Udayan Namboodiri elaborates on a little-known prophesy that condemns West Bengal denizens
The discourse on West Bengal’s economy is so riddled with clichés that one wonders if its mediocrity has anything to with the inability of this state of 90 million to lean in on the great Indian growth story. Since the 1950s, misgivings over federal ‘neglect’ led to a certain consensus that the Bengal’s side-flanking was a conspiracy. That’s how the Bengali political class befooled the masses to hide its failure to latch the state to the engines of post-1991 economic liberalisation. With the passage of time, …
the combined effect of several hogwash theories has been to shackle the collective will into a condition of inertia, which grips the entire state today. Perhaps at no point in history had so many people found themselves manacled by collective déjà vu as the Bengal denizens do in the second decade of the 21st century. But then, this is just part of a continuum – inescapably linked to a tale that the present generation of Bengalis have no control over.
In August 2011, when there was talk of poriborton (“change”) in the air after Mamata Banerjee rode a tremendous crest to topple three decades of pernicious Stalinism which passed off as Baam Front Shashon (“Left Front rule”), I was invited by Father Felix Raj, the principal of St. Xavier’s College, to be part of a panel of experts to address the students of his economics department on the “road ahead”.
Within 10 minutes of the address of my first co-panelist, an “economist” (actually no more than a teacher of graduate students in another university), I regretted taking the trouble of waking up early to catch the first flight to Kolkata to honor a commitment I’d given to Father Felix months earlier to be there with him to make the incipient Jesuit Economics Association a success. Reason: the gentleman was absolutely, comprehensively and resolutely entrapped in a fanciful notion harped ad infintum from the mid-1990s that held that wealth does trickle down via gung-ho industrial outputting. As he, followed by two more –another “economist” and a representative of the corporatized world – blabbered on about the virtues of lasseiz faire expansionism over State-moderated liberal economy planning, my hearing went on auto shut mode. I watched for a while the faces of the youngsters before me and a thought crossed my mind: “How many of these kids are really interested?” Would they be willing to invest their own youths for the economic revival of West Bengal, supposedly their home state? From the looks of some of them it was clear they were merely marking their attendance. Most of them would rather be in a workshop on how to crack the common admission test to the elite management schools. Or, maybe, a USEFI-sponsored “What’s the right kind of graduate school in the United States for me?” I looked for the quintessential Bengali mystic, the kind who in another age would be glad to be anywhere where intelligent conversation was assured, but realized St. Xavier’s today was perhaps too much of an assembly line churning out `finished products` for those types to survive. The academic year was packed so tightly with lectures, special lectures and examinations that Father Felix, as he recalled to me, had to practically lift mountains to find two free hours.
I said to myself, what was the point of disseminating the “road ahead” when it was plain as daylight that these kids had their roads well laid out already? And it led only one way – out of West Bengal. Kolkata would be forever an object of crushing nostalgia, a timeless zone of familiar sights and smells. These kids, being products of an excellence detection system based on learning by rote, are unlikely to ever conceive an original perception on any issue, so why should I come between them and a sumptuous lunch which promised at the end of the session?
It struck me that Father Felix had been counting on me to break the languor whose inevitability was fully known to him. As the last speaker, I was expected to perform the Herculean feat of keeping the eyelids of each member of the audience apart for all of 15-20 minutes. My favorite way to begin to do so is by making your presentation inter-active. After the shortest-possible self-introduction (which included by stating that I’d spent 10 years of my life in St. Xavier’s) I fired my first salvo:
“How many of you see yourselves in Kolkata a year from now?”
Only about half the audience raised their hands. That’s a fine start I said aloud.
“How many of you see yourselves in Kolkata five years from now?”
Only about a dozen; maybe sons and daughters of local business people I said to myself.
The next one, about spending 10 years, produced more or less the same result. Which goes a long way to say that the uniqueness of Kolkata grows into you over time, making it impossible to feel at home any place else.
West Bengal no longer holds out “prospects”, which means the top jobs bypass its only viable city, Kolkata. The best minds of Bengal, never famous as creators of jobs, are forced to seek economic refuge in India’s growth centers which lie westwards and to the south. So, the snap poll that I conducted was not expected to produce anything profoundly new. The Bengali has been on the move since 1947 when the Partition of India destroyed the natural economy of the province and left too many people fighting for too few resources. Like the Punjabis and the Sindhis, the other victims of Partition, the Bengalis resemble national adhesives in the sense that there is hardly a taluka in the vast sub-continent without these three sub-nationals entrenched in the local economy in often particular roles – the Sindhi is the trader, the Punjabi the transporter and the Bengali the diverse specialist. But there is an essential difference between the predicaments of the Punjabi and that of the Bengali. The Punjabi remained on top of the food chain in East Punjab, but the Bengali, for reasons internal to his socio-economic ethos, compromised it and was forced to the position of the economic diminutive in his own state.
By now, I was sure I’d become some kind of a freak show to these products of Bengal’s selfish elite. As a class it harbors greater interest in perpetuating rather than ending the economic marginalization of the state because its deepening poverty indices assures them a steady supply of kitchen maids and drivers. Most of the scandalous aspects of Baam Shashon perfidy had worked to their benefit: the ban on English in schools for the masses had restricted competition and ensured continued predominance; the squeezing out of respectable economic players through forced strikes had created ideal conditions for crony capitalism which eminently suited its beneficiaries (again, them) and, most importantly, the banishment of every notion of transparency from public life which ensured, even by Indian national standards, record lows in tax compliance and assured the latest comforts at medieval costs. These folks were, simply put, untouchables. Mamata Banerjee’s promised “revolution” was for the birds; their only concern was the building of mutually profitable equations with the new denizens of Writers’ Buildings.
It’s a good question why, then, would the young of this incestuous class want out? Are they not pessimistic of their chances of survival in societies where professionalism and meritocracy prevail over the nepotistic way of life which had helped their growth? Amazingly, they are not. If these guys, at least the young among them, didn’t yearn for a different life, the cultural climate of Bengal would be rendered quite dystrophic, and since it retains some of its old vibrancy, one tends to overcome the binary vision when judging the Bengali moral temper.
Living in Delhi myself for over 15 years now, I have seen how effortlessly talented Bengalis from Kolkata have slipped into positions of authority in the ‘new’ economic engines of India – IT, financial services, media and academia. The Xaverians, I was addressing, were actually willing to shed their privileged, cocooned lifestyles and compete with their compatriots to seek greater fulfillment in other parts of India and the world where, despite the flip sides of neo-liberalism, the air is not filled with the pungent odor of rotting sacking which permeates the consciousness in Kolkata.
“So, what should you care about the road ahead for a place you are not keen on investing in yourselves?”
My questions produced the first signs of a stir. Since this one did not demand a show of hands, the reactions were confined to their faces – young, hopeful and eager with a vague trace of uncompromised idealism.
I turned anecdotal.
“You all would have heard of Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, the first chief minister of West Bengal?”
The electrifying effect of that name, even 49 years after the passing of the only Bengali post-Independence era politician enjoying bipartisan respect as the ‘builder’ of modern West Bengal, was indeed interesting. These kinds were born a generation after Dr Roy’s death, and had most certainly heard of him in the context of contrasting narratives; the one of despair in the present compared to the dreams of their grandfathers which the physician-politician had generated.
I rushed to the next scene, set in a meeting hall very much like this one but in another age – the 1950s. It is filled with the business leaders of Bengal, and the chief minister is addressing delegates of the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He is telling them a few home truths and for the benefit of my audience, I initially decided to quote Dr Roy directly from the narrative of my only source on this event, Dr Roy’s former secretary, who wrote this in his memoirs published in the early 1980s.
“West Bengal is today the most industrialized state of India, with the highest per capita income. The Income Tax department raises the highest revenue from our state. We are building new industries faster than any other state, attracting the best and brightest from all over India and even other countries of Asia to our ever-growing economy. I am conscious that to sustain this growth we need more electric power, more homes for people to live in, more ancillary industries so that people have a choice of jobs. To meet these demands, we are building the Ruhr of India in Durgapur. We are adding more power capacities. New towns are coming up in Kalyani and on the eastern salt marshes by dredging the River Hooghly whose silt will be vacuumed up and transported there with the help of huge pipes. We will soon be drawing up a detailed project report for an underground railway system for Calcutta…”
The crowd of businessmen and technocrats broke into cheers. The future indeed looked great. But Dr Roy paused here and adopted a more serious demeanor.
“But I am sorry to observe that none of this would have been possible without the largesse of the central government in Delhi. Time and again Panditji (Prime Minister Nehru) has told me ‘Bidhan babu, as long as I am around your Bengal will be showered with the best projects and all your projects will be cleared. But what will happen after our time? I don’t see a single Bengali entrepreneur come forward with an industrial proposal.’”
Dr Roy then lashed out at that self-destructive, indolent streak in the Bengalis which leads them to willingly hand over the levers of their province’s economy to outsiders – whether from abroad or upcountry— while withdrawing to seek comfort in secure jobs with fixed salaries. He told the gathering in no uncertain terms that the day is not far when West Bengal would lose its premier place in the national economy and begin an unceasing hurtle into obscurity and irrelevance.
“When I go to the other states, Punjab, Madras, Bombay…what do I see? Young men starting factories instead of looking for ideal jobs. They are raising capital by mortgaging their own homes to the banks. This is leading to brother collaborating with brother, cousin linking up with cousin and so on. A person having one factory employing three people five years back is now the owner of five factories employing 800 people. But what do I see here? We Bengalis are only interested in jobs. We look up to investors from outside to create the jobs.”
Hushed silence descended on the assemblage as he told them of a personal encounter which left him in low spirits about West Bengal’s future.
“ A young man, scion of a famous zamindar family from East Bengal, whose family I’d known well for years, came to see me some time back. He wanted a recommendation from me for a job in one of the top companies which takes in ‘pupils’ for building into covenanted managers. These jobs are only given to those born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths – which I regret.”
“I told this chap, ‘Why are you thinking of being somebody’s employee. You should start your own factory. There are so many British factories which are being sold cheap and Marwari businessmen are buying them up. Why don’t you? Your family has just sold off its lands in Pakistan, you have enough money. After a few years you buy another factory and soon you will be heading an industrial empire.’”
“The young man went away. A few days later he called on me again with the same old request for a recommendation. I asked him, ‘What about starting the factory?’ He told me without the slightest trace of embarrassment, ‘My father told me to invest my money in fixed deposits…’”
A peal of laughter broke across the hall as I related this to my young audience. The Bengalis, unlike most other categories of Indians, know how to mock their own shortcomings. But when it comes to taking lessons from history, the failing is spectacular. The enduring relevance of the story is the oft-repeated homilies of self-styled “economists” who never tire of haranguing generations of Dr Roy’s successors for their “failure” to attract investors from other states and countries to West Bengal.
Unwittingly, as I stood there that morning, I seemed to be possessed by the spirit of Dr Roy: one body two men, both articulating despair from the deepest innards of the Bengali being.
“Why should a people from outside invest in a province whose own sons (and now daughters) want to leave it?”
“The Bengali must take stock of his own position and decide that none other than him alone can make a difference to Bengal. Depending on the outsider for succor is a sign of irretrievable decay.”
I had hoped that using myself as a subject of historical morphing would prove effective as a communication tool. While addressing young crowds, I keep only one objective in mind, the long-term objective – to remain permanently in their memory. My co-panelists had only a short-term goal, to iterate with deadening monotony the same fallacious line which has consumed them. But for me what was important was to make an indelible impression on their imaginations. For the rest of their lives, whenever either Dr Roy or the thought of West Bengal’s revival rankled, most of those youngsters would recall me, the guy with the funny last name.
