Stray Thoughts

PTI memories

2020-08-16T21:49:00.003+01:00

I was watching a movie last night. The plot and glare of the screen delayed the arrival of sleep. The slumber, fractured by the early break of dawn ended up with a headache. The discomfort disappeared as I came across a snap shared by my friend and comrade Prem Udayabhanu . It transported me back quarter of a century.

It was originally posted on the social media by another good friend Shrikanth Varadhachari many moons ago. We used to share banters at PTI's Scan Desk, a precursor of sorts to today's Tweets.

We all were given copies of the snap at the end of our training at PTI Delhi in December 1995. There was no social distancing obligation to fulfil then. Instead, camaraderie and cosying up were the norms of those days.

We were four Bongs from Bengal, then branded in Delhi as the "lousie Commies". An energetic Supratik Sengupta, a cucumber-cool Nirmalya Nag and a charismatic Amitava Roy are still closest to my heart as are all the men and women on their feet in the snap. Life would have been poorer and with less charm without being their friend.

The folks who left for PTI Mumbai after three months were lodged at PTI's guest house at Delhi's posh Jangpura. We four were in Delhi for nearly 18 months, breathing the political storm that came our way first with the Hawala Scandal unveiled by PV Narasimha Rao, then the instability that followed his defeat and unceremonious exit from power.

Atal Behari Vajpayee-led 13-day government relinquished power with one of the best prime ministerial speeches in the history of India's parliamentary democracy. Sonia Gandhi made her arrival in the world of "real-politic". HD Devegowda got the prime ministerial position on a platter and lost it. It was just before the departure of IK Gujral that we were transported to PTI Kolkata.

Since then I have met only a few of my comrades, our emotional engagement is relentless though, often in the relm of our many conversations in silence. The early period of my London-life was marked by the couple of weeks Gopakumar Warrier and Easwaran spent in London as part of their Bridge News training.

The member of the group with the maximum number of proverbial Commi-chromosomes, Vinu and the darling of many hearts Jacinta Dsouza have since settled down as life partners. Our hour-long tryst at the Strand Continental Hotel in the upmarket vicinity of Central London a few years back is still etched in memory. While Vinu remained mostly quiet, Jacinta was the articulate self as we were reminiscing the good old days.

Memory they say is a state of mind, and probably with a hypnotic effect. Today's state of mind is another testimony of the fact that PTI memories haven't lost an iota of their power to hypnotise.

14 May, 2020

Musings on India's tryst with demonetisation & an endeavour to become cashless

2016-12-24T19:39:00.001+00:00

The Indian middle class and the ruling elites are rejoicing the country's elevation as the world's sixth largest economy surpassing Britain. The celebration is a function of India's increased importance in the committee of nations, broadly made possible by a trajectory of higher economic growth and technological globalisation and is manifested by unbound patriotism, not so much based on pluralistic values and all round development but mostly on cultural and philosophical supremacy. A similar self belief on intellectual and ideological supremacy once influenced the leftists to think of themselves as the saviour of the world and the custodian of the progressive mindset.

The celebration, however, overlooks the fact that India is still home to one-third of the world's poor and around one-fourth of Indians are yet to be illuminated by the enlightenment of conventional education. These make it irrelevant for the Indian poor as to whether their national economy is the sixth largest in the world or even higher in the pecking order.

It would possibly have, had the "Trickle Down Hypothesis" - the basic proposition of which was that take care of the rich and the poor would look after themselves based on the residual income trickling down from the enhanced affluence of the rich - worked in today's complex world. The proponents of the Trickle Down Hypothesis may have envisaged a much simpler proposition that the rich gets richer and also pulls some poor out of poverty, but in today's complex world the rich gets richer only at the cost of the poor and more often than not under state patronage and political tautulege.

For the poor every day is a struggle often made worse by the fancied expediency of the state which is supposed to look after their interests. The decision of the Indian government to demonetise higher currencies was first dished out under the garb of a patriotic zeal to create a corruption-free country. Soon it was taken over by the prime minister's desire to evolve a cashless economy with the simplistic assumption that a cashless economy is a precursor and a precondition of a corruption free or a controlled corruption economy.

I am in favour of a cashless economy as it secures me from the risk of misplacing paper currency and also saves me from accessing cash. But the prerequisites of the introduction of a cashless economy revolves around the trust on plastic as an alternative to paper money, reliance on banks and their reliability as an important instrument of economic activities, a certain level of literacy and numeracy, adequate technology to run a cashless economy and the ability of the people to adapt to it and the general awareness about the benefits of a cashless economy to name a few.

Unfortunately, India with its size, diversity and demographic profile is yet to be ready to take such a plunge. Moreover to assume that being cashless is a way of becoming corruption free or at least controlled corruption is too simplistic an assumption to make. Had it been so, the West would have been able to weed out much of its corruption as it is widely cashless.

Rather than being dependent on the use of currency for transactional purposes, corruption is more a function of inadequate policies, poor implementation, political will and lack of collective awareness and wisdom about the pitfalls of corruption. The agents of corruption re-calibrate their mechanisms every time there is a new legislation to stamp it out and re-adjusts the risks involved. Resorting to corruption is a parallel trade and the agents modify themselves to adapt to every possible changes to enhance their efficiency.

Rather than using demonetisation to weed out corruption in the garb of corruption and to satisfy queer personal ego, the government should rather focus on reforming the institutions like poll funding which in itself is the fountainhead of political favour in the form of quid pro quo, expanding the tax base by incorporating agricultural income under the purview of income tax, encouraging the people to pay their due tax by streamlining the tax structure and creating awareness about the benefits of progressive taxation.

The ever increasing Indian middle class and the upward mobile are however in favour of a cashless set up without adequate infrastructure as they are in favour of a streamlined lifestyle. This emanates from a false sense of importance caused by a steady rise in income and oppulance following economic liberalisation.

The irony is that the ever increasing middle class is yet to take over the impoverished and the deprived sections of society. Snowed down by abundance and increased level of comfort, the middle class is rendered myopic about the plight of the majority.

All comments are personal.

EU referendum overrides political homogeneity

2016-06-22T19:53:00.003+01:00

Homogeneous is a curious word for Europe at this point of time in history. Ethnically the most homogeneous continent in the world, according to a landmark study by the Harvard Institute of Economic Research in 2002, is faced with a situation which may change the tone and tenor of future politics in Europe. The economic cooperation – then known as the Common Market following the Treaty of Rome – initiated about six decades ago as a harbinger of peace, reconstruction and prosperity in the years following the Great Wars is now the subject of a heated war of words both within Britain and across Europe.

Jeremy Corbyn voted to opt out of Europe in 1975

The referendum on whether Britain should or should not be part of the European Union (EU) has divided the island nation like never before in the immediate past, and has exhibited signs of a tumult in the conceptualisation of political homogeneity.

The hard-line left within the Labour Party, like Michael Foot and Tony Benn, may have staunchly opposed Britain’s integration with what was then called the European Community during the earlier referendum in 1975. But their present day political descendants like the Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell are campaigning vigorously so that Britain remains within the EU. The Foots and the Bens may have apprehended that the economic integration was a ‘capitalist ploy’ to keep the real wage low, but the incumbent Labour group supporting the ‘Remain Campaign, were brandishing their opponents as a “bunch of snooty Eurosceptics” who were out to compromise on job losses leading to further hardship for the working class Britons.

Interestingly, during the 1975 referendum, as a local councillor in the London Borough of Haringey, Corbyn voted 'No' to Britain's membership of the European Community. Britain, however, voted 67 to 33 to stay in. In fact, Corbyn was first elected to the House of Commons in 1983, the year Labour leader Michael Foot was defeated with a radically left-wing manifesto that included a pledge to withdraw Britain from the European Economic Community, which later became to be called the EU. Though the Labour's leadership then embraced the EU, Corbyn in 1993 voted against ratifying the Maastricht Treaty that laid the groundwork for the modern European Union.

When it comes to the Conservatives, on any day and on any issue Prime Minister David Cameron is considered to be much more centre of right than his controversial predecessor Margaret Thatcher. Those who are aware of the developments surrounding the ‘UK Rebate’ - a financial mechanism which reduces the UK's contribution to the EU budget and is in effect since 1985 - as extracted from the union by Thatcher in the 1980s, know that the ‘Iron Lady’ of British politics was more keen on negotiations to leverage benefits for Britain than an outright exit. After all, Thatcher’s political philosophy revolved around balancing the books and taking stock of her political profit and loss when it came to clinching deals and inking agreements.

Cameron may be a different brand of Tory politician as compared to Thatcher, propagating ‘compassionate Capitalism’ as against the ruthlessness of the Iron Lady, and yet he chose a similar path of negotiation, and thereby clinch a deal favourable to Britain, rather than proposing an exit from the union.

Politics they say make strange bedfellows. It’s also true that politics makes the best of friends into worse adversaries. Nothing can be nearer to truth of this than what’s being witnessed in contemporary British politics. The party is literally in the midst of a civil war with the ‘Remain Camp’ involved in a slanging match with the ‘Leave Camp’, similar to what was witnessed by the Labour Party when its Prime Minister Harold Wilson held a referendum in 1975 on whether the UK should be or not in what was then termed as the European Community. Apart from Prime Minister Wilson the likes of Roy Jenkins and David Owen favoured Britain remaining within Europe, but it was strongly opposed by the hard-line left leaders Michael Foot and Tony Benn.

Debate on Europe divides Etonian pals

The wedge of divide is equally pronounced within the Conservative Party this time round. Some of Prime Minister Cameron’s trusted lieutenants in government and in the party are up in arms when it concerns Britain’s position in Europe. Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Michael Gove is one of the leading figures in the ‘Leave Campaign’, but only recently as the Education Secretary he was in-charge of putting in place the prime minister’s education agenda, the biggest of all being the exam and curriculum reforms to elevate Britain’s position among the developed countries on the various aspects of school education.

Another heavyweight in the ‘Leave Campaign’, Preeti Patel was handpicked by Cameron to don the mantle as the Minister of State for Employment and also provided her with the special privilege to seat around the cabinet table. The elevation of the minister born to a Ugandan-Indian migrant family assumes significance for a plethora of issues plaguing the British economy, including the controversy surrounding the zero-hour contracts which in effect is one of reasons behind showing lower unemployment figures despite a rise in part-time jobs and underemployment; the high youth unemployment figures and in the backdrop of the call for British jobs for the British people being one of the main planks of the hard-line Eurosceptics. Patel is also seen as a go between Cameron and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi. These, however, didn’t stop Patel from shifting to the opposite camp of the British prime minister.

A fellow Etonian, Cameron and former London Mayor Boris Johnson are on the same page on a number of issues ranging from politics to governance. Despite having their fair share of differences, the two are thought to have a good rapport and they also share a few jokes. Johnson is now accusing the prime minister of scare-mongering on a possible ‘Brexit’, the slick name provided to Britain’s exit from the EU, and on his part Cameron is alleging ‘rabble rousing’ by the ‘Leave Campaign’ of which the former London Mayor is a leading light.

When the Common Market – a predecessor of the modern EU – emerged in 1957, Britain then the largest economy in Western Europe was least interested to join force. Following a couple of unsuccessful attempts, Britain finally made it in 1973. But Britain’s relationship with the EU or its earlier forms were never beyond scepticism and doubt. The wedge has been further widened by the bitter campaign ahead of this referendum. Notwithstanding Europe’s homogeneity, the relationship between the EU and the UK will not be free from trust deficit and tribulations, even if the British people vote for Britain to remain within the EU.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Separated at birth!

2016-05-15T20:23:00.004+01:00

The World Economic Forum has set up a new task force in January this year with the Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and his counterpart at the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan, to study how rapid changes in technology affect financial stability and growth. However, there are more similarities between the two economist-governors than sharing a global task force.

Raghuram Rajan predicted the
2008 financial crisis

In 2005, during the heydays of easy money and sub-prime mortage, Rajan warned about the growing risks in the financial system and proposed policies that would reduce such risks. Rajan's comments evinced criticism from no less than the former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers who termed the warnings “misguided” and Rajan a "luddite". However, following the 2008 economic crisis, Rajan's views came to be seen as prescient.

Carney's actions as the Governor of the Bank of Canada, prior to donning the mantle at the Bank of England, are said to have played a major role in helping Canada avoid the worst impacts of the financial crisis that began in 2007. The most important being the decision to cut interest rates in March 2008, only a month after his appointment.

Now as the head of the Bank of England, Carney is warning against a possible British exit from the European Union. Carney's argument is straight and simple - overlooking the risks do not necessarily reduce them - a somewhat similar vein to what Rajan articulated in 2005.

Mark Carney is blamed for
scare mongering

Carney's comments attracted severe criticism from British politicians of the 'Leave Campaign' who are alleging politicisation of institutions and that the governor is toeing the line of Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne in the fractured Tory government.

Rajan has also drawn flak from the likes of the maverick Indian politician Subramanium Swamy, who is baying for his blood in a bid to hit the incumbent Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his (Swamy) mission to grab the chair for running India's finances. A friend posted that Rajan was seen at the bustling shopping district of Oxford Street on Saturday and his wife was at the Boots, possibly getting some anti-septic cream to soothe the wounds inflicted by the bristling broadside of a desperate Dr Swamy.

Carney met his wife, Diana Fox a British economist specialising in developing nations, while at the University of Oxford, and Rajan is married to Radhika Puri Rajan, whom he met while they were both students at IIM Ahmedabad. Radhika teaches at the University of Chicago Law School.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Musing on sadness

2016-04-24T17:35:00.002+01:00

The election campaign in West Bengal has turned out to be a slanging match. Look to your left or even to your right, it is the same mud-slinging which is having its day. The content of the campaign has been taken over by allegations and counter-allegations, that too in words matching those erupting from the gutter. Even the commentators and the civil society are so polarised that the civility in the society has been replaced by vulgar expression of might. The irony is that this is the same Bengal which was once considered to be citadel of civility and cultural conformation.

Over the past few weeks, I spent some time to be a mute observer of what’s going around only to make an effort to get to the truth behind the cumulative decadence in values that is gulping Bengal. Though not sure if I have managed to do so, but prima facie it seems that the sharp accusations are a function of the expansion of the sample space of the stakeholders.

The patron-client relationship which is the mainstay of any political formation is now utilised to its optimum level and even beyond for the sake of distribution and redistribution of favours. In the process what they are missing out is that there is enough redistribution of favour but not adequate generation of resources. Majority of those who are pawns in the process of socio-political polarisation and degeneration are actually the stakeholders. Since their level of engagement with the stakes and dependence over them have increased with every passing day, these pawns are shouting their lungs out and often resorting to other vitriolic and vulgar means to maintain their positions of prominence and privilege.

Often the media is the favourite punching bag of every evil that engulfs the society. However unfortunate and unfair it may sound, but in this case, the media has also emerged as a powerful stakeholder with serious contention in rendering the politics of the land murky. The out of proportion media explosion has created a workforce who are inept with their knowledge, expertise, experience and insight to deal with the sharp divisions that are manifesting a fractured polity. Conventionally being the mirror of the society, the media with its inadequacies is actually projecting a rapturously vulgar imagery of an already broken state.

Historically, the civil society was considered to be an intermediary between the state and the individual. That’s how the civil society oiled the wheels of capitalism for generations. The trade unions, the pressure groups, the intelligentsia, the media – they all are well-orchestrated tools of capitalism to contain systemic discontent. When the allegiance of the civil society shifts from the objective of sustenance of the social system and is fractured between warring factions it is the society which turns out to be the ultimate looser.

So whatever be the outcome on the 19th of May, it is Bengal and the Bengalis who are the real losers. The decadence and the depletion in the values, lexicon, civility, reverence and imagery are gradually turning out to be irreversible. It seems that in the folly of political one-upmanship not many are bothered about the moralistic degradation.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Keynesianism in action

2016-02-26T19:16:00.000+00:00

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of John Maynard Keynes's seminal work "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money". It was first published in February 1936. Keynes had expected his magnum opus to redefine economics and so it did, especially in the post-war years. Many see the demise of Keynesianism in the advent of Neoliberalism and its graduation to becoming the dominant discourse in contemporary economic thinking. Keynesianism, however, is still in action amidst the roadworks and the construction projects.

Roadworks in Labour-controlled Hounslow Council
(Pics courtesy: alamy.com)

Hounslow Council, the place where I have been living nearly 17 years now is full of roadworks. Everytime I get past the barricades that separate the repairing pavements and parts of the road from the main way, I am reminded of John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential personalities of our time. The broken tarmac, the guarded pavements, the helmets and fluorescent jackets of the workers of Hounslow Highway are living examples of Keynesianism in action.

Spend more to create demand was the ethos of his demand-determined model. By then J B Say's tenet that "supply creates its own demand" had been diluted as an economic principle. Keynes also underlined role of the government in generating and enhancing demand, situating the state much beyond its conventional realm of managing the finances, law and order and foreign policy. All for generating the much needed demand to boost a post-depression economic order. Our teacher Kunja Behari Kundu, or KBK as he was generally known, likened "demand" with a bride as the groom followed her during the time of their marriage.

The threat of Communism was hanging over the Capitalist world and the Great Depression of the 1930s was good enough reason to impress upon the ordinary Europeans and also the world that Communism was a force to reckon with. If it couldn't alter the political landscape of Western Europe then a large part of the credit was due to Keynes. He was almost the saviour of Capitalism against Communist onslaught, and it was a coincidence of sorts that Keynes was married to Lydia Lopokova, a ballerina of Russian decent.

Keynes with wife Lydia Lopokova (Pics courtesy: Getty Images)

"Physics was too easy for me", Keynes once told his friend and physicist Max Planck, but had "an affection for Economics", then considered to be a science of the naysayers. He along with Virginia Woolf, E M Forster and Lytton Strachey were part of the Bloombury Group, who lived, worked and studied together at Bloomsbury near the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the University College, London (UCL).

Was Keynes concerned or even bothered about his legacy? Probably not. His concern was more for the short-run. "In the long-run we are all dead", Keynes once famously said. And yet he lives and relives in the roadworks, the under-construction school buildings and new railway tracks even 70 years after his physical demise.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Modimania abroad - India's growing might & democratisation of diaspora politics

2015-11-11T16:04:00.002+00:00

The Bollywood-style grand rallies that Narendra Modi addressed in parts of the world amidst rousing welcome have caught the imagination of the intellectuals both in India and abroad. The Indian Prime Minister is going to address another such rally this Friday afternoon in the grandiose of the Wembley Stadium. For some it is like thumping his 56-inch chest amidst all the talk of unfettered arrogance, and for others it is having the rich and the powerful non-resident Indians on board for a quid pro quo.

The grand community reception at Wembley has become the talk of the town especially after the drubbing Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received at the hustings in Bihar, one of India's least developed states, ripped apart by caste relations and bloody politics. When the allegations of growing intolerance in India have crossed its shore and Modi is being blamed for his stoic silence, the caricature surrounding the Indian Prime Minister is that he speaks more when abroad than in India. His extensive and grand foreign trips even earned Modi the laurel of being branded India's non-resident prime minister.

For me, however, these grand and festive congregations are expressions of India's growing might in the fields of global politics and economics, which remained suppressed and subdued for various historical and geopolitical reasons. India might still be the home of one-third of the world’s poor and yet Indians at home and abroad want to see her more as an emerging economy. The euphoria surrounding unending opportunities often overshadow the thoughts that India is also ripped apart by stark inequality.

Globalisation of Bollywood

Modi is not the first Indian politician to use non-resident Indians to his political advantage. Katherine Frank’s book on Indira Gandhi would show how the former Indian prime minister used the Indian community in the United Kingdom to campaign against the Janata Party government when she was thrown out of power. The community of Kashmiri Pandits in London always stood rock solid with the Congress party and the Nehru-Gandhi family in particular. This support was not without adequate compensation in the form of political and economic patronage. Those in the know of things know how the Kashmiri head of an Indian news organisation got support from successive Congress dispensations in running a highly successful business in London’s upmarket Regent Street.

Grant Thornton India Tracker 2015

The Bollywood-style festivity also stems from increased globalisation of India’s highly successful film industry. Before I came to the UK in 1999, I never knew that Bollywood was such a recognised form of entertainment industry here which strived more on the glitz and glamour of the colourful Indian society rather than its trials and tribulations with poverty, inequality and discrimination.

So what we are seeing today is not a completely new phenomenon in itself and rather a culmination of a trend which has been work in progress for decades. In fact, over the past decade or so managing the Indian community in the UK and roping them in with the representatives of the Indian government here have become much more democratic than what it was for decades since independence.

The Independence Day celebrations, which once was within the confines of the High Commission building, Nehru Centre or the official residence of the High Commissioner near Kensington Palace Gardens with the same set of invitees - with close links with the Indian establishment both here in the UK and back home - every year has now been opened to the Indian population at large since the time of High Commissioner Shiv Shankar Mukherjee. Over the past few years anybody can attend the Independence Day celebrations at the Indian Gymkhana in Osterley rather than being at the good books of the “Indian Baboos” running their self-styled empire inside the India House at Aldwych.

Evenly balanced relation

The "Gujarati asmita" or the pride of the Gujarati people backing Modi abroad is nothing different from the Kashmiris backing the Nehru-Gandhi family, especially Mrs Gandhi. The symbiotic relationship between the politicians in power and the benefactors abroad is still the same. The only change that has happened over the years is democratisation of the process of engaging with the non-resident Indians in the United Kingdom. One doesn't need to be in the good books of the people at the helm to avail some of the basic facilities. The non-resident Indians are now treated with greater respect by the Indian establishment than it was during the Congress regime. Recall how Mrs Gandhi turned her back to the people of Indian origin who were thrown out of Uganda as part of Idi Amin's Africanisation Project.

The relationship between non-resident Indians and the Government of India has become evenly balanced since the days of economic liberalisation in 1991. The remittances from all around the globe and especially from the Middle East keep India's coffers full with dollars and pound sterling so as to allow the government of the day to engage in economic risk-taking and not count the pennies and the cents needed to keep the oil-pool account up and running. The 30 million Indians living abroad contribute an estimated $70 billion to the national economy each year in the form of remittances.

The suspicious attitude of the Indian establishment towards the non-residents have eased as the government now can see the benefits, including financial, economic, political and diplomatic, of a vibrant expatriate Indian community. The policy-makers in India's archaic North and South Blocks have now realised that China's strength stems not only from its financial and military muscles but also from a vibrant and effective expatriate community.

If India wishes to match China, it can hardly overlook its diaspora.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com All comments are personal.

Osborne set to put brakes on BBC gravy train

2015-07-06T15:47:00.004+01:00

In Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs media comes
either under 'esteem' or 'self-actualization'.

After John Whittingdale its now the turn of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In his interview for the Andrew Marr Show, George Osborne has underlined the obligation of the BBC in contributing to balance the books of Britain’s finances. It is an altogether different debate as to whether austerity as proposed by the Conservative government is the right thing to do in the present circumstance, but as a publicly funded organisation, the BBC certainly has its responsibilities in fulfilling certain socio-economic obligations and merely wishing it away in the name of creative licence or journalistic rights or media freedom is not commensurate to the needs of a 21st century organisation, especially at a time when the deprived and the vulnerable are feeling the pinch of the £12 billion welfare cuts as proposed by the government of David Cameron. However important media freedom might be, and no one is denying its significance for a free society, meeting the basic survival needs of the people, especially the impoverished and the vulnerable, comes much higher in the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as compared to the importance of consuming news.

Along with his colleague Whittingdale, the Secretary of State Media Culture and Sports, Osborne also need to have a close look at how the corporation, considered to be one of the prized British institutions, is managed. BBC Director General Tony Hall has already promised a leaner and thinner corporation which fits into the mold of a modern, inclusive and smart organisation. He has also announced a further thousand job cuts comprising mostly of managers, yet a closer scrutiny is necessary to make sure that public money is not wasted especially at a time of austerity.

'Imperial ambition'

The other observation made by the chancellor about the BBC is equally important. Osborne has expressed his concerns about the “imperial” ambitions of the BBC. His concerns may have stemmed more from Osborne’s political ideology promoting free market where other media organisations within the UK are on a level playing field so as to encourage healthy competition, but a different facet of the problem is as important as mending its finances.

George Osborne wants the BBC to play its role in balancing
the books and rein in over its "imperial" ambitions

The chancellor has highlighted his apprehension about the BBC doing everything from publishing "features and cooking recipes" and “effectively” nearly serving the purpose of the “national newspaper as well as the national broadcaster." But there is a wider aspect to it which goes beyond the national domain of the United Kingdom.
As the successor of the “Empire Service”, the BBC World Service may have lived its age of “overseas broadcasting” since the early 1930s and decided to continue with it in 1946 “after the immediate exigencies of the war had melted away and in harsh austerity conditions”, and many may enjoy the grandiose of referring it to be a “jewel in the BBC’s crown” but one also has to recognise the changed global order where Britain no longer occupies the position of importance it once did.

The purpose of the media in the modern day society may be of an antidote to power and the powerful, ironically its voice and that of the wider civil society is listened to only if they are associated with those who matter and with clout. Whatever may have been its imperial past, not much sheen is left for Great Britain in the current matrix of diplomacy and accordingly the British media doesn't enjoy that kind of penetration and reach as is the case with those in the United States of America, or the emerging economies like in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Despite all the myth surrounding the glory of the BBC, it has to be accepted that Britain is neither a trend-setter in today's world nor does it have the power and position to adjudicate on maters global as was once the case.

In such a backdrop, it makes little sense to flaunt the BBC World Service as an effective soft power tool. Soft Power as proposed by Joseph Nye becomes effective only when it is supplemented by Hard Power, the resultant being the Smart Power, which lies somewhere in between Hard Power and Soft Power. For the proponents of the argument surrounding World Service as a soft power tool may be self-aggrandisement, but there are doubts as to whether it is value for money for the British economy and fetches any commensurate benefit to the British people.

Cost-benefit analysis

Funding the World Service cost the BBC £245 million in 2014-15, and it is now time to do a cost-benefit analysis in terms of the advantages accrued to Britain - its economy and the people - and whether it is worth spending that kind of money at a time when a large section of the British population, including the disadvantaged and the vulnerable, are feeling the pains of austerity and cuts in public services.

Its now time to do a cost-benefit analysis of the benefits
accrued to Britain from the BBC programmes
in India and Bangladesh

While provisions like the Ebola information service for West Africa on WhatsApp may still be of some ethical value, although rightly questionable at a time of austerity, given Britain's commitment to human rights, development, but one finds it hard to reason as to what British interest will be served by the launch of the BBC Bangla TV programme - BBC Probaho, on Bangladesh’s cable/satellite station, Channel-I, apart from the fact that the editor of the BBC Bangla Service will use this pretext to make bi-monthly trips to Dhaka at the cost of the British taxpayer.
According to the information available through the Freedom of Information Act 2000, "the incumbent editor of the Bangla Service spent 49 working days on duty away from London during the period 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2010. The total cost of the three trips paid by the BBC World Service was £6,384.44". The BBC, however, didn't provide any information regarding the costs incurred by the BBC World Service Trust, now the BBC Media Action, as it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The media market in Bangladesh is already saturated with a large number of television channels and it will be hard to make any impact for any new entrant. Moreover as it happened with the BBC Hindi TV in India in the 1990s (and the beneficiary it that case was the ANI), Channel I will flourish at the cost of the British taxpayers. These sort of projects generally serve as a platform of quid pro quo, often nourishing symbiotic relationship between those in the upper echelons of in this case the Bangladeshi society. The privileged make hay as the impoverished and the vulnerable in Britain suffer, and it is morally imperative on the government of the day to rectify such delinquencies.

Also available:
Why should I pay for the BBC.
Scrap BBC tax at a time of austerity

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.

He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Future British workforce facing systemic failure

2015-07-02T11:42:00.004+01:00

Labour market expert and author of a review of vocational education for former Education Secretary Michael Gove, Alison Wolf has argued that cuts in the sectoral budget will be detrimental to the supply of skilled workforce for the British economy.

Historically, the supply of skilled workforce in Britain may have been ensured by apprenticeship programmes and institutes of vocational learning, but these organisations are failing the current generation and funding cuts is not the only reason behind their systemic failure.

This observation is based on a real life experience of an Employability Adviser in a Further Education (FE) college over the past two years. The views may be constrained by being biased on the experience of an individual in only one such institution, but the general feeling among a large section of the population who are either employed or associated with the FE sector is that a majority, if not all, of such organisations of further education across London, if not all over the country, are run in a similar fashion.

The popular wisdom about the FE colleges in the United Kingdom is that these organisations are meant to make those who are not suitable for the normal route of GCSE and AS & A-levels for whatever reasons, employable so that there is a steady flow of skilled workforce in the British economy and only those who are capable of traversing the higher education route are allowed to do so. The idea was to engage the less qualified ones into gainful employment so that over time they can gain some practical skills so as to make up for the lack of their academic qualifications.

However, it is now evident that the focus is not on making the learners employable by way of imparting vocational education and teaching them functional skills but to make them 'pass' their course(s), by handing over coursework often without independent assessment, so as to ensure the funding of the FE college. The underlying presumption is that a 'pass' ensures £5000 per student per annum and there is no incentive for 'merit' and 'distinction' either to the student or the staff. I do not want to delve into any further details as to how a 'pass' is ensured, often without any learning at all, but there is enough evidence that a section of the students who are unable to write a proper sentence or do some basic Maths even when they are in Level 3, which is equivalent to AS/A-Levels.

Talking about functional skills, there is generally not much faith either in the curriculum or in the teaching methods in English and Mathematics. Having studied in India, I find the content too simple so as to expose the students to the complexities of modern life. Although on paper the focus is on student-centered learning, in practice the onus is on the teachers to ensure that the learners get a 'pass', even if it is through innumerable 're-sits', and the teachers literally hunt the students, coax and cajole them to appear for the tests. This is because of the fact that the performance of a teacher is linked to the paper results of his/her students. Often we are told that the students should be encouraged to take ownership of their acts and be responsible for their actions, however, responsibility or to use its nearest synonym obligation are not part of the lexicon of a majority of the students. Many of them attend these courses not because of any willingness to learn or gain skills but to make sure that the benefits of their parents or carers are not curtailed.

The FE Colleges may be meant to make the students who can't traverse the academic route, of the GCSE, AS and the A-levels, for whatever reasons and make them employable, however, in reality employability has the least priority. The 16-19 year old Levels 1 & 2 students are supposed to attend an hourly session on Employability for 36 weeks, but since it has no qualifications attached, no assignments or examinations, and the Employability Advisers are not accorded the status of lecturers, the students start loosing their focus after six-10 weeks when they start getting assignments on their vocational courses. These lead to behavioral, punctuality and attendance issues ultimately vitiating the relationship between the Employability Advisers and the learners.

Often the classroom sessions deter students with genuine interest and employability needs from seeking help as their voices are eclipsed by those resorting to problems as they consider the hour-long employability session nothing but useless captivity. However, the college enforces classroom seasons over workshop-style ones as, and this is the general perception, it ensures £900 per students per annum as compared to £100 for workshops. In the process, the college ensures its earning at the cost of the Employment Advisers facing the flak at the front-line and the majority of the learners failing to develop any of the peoples' skill.

Making the students employable may be one of the main objectives of the FE colleges, but employability advisers face enormous hurdles while organising work experience for the students and the resistance / reluctance / indifference are alike from the vocational lecturers, curriculum managers, careers and apprenticeship teams, the college management and the students. There is tremendous apathy on the part of the curriculum managerial staff to engage with the local employers and trade bodies so as to ensure work experience for the students and facilitate employment for them in the long run.

The FE sector in the UK calls for serious introspection and possible overhauling as it is increasingly digressing from one of its main objectives and in the process failing a large section of the future workforce.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Scrap BBC Tax at a time of austerity

2015-06-10T19:45:00.004+01:00

James Whittingdale is expected to take a close and
hard look at the BBC Charter and the Licence Fee

The Secretary of State for Media, Culture and Sport, James Whittingdale, should take a close and hard look at the Licence Fee when discussing the next BBC Charter, which will come into force at the end of 2016.

When the Conservative government is resorting to Victorian penny pinching and making the poorest and the weakest in Britain more vulnerable, the BBC is employing the resources generated through Licence Fee in Britain to launch a television programme in Bangladesh.

The launching of the BBC Bangla TV programme - BBC Probaho, on Bangladesh’s cable/satellite station, Channel-I is nothing short of an expediency as it will not reap any benefit for Britain and those who help the corporation survive by paying the Licence Fee.

It beggars belief that the new television programme being launched by the BBC Bangla Service will cut any ice with the audience, not least because of the sustained decline in the BBC’s influence in Bangladesh, but also due to the fact that the media market in the country is crowded by the presence of nearly a dozen television channels, if not more. Moreover, the continuous decline in the audience figures of the BBC Bangla's radio programmes are a testimony of the listless editorial leadership of the service.

The BBC World Service has a dubious distinction of floundering with public money when it attempted to launch its Hindi television channel in India in the 1990s. As the BBC faltered, its supplier the Asian News International or the ANI flourished. There is a widespread apprehension that like the ANI in Delhi, Channel-I is prospering at the cost of the Licence Fee payers in Britain as BBC Probaho is destined to fail.

The sponsorship of the longstanding relationship between BBC Bangla and Channel-I by the BBC Media Action also raises serious financial and editorial questions. Questions are being raised as to why the British taxpayers' money should be used to help a foreign media business flourish. Secondly, is the editorial stature of the BBC, despite its continuous decline, compatible with Channel-I's position in the media landscape of Bangladesh?

When the government is making additional cuts, it should ensure that the ordinary people have enough resources at their disposal to make a decent living. Resources at the disposal of the ordinary people would be better utilised to meet their basic needs rather than paying the bills of an expedient move by a maverick or a dubious BBC manager.

Also available: Why should I pay for the BBC

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a freelance journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

High time India reciprocates to reap diplomatic dividends

2015-06-06T07:44:00.001+01:00

What a gesture of friendship and camaraderie by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, first to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and then on Saturday to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The people of Bangladesh have always been at the heart of the Indians and their struggle for independence remembered with reverence on the other side of the border and so are their strides on the social indicators of development.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has
walked the extra mile for friendship

Prime Minister Sk Hasina was quick to acknowledge the tide of geopolitics and its significance in South Asia, although it must be said that she had always been on the right side of a cordial relationship with India.

Notwithstanding the irritations in the bilateral relations, Sk Hasina has walked the extra mile not only to strengthen the friendly ties with her neighbour but also delivered on the promises made by the Bangladesh government to make the historic relationship smooth and render it with due cordiality.

It wasn't an easy task though!

Sheikh Hasina had to tread a dangerous path not only in the country, to overcome the widespread anti-Indian sentiments and wipe out an air of suspicion, but also within her party the Awami League to make Bangladesh's relationship with India effective and meaningful. She had to stave off strong and often conspiratorial opposition to friendly ties with India from a section of the domestic media, other groups in the civil society and also an arm of an influential international media organisation having strong roots and historic links with Bangladesh. Quite expectedly, this arm of the international media organisation downplayed the success of what is being termed "a historic trip" and highlighted Khaleda Zia's allegation, during a one-to-one meeting with Prime Minister Modi, that "democracy is at its peril in Bangladesh".

It is high time that India recognises the friendly gesture of Bangladesh in the backdrop of a bilateral relationship which has been on a roller coaster ride over the past more than four decades and with the evolution of geopolitics.

India should be mindful of fulfilling her commitments to the people of Bangladesh, made on several occasions. The public perception in Bangladesh is that India is quick to make promises but falters when it comes to delivering on time, often seen by Dhaka with suspicion and as a sign of lack of commitment. This perception is of course not without reason. The promises made by the then Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee on reconstruction of villages post the devastating cyclone Aila took a lot more time to deliver than the usual period of gestation.

The operators in South Block should recognise the fact that Bangladesh may be small in size but it occupies a position of strategic importance and it is only in India's interest to nurture the bonhomie and friendship that's in the air at a time of sweltering heat and high humidity in both the countries.

Prime Minister Modi's strategy of extending an olive branch of friendship to South Asian neighbours like Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, notwithstanding her size and importance in regional and global politics is bound to reap diplomatic dividends in the time to come.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

An authentic Highlander with chubby looks & cheeky smile

2015-06-02T15:41:00.000+01:00

My Tuesday morning passed with a sense of loss. Political passing has never been so remorse, at least recently. I encountered a similar sense of loss when Tony Benn passed away in March last year. Back home in India, political passings are full of statist grandeur, depicting the clout and power of politicians. A sense of loss is often overtaken by the public display of grief.

Courtesy: The Telegraph

I gulped emotion ever since the news of Charles Kennedy's untimely demise flowed from the television sets during the breakfast programme. A stream of condolences followed. For Paddy Ashdown, whom Kennedy succeeded as the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, he was a repository of decency, wit, humour and charm, when large parts of modern day politics were bereft of the traits that rendered it humane.
Kennedy's high point in politics was when he vehemently opposed the Iraq War in 2003. With Tony Blair being the bagpiper in the campaign against Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction" and the Conservative Party under Ian Duncan Smith following suit in Britain, the Liberal Democrats under the stewardship of Kennedy stood rock solid as a moral compass, despite his denouncement for "treachery and treason", against the divisive war. Over a decade after the war, Kennedy's apprehension about its credibility had been proved right. The liberal in him insisted that inspectors be deployed to make sure that the weapons of mass destruction were destroyed rather than going all out for the scalp of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq is not the only issue where he instinctively made "an exceptionally shrewd" political judgement. The bleak performance of the Lib Dems in the recently concluded general election is a testimony to the gut feeling of Kennedy opposing any possible coalition with the Conservatives. The two parties were in coalition for five years and in the end the Conservative Party gained at the cost of the Liberal Democrats. Kennedy's opposition to the coalition was based on the intuitive apprehension that "David Cameron would use it to re-brand his party as Liberal Conservatives destroying the real Liberal Party in the process".

When Kennedy became the leader of the Liberal Democrats in 1999, the political landscape in the United Kingdom was dominated by New Labour and more so by Tony Blair. The Tories were in utter disarray with leaders like William Hague, Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Howard grappling as to how to cope with the Tony Blair phenomenon. Although the leader of the third largest party in the House of Commons, Kennedy with his captivating charm, authentic touch with the ordinary people, principled politics and brilliant oratory performed the role of a 'de facto' leader of the opposition in parliament.

It is to Kennedy's credit, and also that of Paddy Ashdown, that the Lib Dem apparently turned into a party of intellectual and ethical refuge for many - who despised the Tories and yet were not necessarily heart and soul with New Labour - despite its inability to become pivotal in the once effectively predominant bi-partisan electoral politics in Britain.

It was under his leadership that the strength of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons reached 62, the highest tally for a third party since the old Liberal Party days of the 1920s, in the 2005 general election, only to plummet to 57 under the stewardship of Nick Clegg in 2010.

As tributes flow from all sides of the political spectrum, Kennedy will be dearly missed in Britain for delving into the humane terrain of politics, his gaiety and serious principled politics. His stance on the Iraq War made the Liberal Democrats stand apart in the face of jingoism worldwide. Kennedy's lovable chubby looks and cheeky smile endeared him to many well beyond the murky world of politics. Binge drinking was his demon and Kennedy had to pay dearly for it. British politics will never be the same again without the sandy-haired Highlander.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com All comments are personal.

Stop learning and we're dead, Mr Gandhi

2015-05-28T16:28:00.004+01:00

"In the long-run we are all dead", once said John Maynard Keynes. Reading about Rahul Gandhi's recent jibe at Narendra Modi, claiming that the incumbent prime minister had invited his predecessor to have an "hour-long Economics lesson from Dr Manmohan Singh" made me think that one can very well be dead not only in the short-run - as compared to the 'long-run' as mentioned by Keynes - but also when one is very much alive and aspiring at least apparently.

Let me at the very outset pronounce my opposing views on Rahul Gandhi. In 2012, I had written my first blog post on Rahul Gandhi when he stopped short of making any mark as a "successful Indian politician" by failing to lead his party - the Indian National Congress - to victory in the assembly polls in India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, also one of the politically significant ones in the country.

My second blog post on the Gandhi scion, written just after the worst ever drubbing faced by the Congress, was much more personal and sympathetic about the physical, psychological and emotional captivity that Rahul had to live with all his life, thanks to the greed for power of the leaders of the party he leads as its vice president.

Ever since he returned from his much talked about 57-day sabbatical, Rahul seems to have mastered the art of being the typical Indian politician - the usual street smartness without much substance and an iota of statesmanship.

What's the harm if Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought some advice on the economy from his predecessor Dr Manmohan Singh, who happens to be an internationally acclaimed economist? Moreover, Dr Singh steered India out of the economic mess in the early 1990s.

In many of the world's mature democracies there is either a well defined handover process during change in governments - as is prevalent in the United States when the president-elect works very closely with the outgoing head of state for weeks together to ensure a smooth transition in power - or the ruling and the opposition parties work in tandem despite the acrimony and competitive politics during the elections.

In the Westminster system, which is followed in India, it is often said that the British prime minister knows the leader of the opposition much more than his/her spouse. If that is the essence of the democratic relationship between the ruling and the opposition parties in India then why can't an incumbent prime minister invite his predecessor to seek advice.

In fact, Prime Minister Modi set a nice precedence when he called on Dr Singh immediately after assuming office, so did Dr Singh when he called on an ailing Atal Behari Vajpayee to wish the nonagenarian leader on his birthdays. Even Sonia Gandhi called on the former prime minister to condole the death of his long-time companion Rajkumari Kaul.

Competitive politics may be the call of the day but nothing can be more unfortunate if that killer instinct of achieving short-term gains comes in the way of civility and interpersonal relationships between the political actors in the country. Moreover, there is no harm in learning even if it is from a political adversary. As Albert Einstein reportedly said, "The day you stop learning is the day you stop living."

Political animosity between former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Jayprakash Narayan is well known. JP, as the social reformer was known, was arrested during the Emergency and in return he made sure that Mrs Gandhi was ousted from power. However, before JP's death in 1979, when Mrs Gandhi called on him, the Lok Nayak wished her well and said that he hoped that the former prime minister's future would be brighter than her past. Political equation never came in the way of JP's affection for his "Indu" - the daughter of his friend Jawaharlal Nehru, despite their longstanding political differences.

Reading the news report on Rahul Gandhi's diatribe against Mr Modi, I find that the Gandhi scion has also criticised the strict disciplinarian practices of the hardline Hindu organisation, the Rashtriya Sayamsewak Sangh or the RSS, stating that "Discipline is an excuse for suppressing individuality." Mr Gandhi probably forgot that his grandmother Mrs Gandhi and uncle Sanjay Gandhi did exactly the same during the Emergency, and his father Rajiv Gandhi tried to do the same by introducing the infamous Defamation Bill in 1988, which was later withdrawn.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

A divided Kingdom

2015-05-09T15:04:00.002+01:00

After days of discussions around a possible hung parliament and various coalition equations, who could have expected such a poll outcome in the United Kingdom? Certainly, not David Cameron. Or else, his party wouldn’t surely have campaigned so vigorously against a possible pact between the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP), vehemently ruled out by Ed Miliband.

Ironically, in a year that marks the octocentenary of Magna Carta — the Great Charter — signed by King John at Runnymede on June 19, UK’s major political parties planned their campaign strategies around fear. Magna Carta was the first formal document making it imperative for the monarch to follow the law of the land, and ensure individual rights against the wishes of the ruler. It was a charter of liberty and hope. But in its 800th anniversary year, we witnessed an election campaign tied to fear. Can anyone deny that exercising the franchise without fear or favour also constitutes an important individual freedom?

The Tories scared the English voters into believing that a minority Labour government would be captive to the SNP, which clearly wants to break away from the United Kingdom. The Labour, on its part, pressed the panic button based on their assumption that another five years of Tory austerity will cut the public services, including the much valued National Health Service, to size.

The campaign of fear, it seems, is going to haunt David Cameron in the weeks and months to come, as he heads to form a single-party government backed by a slim majority. Armed with the over 50 seats in Westminster, the SNP will make every possible effort to irritate David Cameron and undermine the authority of his government over Scotland.

Nicola Sturgeon, the charismatic leader of the Scottish party, had vouched to enhance the influence of Scotland in Westminster. She led her party to win 56 out of the 59 seats in Scotland. But, given the outright majority of the Tories, the election outcome didn’t necessarily enhance SNP’s power in Westminster. Sturgeon will, therefore, try her best to enforce that power by questioning Cameron’s authority, and, thereby, fuelling Scottish ambition of independence from Britain in the form of a referendum.

The rise of the SNP meant bloodbath for the Labour and the Liberal Democratic Party in Scotland. Jim Murphy, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, and Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, have lost their seats to the SNP. Alexander lost his seat to a 20-year-old student, Mhairi Black.

Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and a key figure in the Tory-Lib Dem coalition and Charles Kennedy a former Lib Dem leader too, suffered the same fate. So did Vince Cable the Business Secretary and Lib Dem leader from Twickenham, a constituency he held for nearly two decades. What is surprising is that the coalition partners may have projected their record in government during the campaign, but it is the Lib Dem candidates who were punished as the Tories returned as winners.

As the election results stated coming in on Friday morning, I met a girl from a religious minority community. She told me, she voted for the Conservative candidate overlooking Cable, who represented the middle ground and sanity in British politics. And she is not alone in holding that view. While the voters were polarised as a fall out of a vitriolic election campaign, it is equally true that the electorate can’t be stereotyped by their religious and ethnic backgrounds any longer. Across the country, young voters from the religious and ethnic minority groups stood by the Tories, generally considered tough on immigrants and religious and ethnic minorities. For years and generations, these groups have constituted the core support base of the Labour Party.

The performance of the Labour Party isn’t that dismal in London. They have increased their tally from 2010, probably a message for the city’s Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson, the darling of the party’s right-wingers. Rumours that Johnson would be propped up as a leader of the Conservative Party if Cameron failed to deliver an outright majority, were circulating. The electoral outcome in London also underlines a consolidation of working class votes in favour of Labour after the Tory onslaught on a possible Miliband government in a tacit agreement with the SNP.

The electoral outcome across the United Kingdom is a complex equation, definitely much more than what caught the eyes of the poll stars, a majority of whom were proved wrong.

The equation is even more complex in England. The United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP), which wants the UK to quit the European Union (EU) and blames the migrants — especially those from the East European countries — for all the ills that have befallen Britain, have made significant inroads in England, not necessarily in terms of seats won, but in the share of votes garnered by the party.

The rise of the UKIP comes not necessarily at the cost of the Conservatives, which incidentally is its parent party. But, also at the cost of Labour. The Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls lost his seat because of the number of votes secured by the UKIP in his constituency of Normanton in West Yorkshire, up in North England. The polarising party led by Nigel Farage is making its presence felt beyond the South of England which sees the maximum immigration from the continent.

Despite the resounding success of the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru, another nationalist party in Wales, has managed only a handful of the 40 seats. But there is apprehension that the trend set by the Scots will inspire the Welsh to speak out more vigorously for independence.

With a large number of leaders not returning to parliament, the Labour Party faces a generational crisis. The burden of the skeletons of the New Labour, left by the Blair-Brown years, seemed to have been too heavy for Miliband to bear. The infighting between the Blairites and the Brownites, which later resurfaced in the form of a family war between the Miliband brothers — Ed and David — the latter leaving the Labour Party to take up a plum job in the US, split the organisation too wide for Ed Miliband to stage a comeback.

An outright majority is not all comfort for Cameron. Now that there is no coalition, he will face enhanced pressure from his backbenchers to deliver more for the Tory core voters. Europe and immigration are causes for concern for the prime minister so is the difficult task of balancing the books and yet deliver a reasonable public service.

Divisive politics awaits a divided nation.

A version of this write up was first published in the DNA on May 9, 2015

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Scare dominates campaign in Magna Carta octocentenary

2015-05-06T20:27:00.001+01:00

The campaign frenzy is over and the electorate is all set to exercise their franchise to elect the members of what is historically the mother of parliaments. The year which marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the first charter finally contributing to a body of conventions called the constitution of one of the influential democracies in the modern world, is witnessing an election unprecedented in the history of the contemporary British politics.

The Magna Carta may have been the first formal document making the King of England answerable to the law of the land and ensured individual rights and a beacon of liberty, but the campaign of the election held in its tercentenary year is dominated not so much by the spirit of optimism and hope but more so by a message of fear.

David Cameron is scaring the voters that if they don't vote judiciously, the "achievements of the past five years of containing the deficit will be thrown out of the window." The Labour Party is pressing the panic button based on the fact that "another five years of Tory rule will cut the public service down to size". The Liberal Democrats are using a dual strategy for scaremongering, saying that the Tories are dangerous for the society and the Labour detrimental to the economy.

The UKIP has its favourite punching bag the European immigrants, harping on the collective psychosis on jobs and increased pressure on social goods. The threat of global warming and climate change are good enough for the Greens to make the electorate worry of what lies ahead for the British Isles.

The nationalist parties - the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales and the Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland - have set out a battle among nations in what is actually a national election.

It's not only among the parties but within them as well that fear, apprehension and insecurity are more predominant than ever before. If reports are to be believed, the right-wingers in the Conservative Party are waiting in the wings to push David Cameron from the pedestal of leadership if he fails to deliver an outright majority. The people on the right in the Conservative Party want to prop up Boris Johnson as the next leader, making the general election of 2015 a make or break for Mr Cameron.

The Labour leader is also under pressure from the trade unionists, despite the best of efforts to distance himself from his largest support base during the party's leadership race. The Tories may have trained their gun around the narrative that Ed 'back stabbed' brother David under pressure from the left hardliners, the Labour leader is facing the heat from the trade unionists and the nationalists SNP and Plaid Cymru who are harping on the traditional political philosophy of the Labour Party, lurching more to the left and with greater credibility.

As the heat and dust of a hectic election campaign settle down, its time for the British electorate and the politicians to seat back and reflect. The negativism that dominated the campaign, can this antagonism bring about any positive change in Britain!

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

What's missing in this British election campaign

2015-05-04T15:00:00.002+01:00

American political strategist Roger Stone once described the general election as a "mass media exercise", and true to his observation the major political parties in Britain are leaving no stone unturned to use, utilise and influence the media to their advantage. While tabloids like the Mirror and the Mail are at daggers drawn when it comes to Labour and the Conservative parties respectively, the Express has sided with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) this time, and The Sun dividing its loyalty between the Tories in Britain and the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Scotland. Among the major broadsheets the tilt of The Guardian with Labour and that of The Telegraph with the Tories are an open secret and they make little effort to conceal or camouflage their stances, and The Times toes a more centrist line.

The debate on public spending is at the heart of this year's election campaign with the major political parties, gauging the public mood, are committing themselves to save the National Health Service (NHS) from any possible cuts, only to be questioned by their rivals on accounting credibility to balance the books and economic trustworthiness to manage the deficit in the long run. In the process, however, each political party is craftily overlooking the lapses in its own spending plan.

The austerity practised by the the Conservative -Lib Dem coalition over the past five years has caused immense hardship to people on low income. The euphoria over employment figures is subdued by the chronic problems in youth unemployment, under employment and ridiculously morbid "zero-hours contract". Prime Minister David Cameron looked helpless when encountered by Jeremy Paxman on the contract which is professed by the Tories, allegedly "to make people's lives more flexible."

The Camerons and the Osbornes are also overlooking the economic realities of under-employment and disguised unemployment. The rising employment figures seem ridiculous when you find a Bulgarian project manager working as a cleaner earning around £8 an hour. The person might not have had any other option but to take up the job, and that added to the employment figures of Mr Cameron, but surely this is under utilisation and misuse of professional skills ultimately resulting in wastage of resources. .

Historically, the Labour Party suffers from lack of trust when it comes to the economy and it has become more so after 13 long years under New Labour, when they professed Labour values but acted more like the Tories at the centre of the party's political spectrum. Although a respectable civil servant has argued that Labour is not to be be blamed for the financial crisis engulfing Britain, but over spending and wasteful spending are detriments to social and economic justices that Labour leadership proudly claims to achieve.

In the midst of claims and counter-claims on public spending, with all political parties trying to show how magnanimous they are, what is missing in the campaign trail is a detailed plan to instil a sense of aspiration in the British society, especially among the youth. No political party has articulated any plan on how to enhance the aspirations of the British youth and influence them to acquire new skills so as to utilise them through gainful employment. Even the UKIP which is constantly crowing against the influx of immigrants from the European Union (EU) and allegedly grabbing the jobs from the British people, are not asking the indigenous people to aspire high or speaking out any plan to make them more enterprising.

Years of post-war social security and welfare have rendered a large section of the British population susceptible to state patronisation in the form of benefit. Even a couple of years ago people would compare their entitlement from benefit and remuneration from jobs and in a substantial number of cases the former overtaking the later.

Entitlement (to benefit) irrespective of achievement (enhancement of employability skills and job prospects) may be arguably good social justice but not necessarily wise economics. The system of entitlement without any commitment to deliver, prevalent over the years, has subjected the working population to stunted aspiration, limited or no entrepreneurial skills and above all a flawed sense of self respect.

Tightening of benefits and monitoring (carried out by the staff at the Job Centre Plus) have resulted a new form of systemic fraud by which young people attend further education colleges, work placements and skill centres, to save their benefits, but hardly pick up any knowledge or skill from there (mainly due aspirational deficits), making bulk of the public expenditure to train them wasteful.

The major political parties competing on public spending and those like the UKIP taking the vexed path of blaming the immigrants for everything ill and evil in Britain should first chart out their plans not only about allocating the taxpayers' money but how they will instill a sense of dignity and enterprise among the working population, a large proportion of whom are otherwise unemployed.

They ought not lose sight of the fact that austerity is an imposition but aspiration is an achievement.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media commentator.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Suffer they do, but for whose sin

2015-04-25T22:23:00.005+01:00

I was woken up this morning by the terrible news that an earthquake of high magnitude shook large parts of India. The grey morning in London coupled with drizzles after a week of glorious sunshine made me pensive and apprehensive too.

My home state of West Bengal in India has been voting in the second phase of civic elections today. The first phase and the campaign have been marred by violence and bloodshed. I dialed my parents to make the cursory Saturday call and inquire about their health, the heat and dust in a normally sweltering April, the political and social tension surrounding the polls and added to that today was how they coped with the tremor that shook large parts of India.

My parents in Kolkata, relations in North Bengal and the North East of India are all fine. Relieved, I switched on the television set and tuned in an Indian news channel not for the news on the tremor, but to keep myself abreast about the possible poll violence in West Bengal. Little did I know that large swathes of the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal were razed to the ground as tremors struck only to be followed by regular aftershocks.

Nepal earthquake: How you can help victims of the Kathmandu disaster

The heart wrenching footage of people running amok, cracks on multi-storied buildings, uprooted trees, broken temples and monuments and casualties came as a pall of gloom. Many faces crossed my imagination. My former colleagues in the BBC Nepali Service, many of whom were deputed to Kathmandu from London. My good friends Rabindra Mishra, Yubaraj Ghimire and Jitendra Raut - all former colleagues in the BBC.

I suddenly recalled 'Daiju' - an elderly person with wrinkles crisscrossing his face, who looked after us well at a guest house in Gaurikund on our way to Kedarnath in the late 1980's. Daiju then told me that after a few years he longed to retire in his home town in Nepal and spend a peaceful life with his grandchildren. Since we left Gaurikund, I was never in touch with Daiju, but somehow his affection crossed my mind as I imagined that he might be in Nepal now and feared about his well being.

The name of 'Sundar' also cropped up in my mind, although I have never seen or spoken to him in my lifetime. Sundar was a Nepali boy who accompanied my father to Kolkata in the 1960s. My father was visiting Darjeeling and poor Sundar wanted to travel to Kolkata with him. He stayed at our ancestral house in Belgharia for a few years, helping my late grandmother in her household chores and being like the fifth son in the family. In the process he grew from being a boy to a man. But as politics in Bengal became tense with the rise of the radical left, Sundar had to be sent back to Darjeeling for his own safety. Notwithstanding Sundar's departure, he remained so ingrained in the memory of our family that even I heard about him from my grandmother, father and uncles long after he was gone. I imagined that Sundar might be with his family in Nepal and feared that the high-magnitude tremor struck the place where he lived.

As the news of the terrible loss of life, property and heritage trickled in through out the day, the faceless number of hundreds of affected people was embodied in those I knew or was aware of. I was reminded of a comment made by one of our teachers in school. "Disasters happen when nature takes its own action", he told us quoting a German philosopher, whose name I couldn't remember. Taken aback by the extent of the disaster in Nepal, I tried finding out who the German philosopher was. And I did as the day unfolded and night fell in quake struck Nepal.

Wrote Frederick Engels in 1876 in "The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man":

"Let us not, however, flatter ourselves over much on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first."

The "victory" that Engels talked about might have added to the comfort of the rich and the relatively well off but it was the poor people of Nepal who were bearing its brunt.

Please donate generously to help the Nepalese people. I have done so myself.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.

He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Why India's Daughter is a non-starter

2015-04-19T18:33:00.001+01:00

I watched Leslie Udwin's documentary "India's Daughter" for the third time. The last time when the heat and dust have settled and the humdrum gone. Still my views on the documentary haven't changed. The perverse mindset of the perpetrators of the heinous crime and those defending them is not India-specific but universal in nature.

I pondered over the issue for sometime now and tried some social experimentation in my day to day life. Despite the unsophisticated process of my social experimentation and the rudimentary nature of the outcome, the trend available demonstrated that whenever someone does something illegal and unethical, there is a broad tendency to defend it.

I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychoanalyst or a criminologist and hence can't delve into the reasons behind such an action. At a superficial level though it seems that the defence mechanism sets in through which one justifies his actions both within oneself and outside, and this is a universal phenomenon.

So what Udwin showed in her film is universal and not specific to India and hence there is no justification to ban it in India. In fact, by banning it the Indian Government has provided the film with the much needed political succour to keep it afloat, not because of the content but by virtue of the political controversy. The controversy notwithstanding, the documentary has failed to reveal anything that was hitherto unknown to us.

My problem is mainly with Udwin's methodology. The way the perpetrators were given a platform to articulate their views and justify their actions, and that too unchallenged, defy all norms of effective and responsible journalism. My feeling is that Udwin being a veteran in documentary making was aware of this methodological lapse and hence allowed herself to be swayed by sensation and emotion, Recall how Udwin kept on stating in interviews that she herself was abused. However unfortunate it is, this in no way makes one any more competent to direct a documentary on the said issue.

In the final analysis, Leslie Udwin's India's Daughter managed to create some surrealistic ripples but failed to take us even an inch further from where we were before.

The controversy surrounding the documentary on the gang rape of a paramedic in Delhi in December 2012, however, raises questions similar to the critique of the development model professed by the West in the post-war years. The assumption that the West is a moderniser and has an obligation to civilise humanity encouraged them to thrust upon development models and processes without trying to understand the essence of prosperity for individual nations in the global South. The homogeneity in western society and the inability of the policymakers and development practitioners to appreciate diversity are the biggest detriments for the one-size fits all prescription of the West.

It seems that the framework used by Leslie Udwin when conceptualising India's Daughter suffers from the same shortcomings.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

It's time to say good bye, Richie Benaud

2015-04-10T17:56:00.005+01:00

The demise of Richie Benaud brings back memories of a vintage flavour of cricket. Always a moderniser of the game, the man who had the most distinctive and authoritative voice on cricket, however, never claimed that cricket was better in his time.

Benaud became popular in our early days through the social and collective viewing of highlights of foreign tours of the Indian side. Television sets were yet to graduate to the level of being products of mass consumption then and the ordinary others would flock into the living rooms of a lucky few to have a glimpse of how the foreign turfs and the cricket watchers looked like, besides the match.

If Benaud's voice was that of cricket itself then the lanky man sporting the white coat, Dickie Bird was the conscience keeper of the game. The gentleman's game was yet to be commercialised and its flavour was more of merrymaking than moneymaking.

The flamboyant elegance of Tony Greig, who kneeled down before a full packed Eden Gardens in 1977 to appease a crowd rendered restless by the home side's disastrous performance against the MCC, is a far cry in this age of cut throat competition and stress, when every action has a commercial value attached to it. So is the orthodox spin bowling by the likes of Derek Underwood and Bishen Bedi, when the bowler would have the luxury of experimenting with the turns and the flights despite being punished to the ropes.

Cricket has become more instantaneous these days and the five-day carnival called test matches are like the vintage car rallies. Like the English summers the Indian winters then were a time for holidaying, to relax and sink into laziness, and cricket was the vehicle to transport one from the reality to the dream world of fantasy and romanticism.

When Pakistan was touring England in 2001, I came across an English farmer from Essex who has to his credit the rare privilege of watching all first class and test matches being played at the Lord's since 1961. Having a bite of his cheese and cucumber sandwich, an English delight and is also allegedly liked by the Queen, and sipping his Sherry, the middle-aged farmer told me how he picked up this trait from his forefathers and wanted to carry it on till he went to the grave. His son, however, was more into the shorter format of the game, he told me. A generational thing, some would suppose.

Despite our fantasy with the yesteryears, it would be unfair to infer that cricket was better in the bygone days, especially on a day when a moderniser to the core Richie Benaud said good bye to his viewers for the last time.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

End of a dream

2015-03-26T16:03:00.004+00:00

My waking up early in the day and keeping me awake till the middle of the night to watch the highlights and post-match analyses all turned in vain. After the disastrous show in Australia and the tri-series, I never expected India to be a strength to reckon with as the world cup kicked off.
The first victory against Pakistan was the game changer. I deliberately use the word ‘victory’. In sports it’s more of a win except for when India is taking on Pakistan. In love and war every encounter is a battle and for the triumphant it is a victory and not a mere win.

The victory against Pakistan lured me to the world cup. I subscribed to the Sky Sports channels, dug out statistics from the websites, read and watched expert comments and more than anything else prayed for the boys. The boys in blue! Our boys in blue!

The first time India clinched the world cup in 1983, they were nothing more than a minnow. Starting as an underdog their opener against the W’Indies was the turnaround. Then Kapil Dev’s hurricane innings of 175 followed, and the rest is history.

Just before the half-yearly exam in our residential school, we were given a glimpse to watch the Indian innings. With 183 on the board, the West Indians were more than sure to clinch the title for the third time in a row. As we huddled in our rooms for self-study the joyous roar from outside the school campus at regular intervals made us aware that history was in the making.

As Jimmy Amarnath clinched the last West Indian wicket a few of us simply gate-crashed into the room of one of our wardens Nirmal Mirani who was listening to the commentary on the radio.
Cricket then was a delicacy not a staple entertainment. The winter vacations were marked with no studies as the annual exams were over, visiting places of interest, Christmas cakes, oranges, the Bengali delicacy of Joynagar-er Moa and Nalen Gur-er Sandesh, and of course the festival of cricket. Almost every year one or the other team would play a test match during the winter vacation in Kolkata.

Not anymore!

Cricket now has turned out to be a power play than a source of pure pleasure and entertainment. India with its cricket-crazy market is dominating not necessarily the art of the game but the business and politics of cricket.

The world cup victory of 1983 was a turnaround for Indian cricket though. The victories in Asia Cup, Benson Hedges Cup were bright reminders that India had arrived on the world stage.
The semi-final exit in the 1987 world cup turned out to be a dampener. I remember Kolkata, which was longing to host India in the final, was heartbroken after the hosts lost to England in the semi-final at Mumbai.

The overdose of cricket created an apathy in me. The economists refer to it as diminishing marginal utility. The experience at the Wanderers in 2003, very similar to the one at the Sydney Cricket Ground today, made me promise to myself not to watch cricket anymore. It was kept until India was playing Sri Lanka in the final of the 2011 world cup.

I was at a dance show of my daughter at the Paul Robson Theatre in Hounslow, and the brilliant performance of the Indians tempted me to occasionally skip the performance and glance at my mobile to check the scores. The win at Mumbai was a consolation after the drubbing at 2003 and the unceremonious exit in 2007.

Since 2012, India has been performing miserably in all forms of the game and I had no expectation from the men in blue after watching India play England in the last summer. Yet the victory against Pakistan and the wins that followed aroused a glimmer of hope. I started believing that Dhoni and his boys are going to make it. The dream run of winning seven consecutive matches, clinching all ten wickets in every encounter made me feel that despite taking on Australia in the semi-final India will make it.

That dream is dashed and the hope strangulated!

Also on cricket:
Partition imagery on cricket
MSD defined a new India
Cricket, corruption & configuration of power relations
Custodian of decency and determination
That was more than cricket
Street cricket comes to London

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Partition imagery on cricket

2015-02-16T06:04:00.001+00:00

One of the "spoils of partition" - I borrow the term from Cambridge historian Joya Chatterji - of 1947 is the deep-rooted animosity and suspicion between the neighbours. The two republics carved out of an undivided country may have fought at least four proclaimed wars, but every time India takes on Pakistan on the cricket turf it is a battle of sorts. On both sides of the Line of Actual Control, and extending till the furthest point of their geographical territories, citizens are taught, "play the game in the spirit of the game but when it is up against Pakistan (and India) bring out the choicest of ammunition to fight a war."

"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play," once observed George Orwell and both the Indians and the Pakistanis resort to this Orwellian belief when it comes to playing cricket against each other. I wonder if the same madness is prevalent when the two sides taken on each other in hockey. The media often describes them as arch-rivals, probably mindful of the fact that it is not only a cliché but also too simplistic a term to encapsulate the complexities that engulf the neighbourly relationship.

Social historian Ramchandra Guha in a lecture delivered at the London School of Economics a couple of years ago had blamed India's lack of unimpeachable leadership in South Asia as the biggest detriment to making her way to the high table of global diplomacy. Over six decades after emerging as a nation in its present form, India may quite rightfully aspire to be a global leader, but when it comes to Pakistan she can hardly keep herself away from the provocation and the cacophony of the slanging match. Fighting and trouncing Pakistan in every game is still alike the brawl between two warring children.

During the regime of Atal Behari Vajpayee, when India was publicly cosying-up with the US, the dominant discourse of Indian diplomacy was one of moving beyond Pakistan. There were visible signs of India not getting entrapped in each and every action of its unfriendly neighbour, but when it came to crunch time the Indian leadership either succumbed to the Pakistani pressure or crumbled because of internal compulsions or used Pakistan as a tool to sensationalise domestic politics for short term gains.

The Pakistani leadership on its part has failed its people and lived to the tradition of a rogue state born out of a "flawed ideology". Export of terror, the inability to look beyond India and trying to jeopardise each and every of her moves have tied the very existence of Pakistan to the specifications of India.

More than a decade and half ago, thanks to my former colleague Manab Majumder - a cricket aficionado himself all his life till he passed away a couple of years ago, I had a chance to share my thoughts on the India-Pakistan animosity with former Pakistani cricket captain Asif Iqbal at Lord's - the altar of cricket. He couldn't see any reason apart from stating history as the basis behind the relationship based on suspicion. I remember Asif Iqbal ending his conversation, in the glass-walled life members' enclosure of the MCC, by stating that "at the individual level we are still friends. The Indian and Pakistani cricketers are good friends."

I heard similar reaffirmation of friendship from people on both sides of the border, ranging from diplomats, journalists, politicians, writers, the civil society and above all the ordinary citizens. If nation is a collective of its people, how come individual friendships do not add up to national friendliness!

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Delhi Tales: Romanticising politics & story-telling commentators

2015-02-08T18:23:00.000+00:00

Delhi has always been an enigma to me - an intense interest that is extremely difficult to overlook. The first time I landed in Delhi in 1995 after putting in my papers at the Financial Express and not to return to journalism again, I could hardly resist the temptation of visiting The Hindustan Times office at the Kasturba Gandhi Marg to handover a resume to Dr Chandan Mitra, then its Executive Editor. Dr Mitra, then a firebrand journalist delving between political reporting and speaking out his mind on any issue be it a personal tribute to Salil Chowdhury.

He suggested that I see A K Bhattacharya of The Pioneer at the Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Delhi's equivalent to the Fleet Street. As I popped in at the swanky office of The Pioneer, I first came across Paranjay Guha Thakurta, with his ponytail brand. Visit to The Express Building around the same road near ITO the next day to collect an unpaid cheque was equally exciting.

About six months later, when I was employed by the Press Trust of India - PTI in Delhi, walking in its Parliament Street office was like living a childhood dream of coexisting with the reverberations of unfolding politics in the national capital. Every day, a Greenline DTC bus dropped me either around the Parliament Building or some government office along the Raisina Road or the Rafi Marg, which housed the INS Building, as I walked to work.

Inside the PTI office, I would gaze in reverential silence as senior journalists covering Parliament, important departments and ministries dictated copies to make sure that we were ahead of time, and the aspiring journalist in me waited for an opportunity to cover a political event, be it ceremonial or of lesser importance.

First, I was assigned to cover a tea-party hosted by the then Vice President K R Narayanan at his residence in New Delhi's Maulana Azad Road to welcome some young bravehearts ahead of the Republic Day. A few months later, PTI's then chief reporter Amitabha Roy Chowdhury deputed me to cover a presser of the Communist patriarch Jyoti Basu at Banga Bhavan in New Delhi's upmarket Hailey Road. Being from Kolkata, no political assignment could be more self-gratifying than covering a press conference hosted by the then Bengali chief minister, but Amitabha Da would soon diffuse the tension, and with it the excitement, by stating that Basu might be one of the tallest leaders in Bengal but in the national capital he was one of the many chief ministers.

The South Indian canteen at the INS Building on Rafi Marg was portrayal of a mini-India, as journalists from all over the country trooped in after a day of hard work to share a moment or two before filing stories, demonstrating fiesty journalism. It was there that I came across many journalists who would later become my interviewees during the BBC days in London.

Soumya Bandyopadhyay, Suman Chattopadhyay, Jayanta Ghosal, Chandan Mitra, Ajay Bose, Diptosh Majumdar, Swapan Dasgupta, Nitya Chakraborty, M J Akbar - all narrating stories of an India that was transforming with every passing day and in remarkable speed. Coalition of multiple shades was then teasing India's polity and the political experimentation that went beyond the conventional mould of anti-Congressism gaining ground. The rise of the Hindu nationalists and the reinforcement of identity politics alongside the success story of the national economy, coupled with the exponential growth of the service sector rendered the Indian narrative to a description that probably could be best encapsulated by the term dualism - the co-existance of traditionalism and the modernity.

Then there were the likes of the late Nikhil Chakraborty and later his son Sumit Chakraborty, Bhabani Sengupta, Dipankar Gupta, Amitabh Kundu, Asish Nandy - who religiously held the time tested frameworks and parametres of political and economic analyses rather than allowing them to go haywire.

Stains of post-ideology and nihilism were gradually entrenching themselves in Indian polity but it was a defining moment in India's political and economic history. The excitement and euphoria of a romanticised polity, in line with the global ascent of Neoliberalism and an aspirational society, was not without its share of pain, hesitancy, scepticism and doubt. Nontheless the narrative of a new India unfolded with its many shades of grey. The story of the euphoric excitement lives with the memory of the story-tellers.

The news of the passing away of Diptosh Da (Majumdar) reignited the memory but not without its share of sadness.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

MSD defined a new India

2014-12-31T10:57:00.004+00:00

The sudden announcement of Mahendra Singh Dhoni's retirement from test cricket might have surprised many, but it was not entirely unexpected. The wicketkeeper-batsman was struggling with ideas, so essential in a mind game like cricket, especially on foreign tours. The thrashing faced by Dhoni's India against England and Australia only proved that his team was no longer the unchallenged leader in all forms of the game.

The retirement of MSD from test cricket is fuelled by his deep desire to concentrate on the shorter forms of the game. As the defending champion, he wants to lead India to the 2015 World Cup due in Australia and New Zealand. India is going to host the T20 World Cup in 2016 and it is perfectly natural on the part MSD to nurture the ambition of lifting the World Cup in two forms of the game (after 2011 World Cup) at home, and thereby avenge India's defeat against Sri Lanka in 2014.

So, it's a long way to go before the cricket commentators and observers of the game jot down a few points to write MSD's cricketing obituary and delve on his legacy in Indian Cricket.

As the skipper of the World Cup winning Indian cricket team Dhoni will always have a special place not only in India's cricketing history but also in the narrative of contemporary India. In fact, leading India to world cup victories in two forms of the game makes him even more special.

If Kapil Dev's India, by winning the 1983 World Cup, marked India's arrival at the centrestage of world cricket, and players like Sunil Gavaskar, Mohinder Amarnath and Dilip Vengsarkar did the groundwork for the consolidation of its position, then maestros like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and VVS Laxman are credited with stamping India's position of authority not only on the ground but also off the turf.

From that point of view, MSD's main task was cut out to sustain India's predominance in all forms of the game and take it even further. As arguably India's most successful cricket captain, at least statistically, MSD has succeeded in achieving his objective definitely in the shorter forms of the game. His test records are not as impressive, actually abysmal especially on foreign turfs.

These are feats which catch ones eye. But even before MSD touched the zenith in his remarkable journey in the world of cricket, he achieved something which transformed not only the face of India but also its texture.

All the names which shot into fame in Indian cricket are mostly urban phenomena, coming from metropolitan cities. Not that MSD was the first Indian cricketer from a small town to represent India in the highest form of the game, but he undoubtedly manifested a sense of assertion, not only as a leader but also as an actor in the cricketing play, hitherto unseen outside the confines of bigger cities. In that sense, MSD marks the fruition of a new India that goes beyond the realm of the urban space.

MSD's elevation as the captain of the Indian side has inspired many in smaller towns, suburbs and even villages to dream big. Not that all of them flocked to cricket but some of them definitely embarked on remarkable journeys to shape their ambition and fulfill personal aspirations to grow much beyond the place they come from.

The rise of cricketers like Umesh Yadav and Bhuvaneshwar Kumar , and the launch of Indian Grameen Cricket League (IGCL) are ample indicators that there is enough appetite for the game in the rural heartland of India. People coming from modest backgrounds are not daunted by the fact that cricket is essentially an expensive game and that the youth are inspired by India being the powerhouse of world cricket. The use of cricket as a tool to fulfill aspiration is not only ensuring equity but also manifesting itself as a form of empowerment.

The gentleman's game which once defined social hierarchy is now being cherished by the ordinary, and even the subaltern, to break through the class consciousness of the society.

Also on cricket:
Cricket, corruption & configuration of power relations
Custodian of decency and determination
That was more than cricket
Street cricket comes to London

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media commentator.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.

Who is Gandhi

2014-11-11T22:59:00.003+00:00

This year marks the centenary of the First World War. Apart from being a historical event which shaped the world's destiny, the Great War didn't carry much of a significance for me. In fact, the chessboard of World War II seemed more interesting. It is probably the reflection of the same mindset which finds the narrative of Mahabharat much more interesting and politically enlivened as compared to the Ramayan.

It was only after my daughter Seemontini pointed out that she had a link to the Great War that I took a little more interest. They were doing a project in school and found out that although the war broke out on 28 July 1914, it was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on June 28, which happens to be Seemontini's birthday. Although separated by 90 years (Seemontini was born in 2004), I was quite amused by the link she worked out with the Great War.
However, the more interesting revelation came on November 10, ahead of the Armistice Day, when I came across a lecture of eminent Gandhian scholar Dr Uday Singh Mehta. He was delivering a talk titled "Putting Courage at the Centre: Gandhi on Civility and Society", organised by the Tagore Centre for Global Thought at the King's India Institute.

I got stuck in the train and was forced to miss the first part of the talk. However, what I came across was no less startling. Dr Mehta pointed out that Gandhi was a recruiter for the British Army ahead of World War I. Gandhi thought that it was his moral duty to defend the British Empire at the time of war, and using the opportunity to arm twist Britain in India's quest for self-rule or independence would be highly immoral.

What I found fascinating in Dr Mehta's reading of Gandhi is the predominance of morality and ethics in his thinking. Not that it was anything new, but the multiple shades of analysis that intertwined Gandhi as a thinker, according to Dr Mehta was quite revealing. He even went to the extent of arguing that Gandhi was happy with Dominion Status as long as it fulfilled his moral and ethical parameters.

Dr Mehta argued that at some stage Gandhi probably resigned to himself and reluctantly felt that there was no other way than being a nationalist. My reading of Indian history during the movement for independence is quite limited, even then, I can somehow reason the restlessness of Netaji in joining hands with the enemy of the British to facilitate India's independence, which many, including Gandhi, found to be immoral.

It seemed that probably Gandhi was too obsessed with morality and ethics. He situating morality and ethics at the heart of his arguments probably makes Gandhi more endearing to the wider world than the popular notion of non-violence and Satyagraha. Endearing Gandhi in a way gives credence to ones apparent commitment to morality without any obligation of practicing it or treading the ethical path in everyday life. It's almost analogous to flaunting a prestigious publication in ones study rather than having any penchant for going through it with the desire to understand.

It is widely known that Gandhi was deeply influenced by Bhagavad Gita, but drawing from the conversation between Krishna and Arjun, Gandhi probably accepted that violence was no aberration but a fact of life. What transpired from the talk by Dr Mehta was that Gandhi's lifelong endeavour had been to find out an ethical argument to morally justify violence.

The many facets of character that is encapsulated in Gandhi as a person, a social thinker and above all the political leader, seem fascinating to me. The more I read, hear and think about him the more I get a feel of his complexities.

What I also find intriguing is the chemistry that worked between Gandhi and Nehru. I can sense a fair amount of oriental values in Gandhi's version of morality and ethics, which to my understanding is different from what is portrayed by western modernity. What I find difficult to understand is how Nehru, very much a poster boy of western modernity in an Indian set up, could get along with such rationalisation of the political with moral ends.

I look forward to Dr Mehta's forthcoming book, "A Different Vision: Gandhi’s Critique of Political Rationality".

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com

All comments are personal.

What's in a name!

2014-11-09T22:50:00.000+00:00

"I Pity the Fool" is an American reality
television series on TV Land
starring Mr T

"What's in a name," they might say, but when I joined the BBC in 1999, my Regional Head Elizabeth Wright confided that the reason why she decided to officially see me later than expected was because of my name. She needed some time and probably a bit of practice to decently pronounce my name.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay, a 23-letter name is not only mouthful but also quite a difficult one to pronounce even by the Indian standard. No wonder, the elderly White British people in my neighbourhood chose to rename me "Tito". Everytime they apologetically address me by that name, I assuage myself by babbling the Shakespearean phrase from Romeo and Juliet.
My colleagues at West Thames College are even smarter. They have reduced me to "Mr T", of course with my consent. Little did I know that the name was linked to an American television character and our looks and nature were miles apart.

About a decade ago, subaltern historian from Chicago Dipesh Chakarabarty wrote in the Anandabazar Patrika how strangely his surname was pronounced by a cabbie to give it a different connotation.

However, transformation of names to facilitate easy pronunciation is not uncommon. Sunil becomes Sam, Banerjee - Beny or Banjo and Sukhbinder - Suki or Sukh. But all these are in the West and Indians, especially Bengalis take pride in the fact that their tongues are flexible enough to pronounce difficult names easily.

Sea Bass becomes Basa Fish in India

Tonight during our dinner, my wife Sonali narrated a story of how the name of a fish has undergone metamorphosis - thanks to the upward mobile Indian middle class - which is hilarious to say the least. The laughter that followed lightened the sombre mood at the dinning table ahead of a dull Monday morning.
Sonali gathered from her Facebook friends that Sea Bass, a sweet, white, textured fish, caught in the North Atlantic, from Norway to Senegal, is known as 'Basa' in many parts of India and is gradually becoming a prestigious delicacy among the ever expanding middle class. To add a vanity touch, the word 'fish' follows 'Bassa' rather than its usual vernacular versions.

Our local fish monger sells Sea Bream alongside Sea Bass and he hails from Afghanistan. "What's left of globalisation," I said to myself ! Globalisation may be a great leveller but names still matter.

** The comedy of errors with names continues. My friend Suddhasattwa Bandyopadhyay pointed out on Facebook that what is known as Basa Fish in India is actually "Pangasius Bocourti" and not Sea Bass.

Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com

All comments are personal.