Basu's Bengal....

For every child who grew up in West Bengal in the 80s and 90s Jyoti Basu was nothing short of a war hero. Left politics would never be the same again in Bengal.

It might seem a bit unfair to judge a towering individual of his stature by the fate of the political movement he left behind. I admire him for 2 reasons; one, for having exercised an unchallenged hold on the politics of West Bengal in a manner unprecedented in politics. This in itself is an achievement. Two, Bengal remained politically immune from communal politics for years.

But no matter what he remained a committed communist, and in doing so cheated Bengal of its simplicity. He was a ruthless political party machine. He overlooked the fact that Bengal’s transition from an agricultural to a non agricultural one would depend upon basic things like health and education. Therefore his rule remains something of a puzzle to me.

But you have to admit that he built a citadel against two enemies: the Congress centralism of Delhi and the exploitation of share croppers in Bengal. His legacy remains monumental despite his regressive policies which drove industrialization out of Bengal. His historic land reforms and spectacular political fortunes still prevent the state to come out of the economic quagmire that Basu led it into. I think he owed his civility to a bhadralok cultural sensibility than to a revolutionary. The Bengali upper classes made their peace with him because he became a mascot of a genial Bengali identity.

What still bothers me is whether his contributions to Indian democracy will survive debates over his ideological fidelity to communism.

delhi 6

Delhi is almost like a dead city during its summer months. In summer I often wondered what still keeps this city going. When I stepped down from the car onto the streets of Chandni Chowk, I instantly knew what.

Chandni Chowk can be called a sub-city of sorts within Delhi. The vibrant colors and dizzyingly delicious fragrances fill up your senses. Not to miss the Hindi love songs jingled beside heartbreaking ghazals, the new lingo you learn while you overhear a ‘maal’ conversation….well, it’s all for free!

Passing through the crowded streets filled with rickshaws, cars, scooters, bikes, dogs and people , it looked like every space seemed to have been put to use, shops selling DVD players and video cameras next to old men at stalls repairing watches or polishing shoes, street food being cooked and served, and the occasional medical and dental shops. You don’t "walk" down these streets but instead you work through the crowds of thousands of other people, it is overwhelming to say the least. So I stood and contemplated the sheer number of people around me in this overheated, dusty, dirty, broken down relic of an imperial city, and let my still reeling mind turn on the fact that this was the poverty in which most of the city lived.

I had decided that that I would venture off into the quaint odd alleys on my own so I waited impatiently for the rest of the group to gather at Karim’s for lunch. Lunch was elaborate with mutton burras, roomali rotis, biriyani, chicken and firni in generous amounts. I think the men made utmost use of this opportunity, the women kept nibbling little of everything. The walk back from Karim’s through Dariba Kalan and Parathe wali galli was interspersed with more food. I guess its okay to keep eating as long as you don’t outweigh your refrigerator!!

Dr. Nigam seemed different today. He took us through the alleys of Chandni Chowk like how a father would take his kids to the zoo for the first time, stopping at just the right places for the rabri, lassi and then at nataraj’s for bhalle and so on so forth. He insisted that we stuff ourselves up with all the awesome street food. Also the number of places that he knew around the place couldn’t be covered in a single day. We missed out on Ghalib ki Haveli, Chitli Kabar and a closer look inside Jama Masjid.

Next came Khari Baoli. This walk would be a chef’s delight or a food lover’s dream walk, as it takes you through the biggest spice market in Asia. I stopped to talk to a local shopkeeper and asked him what Khari Baoli meant and he told me the name of the street indicates that there must have been a step well here and its water would have been salted. Some others said that there was a step well and it was used for washing the cattle, but today I found no trace of any step well there. As i walked down the street, I saw spices displayed outside the numerous small and big shops. Interestingly the shops are known by their number rather than their names or the owner’s name. Though the traders prefer to deal with the wholesale buyers, but they do entertain the retail buyers too. The pickles and the chutneys were mouth watering.

As we walked down the busy road and smiled at some friendly passersby, I realized that this wild, magical and subtly shocking place did for me what Gregory David Robert’s Bombay did for him. I came across a lot of ‘lin Babas’ and a lot of ‘Prabhakers’ and I mused if Chandni Chowk failed to fill up my senses, nothing ever would.

Strangely, I was far from exhausted and came back to the office to sit with the tech team for more work on the website.

For a few more glimpses go here.

and here's to Saturday

People and places have strange ways of creeping into our lives. After 5 months of being in Delhi, I have finally found companionship in places I least expected. It’s strange how some people who you never thought would remotely interest you become dear friends. What those Saturdays have done for me is beyond words really.

I think I had the toughest time with the relaxation exercise at the end of every session, I just couldn’t see what you wanted me to see. It would make me revisit all my painful memories since childhood, parents getting divorced, losing a best friend to car accident, adolescent crushes that never became relationships, breaking up with the ones that actually did and so on. I remember breaking down after your session once and telling you about it. I still haven’t quite figured that out.

Your sessions were breaths of fresh air that I frantically kept tossing in oblivious to where it took me. The ability to talk to 36 odd people without judging them is something I have I acquired. The ability to accept my flaws and work towards correcting them is what I am working on. Above all, the sanity to work under pressure situations came through those zillion small inter-personal exercises that you made us do.

I was scared when I started on this journey, now I am calmer. I know that even when the environment gets most malignant, a tiny voice in me will push me further ahead. My immense gratitude to you for having shown me a new “me”.

Copenhagen Confusions

While the entire ministry is going gaga over India's stand on carbon emission cuts, the young turks in the house yesterday created a big hoo haa about climate change too. But this little thing has raised quite a many eyebrows.
So is global warming realy a conspiracy theory? Is Jairam Ramesh listening?

and that's the way it is.......

I learnt two things on my first night out at NDTV, first i can't procastinate and second it doesn't matter if i'm trying to be rational around a bunch of kids. As my edit shift rolled from the 6pm-10pm slot to the 10pm-5am slot, things got crazier and by morning all i had were sore eyes, a back ache and a bad edit.

I have a deadline of 26th to meet and i am expected to deliver a 6-8 min documentary. The sleepless slumber today morning took me back to my lab in Bose Institute, it now feels warmer, cosier and incubated. Here i feel violated, cold and naked where a thousand eyes are watching my every move.

The icing on the rotten cake was the meeting with Dr. Prannoy Roy. His being in the same room five feet away from me speaks volumes in itself and he looked at us with the expectations a parent has from their child, and that pretty much did it.

The journey is now getting longer and longer and the destination lost somewhere on the misty road that i'm treading on.

Is it a wave of depression?No. It is a bevy of questions that i am not being able to find answers of.

Lost in translation

journal entry november 5th.........

We looked at the masters again today while discussing cubism and abstract expressionism in art. It was overwhelming and makes you realize what a human mind is capable of. I have looked at Picasso’s cubism but Marcel Duchamp came as a revelation of sorts. I think the creative work is not of the artist alone, it connects the spectator with it who adds more meaning to it by adding his/her own interpretations and thus gives the piece its wholesomeness. Though Duchamp had the elements of fragmentation and synthesis of cubists, he also had the dynamism of the futurists. This came across beautifully in his Nude descending staircase No. 2.

Pollock epitomizes the term “action painting” using his hand, wrist and whole body to paint while challenging the conventions of using an easel. Hence he consciously moved from figurative representation to a more immediate means of creating art. I understand his urgency to have his art the way he wanted it to but Damien Hirst was a shocker. The works of this artist are basically lumps of dead animals in formaldehyde. Maybe they were too zany to attract sane people. But I think Hirst is very clever, his tact was to first grab the attention, whether it will stand the test of time is a different question altogether. I think it has and definitely will. Hirst is kind of a showman, derives all his sadist pleasures from his commercial success. He has a league of his own and it here to stay.

and so it continues......

The " dope sheet " Bug

Two weeks of research led to a two page document on it; i think i read about a hundred pages on MS Word to get the whole idea into my stubborn "scientific" head.The fact that i witnessed a Lalgarh (May-June 2009) for the two months that i was at home made me reconsider whether i was actually cut out to do what i would be doing @ NDTV.
The "dope sheet " bug came along pretty quickly and i didnt need more than a minute's time to decide what i wanted to do. The Dope Sheet is essentially the foundation of a news story and it's one of NDTV's ingenious ways of making us know stuff that we all should have long back.It's a verbal,conversational presentation that we are asked to give a group of 40 aspiring journalists for around 10 mins or so.Here is what came out of it.


Naxalism and political insurgency in India: an inconvenient reality

Forty two years after the Naxalbari uprising, it is remarkable that Maoism remains a potent political force. It has survived the retreat of the Left in academia and trade unions, It has survived the rise of caste, politics, even the rise of the NGO sector, provided a platform to separate 'social' work from 'political' work.
While some Naxals of the 60s and 70s did make a few changes in their political beliefs and practices, the movement seems none the weaker for that reason. The Left landscape is a minefield of splinter groups, but for all their differences these organizations pose a serious threat to state power. Therefore, when one takes stock of 42 years of Naxalism, we should understand it as a phenomenon of the present rather than of the past.
The naxalite movement emerged from a violent uprising in Naxalbari on May 25th 1967 by the local peasants in protest of the CPI (M) government lead by Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal.Their main agenda has been to destroy the State legitimacy and to create a mass base, with certain degree of acceptability, with the ultimate object of attaining political power by violent means. This was the period in Europe, Asia and America, when new radical struggles were breaking out marked by the rereading of Marx, the rediscovery of the sources of revolutionary humanism
The Naxalite movement was a part of this contemporary, worldwide impulse among radicals to return to the roots of revolutionary idealism and they went to their base-the peasants who had a long tradition of fighting against imperialism and feudalism.

Presently the movement is restricted to an impoverished region known as the “Red Corridor” under which comes parts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal states. The main reasons why these areas are significant in such militant activity are because of indigenous tribal populations who are disadvantaged in their relationship with other components of society, deep caste divides and low literacy levels especially in Bihar and Jharkhand.
The movement is highly organized in terms of its hierarchy and uses a 13 member politbureau with state representatives who channelize funds for procuring arms and ammunitions. Their funds come from various sources like government and non-government funds, extorting money from businessmen, contractors and even from illegal opium cultivation in some states. Their modus operandi is predominantly by attacking police stations, infrastructure like rail and road transport and power transmission; manifest themselves through civil societies on issues like the SEZ policy, land reforms, displacement etc.
Interestingly, the involvement of women has been very high throughout its inception and hundreds of women have participated in encounters and ambush operations etc but most of them are now struggling to adapt themselves to mainstream life. Some are even fighting for the rights of surrendered women militants through community groups like the Bandhumitra.
The casualties in civilian lives and security forces in these areas have been over 6000 in the last 20 years and the government is yet to show some definitive action. The obstacles faced by the government are on the lines of weak political leadership in these areas, improper coordination between the centre and the state, also the economic backwardness cannot be ruled out. Another big setback was the failure of the salwa judum campaign. Though according to official claims, the Salwa Judum campaign was a Gandhian, voluntary and spontaneous movement that began in June 2005 but it was a cult of violence let loose. There is also a very strong naxal-politician nexus in the country which has to be disrupted. On paper, several measures to tackle the problem have been taken such as setting up of task forces like the CoBRA , organizational bodies, commissions, coordination teams, a 14-point action plan etc. However, the implementation of these measures is seriously flawed with the exception of the grey hounds in AP. It is important to determine whether this is a national problem or a state problem.
While the Naxalites operate only within geographical boundaries, the government has to operate within both geographical and political boundaries. This explains the divergence of approach between different states i.e in some states, it is possible for the government to hold talks with the Naxals, in others, it is not.
A proper analysis of the Naxal threat is very important given that while some of them are mercenaries and others are ideologues, a vast majority enter the movement because they have no other choice. Despite their theoretical allegiance to Marx and Lenin, they have not made any serious effort to organize urban masses, instead evolving over the years as a political organization of tribals, marginal peasants and Dalits in a corridor of about 150 districts from Bihar to Andhra Pradesh through Chhattisgarh and Orissa. Urban upper middle class ex-Naxals might laugh off the encirclement theory, but for rural cadres exposed to the excesses of urban India after the consumer boom of the 90s the cause remains plausible as ever. Thus the tools in the hands of Naxals are ideologies tailor-made for the oppressed masses, fear of the gun, and a messiah/Robin Hood image.
Another perspective that we could look at is the idea of development with naxals in power, if they are given government resources/private resources/funds for development activity that would be credited to them it would further enhance their image among the tribals ,but the return for the government would be sustained economic ventures enhancing the quality of life of the tribals and economic improvement will eventually bring about a change in perception. Development in Naxal areas will change a lot of existing dynamics.
The intellectuals of the country can and should play a greater role in defining the threat. It is important to spread the government's reach to large parts of untouched territories. Unless this is done, no amount of force can provide a solution. The biggest danger today is that of militarizing the problem. Fortunately, within the armed forces, there is great clarity that the army should not get involved in this problem. The police force, however, is still not capable of providing security. While better training and arming of the police forces is important, it is necessary to strategize various responses. This presents a difficult intellectual challenge and the national effort needs to be directed towards addressing it.
Media interest in such an issue has been substantial with the parallel film industry showing considerable interest in the issue with films like Sudhir Mishra’s Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi and Hazaar Chaurasi ki Ma adapted from Mahasweta Devi’s novel.
The fundamental question therefore still is to understand the nature of the threat before deciding upon the approach to deal with it. To understand today's India, it is essential to listen to these voices that describe the tortuous odyssey of a political movement that had been born from the womb of the bleeding Indian countryside.

Criticism and comments welcome.