no cause of uproar. The contradiction is that Ratan Tata is not addressing the Bengalis of Bengal renaissance period. He is addressing a people smitten with history’s most touching tragedies. His efforts become pointless in the face of the dialectics of the situation, which he fails to appreciate.

CALAMITOUS MEDIA MANIPULATION

Few days earlier I was listening with horror a news casting in Indian national TV channel. The Newsreader was saying that there had been communal clashes between Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants and indigenous people resulting in half a hundred deaths and hundreds injured. Along with that thousands of cases arson and looting were also being reported. My horror was not confined to deaths, injuries etc. This is commonplace all over the world, particularly in our country. What surprised me was the callous way of naming the religious and ethnic identity of rioting parties. It is a longstanding practice among media community, buttressed by various national and state level laws, to describe the riots as group clashes. It is not that by calling these group clashes essentially make these anything else. Riots remain riots. What is important is media is not stoking any sentimental or emotional situation. It tries to remain objective and responsible. Whatever be the opinion or views of a newspaper or a TV channel its stance remains unaffected.

A well-known columnist writes about the aftermath of October revolution of 1917 as comical socialist experiences. As corollary all the unfinished revolutions in history, or the individuals leading them, like say, Lenin, Thomas Paine -- or why not Napoleon Bonaparte -- are comical. Only that columnist and his tribe, brought up with plenty of milk and whiskey in warm or cool houses, successfully procuring a beautiful university degree and tying up with a billionaire media baron are the models of noncomical successful people. They are never eccentric. They never become mad. Also they are never aristocratic. They have unconcealed hatred for the bloggers.

A few commentators’ way of seeing things is unique. Khudiram Bose was hanged by British government when he was in his teens. His crime was he threw a bomb at a British district administrative head that due to wrong information killed his wife who was at that time traveling in the coach designated to the district magistrate. After mutiny this was the first terrorist act involving a killing and execution. For a century Khudiram is remembered and worshipped by his countrymen, particularly the Bengalis. A commentator went into an overdrive by describing this act as teen-age craze for bravado and also an act of foolishness. Without inviting a debate over effectiveness of terrorism etc. thousands or hundreds of thousands offered their lives for the cause that they believed to be correct. One can question their perception. But it is cynical and heartless to ridicule them. All throughout the history millions are struggling and stumbling for a correct and effective way of removing oppression and exploitation. To get your fat salary you are writing essays to ridicule them. But why ridicule who have chosen otherwise?

With the deepening of economic depression another variety of economic or financial analytical writers have opened up their score. Their task is to affirm in the morning the global nature of the crisis affecting India and in the evening to assure all and sundry about the insularity of India to global crisis. When the question of prosperity through borrowings comes up perspective is global. When in a happening capitalist economy usual cyclical crisis starts, when wars no longer make the economy move, when artificial solvency induced by housing boom collapses in the USA, India cannot escape the consequences. These economists are learned and intelligent people. They are aware of everything. Still they have to write as they are asked to write. They are also a bunch of commodity sellers.

DISHING OUT IRRELEVANCE

A spectre is haunting the media world of India – the spectre of communism. All the media moghuls of electronic, print, audio and visual variety have assembled to exorcise this spectre. These at least belong to the realm of fact. The rest is shadowboxing, but shadowboxing with a purpose.

Why this purpose has been invented when it is almost twenty years Soviet Union has collapsed after more than seventy years of existence, when the Peoples Republic of China has turned all its attention to a massive accumulation of capital and resource building quietly burying all the blistering rhetoric about revolutionism and reformism? China is on the threshold of becoming one of the mightiest powers of the world. Russia is now becoming rapidly a powerful modern state on bourgeois democratic line. Now, what is the hurry of the Indian anti-communists to finish off whatever that is still left of the Indian communists?

There is a hurry. India is also becoming quite an attractive capitalist country in a democratic garb notwithstanding the terrible load of poverty and squalor. And there are numerous denominations of communists thriving here upon fast increasing disparity in possessing wealth. To permit this to grow is to jeopardize India’s capitalist growth. To stamp out this danger state’s punitive power is being increased at an incredible pace. We are almost becoming a police state .On the other hand, media manipulations have become a mighty weapon .In fact, press, TV channels etc. those that really matter are an extension of very big business empires. To circulate the garbage of lies, unreality, porno, messages of innumerable godmen, obscurantism, cynicism etc., skilled hands are required – skilled editors, authors, scriptwriters, filmmakers, camera wizards and all that. They are hired at fabulous prices. Idealism, ethics etc. have become merely beautiful ancient words. Such an ambiance has to be seriously built.

Smart growth of capitalism demands a price, a cost input. Mere trickling down will not serve the purpose, as Joseph Stiglitz (see pic above and BIO below with a link to Wikipedia) has put it. If capitalism grows in a massive form its benefits to the citizens of society should also be massive. Other alternatives only would make this business of capitalism forbiddingly costlier. As Stiglitz has pointed out, the European or American Left rather has a more sustainable programme for this than the rightwing of these continents. Perhaps, more mature bourgeois content of these societies is responsible for this. Indian anticommunist columnists are mere reflections of this immature bourgeois content of Indian capitalism.

Now Stiglitz is a world famous Noble Prize-winning economist, not a card-holding member of any communist party. And Marx remains Marx and becomes more entrenched and relevant with the progress of capitalism. Marxian methodology of economic determinism is constantly gathering strength, for the simple reason that course of history is not affected by appearance or disappearance of Karl Marx. And Karl Marx was fully aware of it.

STIGLITZ BIO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiglitz)

Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (born February 9, 1943) is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal (1979) and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001). He is also the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists") and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In 2000 Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. Since 2001 he has been a member of the Columbia faculty, and has held the rank of University Professor since 2003. He also chairs the University of Manchester's Brooks World Poverty Institute and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Stiglitz is the most cited economist in the world, as of June 2008

A Glimpse of America

America, what TV shows and trash literature would have us believe, is nothing like that in reality. Yes, there are crowded cities with notorious slums like Harlem, occasional muggings, crimes, a few stooping scroungers around, small crowds in church sponsored soup kitchens in their battered pickups. There is all this. There are prejudice and malice, although waning, of redneck variety.

Plainly, to a visitor on a brief sojourn America appears to be vast and beautiful. We, in India live and die in ever-increasing stifling crowd. Our psychology is shaped and moulded accordingly. Their fear and our fear are different. They are chasing opportunities. This chase is becoming ever faster and consequently anxiety load is mounting. Our fear is primeval and elemental. Either one eats or starves and starves to death. People there generally live under a very large social security umbrella. That someone will starve to death is quite absurd. To us this is quite commonplace. Our fear is nobody will hear us and we will perish. The very first feeling after alighting at Kennedy airport is an incredible sense of space, solidity, quiet efficiency and speed. We had our trepidations about new and stricter security regime. These are enforced and enforced rigorously but courteously also. After 9/11 we cannot expect anything milder.

This feeling of space is a remarkable thing. A country three and half times larger than India with only one fourth of India’s population make it so attractive. A brief visit of six weeks is hardly of any consequence to grasp these matters of size and quantity. America’s riches and plenty vis-à-vis our poverty and squalor evoke envy and anger in us. An average American is quite good human being like his counterpart in any other part of the world. This reminds one of several things. The famous book “Ugly American” by William Liiderer and Eugene Burdich. Reminds one of Lenin also, who in the pamphlet known as Colonial Thesis wrote in one place that hatred of people of dependant countries towards the colonising powers was so great that they do not distinguish. Even the elements of the working class are not spared. Common Americans are bearing the brunt. Imperialism is capitalism when it emerges as finance capital of monstrous proportion. There is no national benchmark. If there had been an Iraqi imperialism its characteristics would have been the same. Chinese communists are intent upon building a vast capital base in order to make China an advanced country. Let us watch where are the levers of self-limitation to curb the aggressiveness natural to full-grown finance capital.

Meanwhile, the gigantic unleashing of the productive forces there stuns travellers like us from an extremely poor country. Commodities of any kind, products of any kind there is no dearth of them. While fiddling with a laptop I composed a letter to one of my very near ones, a subcontinental Marxist and expressed myself. The reaction was instant and bitter. What was not there? Atrocities, cruelties, brutalities of American imperialism. Everything. Only thing avoided glossed over is unbelievable growth of productive forces in America. Not only in America. Everywhere, wherever American ascendancy has been established. Admission of obvious does not necessarily make it historically justified. It should also be admitted that in several experiments of achieving socialism, including one that was attempted in Russia, went nowhere near American productivity. Of course this is only one aspect and this can never render the ideas and concept of scientific socialism something to be trifled with. Top level U.S universities pour out every year an impressive number of individuals with awe inspiring intellectual qualities who are rapidly becoming disillusioned with American condition, both economic and political. That American war in Iraq is sought to be buttressed by undiluted lies is there for everyone to see. Larger and larger number of American people are increasingly becoming aware of this. And it in U.S.A and Great Britain largest of demonstrations are being held against the Iraqi war. At least war in Iraq has very little to do with war against terrorism.

Recently concluded elections in the U.S.A were just not a matter of who secured the highest number of popular votes. Considering the whole backdrop this election results have alarmed the whole bi-partisan leadership, whether he is a Bush or a Kerry. As cheaply painted among anti American crowd all over the world Americans are not buffoons. They are quite intelligent people. Bush and Kerry are also intelligent in their own way. These election results have made them realize how dangerous was the mood of the American people, whether one was a republican or a democrat. That was why this cry for bonhomie by Bush and Kerry as soon as the elections were over. The fear is so great that Bush has commented that great American universities have acquired a pronounced left leaning. In a reputed university from an occasional chat or a casual remark thrown out by students and teachers, I had an impression that Bush had been substantially nearer to truth. This is not to endorse the naïve idea that American masses will run to barricades musket in hand to bring down American capitalism. American public life is far too rich to accommodate such comical indulgences. But among them a distinct feeling is emerging that American way of fashioning the world is no longer tenable. There is perceptible yearning for a change. How this will evolve is a thing to be watched and studied.

Another thing is coming into American life. In fact, Maurice Dobb pointed out long ago in England. Opulence has become so overwhelming that physical capitalism, so to say, or, entrepreneurial capitalism has become less attractive. Large number of power weilding coupon clippers are emerging who among themselves have all of the finance capital that would have decisive impact over the events. Except for political convenience they are least bothered by national prejudices. Stock market is their paradise and superprofiteering is their pinnacle of success. Faming sector in the U.S.A, Canada or Australia is a vast corporate affair where small-time American farmers have little to do. As a matter of fact this section of mostly American whites are fast disintegrating and disappearing.

Fabulously large cornfields, vineyards stretching up to horizon the both sides of expressway 90 spreading up to Canadian border show up a few important things. Alongside fully mechanized operation there are infrequently situated sagging sad looking white painted wooden farm houses, silos, corn bins, representing mid last century farm production. This kind of production has been devoured by big capital connected to huge food product and wine and spirit producing corporates. In this perspective small has no role. This is an economic impossibility. American farmers of classical stories of Mark Twain days have virtually disappeared. A part of them, after retraining, have become farm labourers. Parts of them are floating across the country to become carpenters, masons. road gang labour etc. working under the contractors. Farm production, on the other hand, is achieving greater and greater heights. U.S.A, Canada and Australia together can feed the whole world many times over if they really want it. And, moreover, farm production in the U.S.A is handsomely subsidized.

Consideration of comparative cost ratio and concentration of capital expenditure, info technology, space technology, molecular biology, genetics, military hardware, capital goods and the wealth accumulated through these have made the U.S.A the most desirable destination of all kinds of consumer goods, ranging from Japanese cars. And Chinese electronic goods and toys, Indian Vietnamese, Bangladeshi, Pakistani cotton garments, sweat shirts, footwear, hats, caps fruits vegetable, fish from Caribbean, China, The catalogue will require pages. And to cap it all outsourcing from poorer countries. American finance capital is in no way bothered about these. If popular sentiment could be soothed a little, if the administration can handle the unemployment situation a little skilfully it will go all out for outsourcing in every department. Only high-grade technology will be extremely carefully guarded. The American big bourgeois is a new personality. A new phenomenon. Its sentimental equations are different. Rhetorically making faces to America and rhetorically flattering lands of Tao, Confucius, Mahabharata and Ramayana will hardly help the mankind. Ordinary people like us discover a new realism when we find British girls and boys unhesitatingly carrying out the orders from a lady with heavy gold earrings and distinct Harianvy English in cleaning the aircraft at Heathrow. There is your globalisation and new realization.

Coming soon, my thoughts!