I felt agitated when I read a post like this. You must read that post and then read this response of mine...
I am a Bengalee and I feel displaced everyday of my life, like scores that traverse this earth. Even though I am enjoying the fruits of liberalisation in Bangalore. I yearn to go back and live in Kolkata. I never voted the leftist while I was there but I wish I could vote for them now.
Sumit Sarkar's problem is very typical of what I have seen of other "antels" in Bengal.
When i visited Calcutta this time with a little hope I was shocked to see many educated but not so worldly Bengalee minds' are in a state of insomnia.
They want industrialisation but they dont want to give land. And when they want to give land to businessmen they dont want to give the good land. They question the left just because of their past and not their present. They criticise and deconstruct but without any alternative.
How many people know that 30% of cultivalable land in Bengal is the made up of the land dividers? But no Bengalee raises this issue and thinks of about increasing farm productivity.
World over development has been from an agragrian to industrial state. The loss of land has been made up by the increase in productivity.
If Sumit Sarkar claims to have visited Singur I too have claimed to have visited the other prosperous farmlands of Punjab, Uttaranchal, Andhra and Maharashtra. I have also visited tractor & car plants in Noida where a farmers son works as a technician, owns a car and send his daughter to school.
To oppose any change has become ingrained in a Bengalee mind. I am fairly apolitical but I do know what harm Jyoti Basu had done to Bengal. But I can equally see a rabble rouser like Mamata cant be a future of any civilization.
People like Sumit Sarkar are selfish. They do not have the vision to think of the coming generation. Just like Mr. Basu.
Result? Millions of Prabasi Bengalees have to create mini Kolkatas to taste the nostalgia that was once their daily life.This is Bengal's last chance to give politics a backseat. We need to work and move forward. Not to talk and stop and question and debate.
The Sumit Sarkars can have their Utopia in Heavan. I am not against them, every society needs them but not now. We would need them after 20 years in Bengal when rampant industrialisation would need some activism. One cannot build bumpers on the road before building the road.
Give hope a chance howsoever cruel it looks.
11 comments:
sabas! go man go! show the finger to all the 'intellectuals'..
and i second your view.
most bengalis i meet have this dilemma of standing up for the so-called "common man" and welcoming economic growth. nothing is without flaws but we need to grin and bear some things for our growth. we lament working in MNCs for our foriegn masters but don't mind drinking our guts out in the pub - which is possible only because of foreign investment in india. now i hope that the people in singur also get a good deal so they can lament likewise.
good comment scout. good analysis.
but this is just kaushik to know that his comment has been deleted.
thanks Ghetu for the info.. It makes me feel proud that he wasted those minutes to delete my comment. But what did Harry Belafonte say "you can cage the singer but you cannot cage the song"
deleted the comment???amazing!! there's a thinking intellectual for you..need to check out the status of my comment..
good point scout..
Hullo, thanks for your visit to my blog and comments. I deleted your comments because I could'nt be bothered to respond to the points made. I can accept such views and perspectives existing, but I do not feel the need to engage with them at all. Its like choosing whom to invite into one's house. There's a fundamental sync problem here. I have no desire to begin teaching someone the alphabet as it were. Or to point out all the contradictions and fallacies inherent in the comments made. People will learn by themselves if they genuinely want to, if they have a self-critical faculty. And meanwhile do feel free to gleefully and in concert with your ilk-mates fulminate, decry, demean, ridicule whatever ... It makes no difference whatsoever to me.
Best
rama
hi rama,
I think u took it personally. But i will not delete you comment. You write well. So u can can coexist.
thank god i removed my comment from his site! now we can gleefully fulminate with our ilk.
just want to point out the inherent insecurity in a person who cannot let opposing viewpoints co-exist.
couldn't read to the end of rama's comment but shuv makes a good point. maybe i can fleefully illuminate with my gilk.
Complicated, very complicated issue. I do not want to take political sides (anti-left, left, left-liberal, etc). However, one point to note here - for the last 30 years (minus the last 2 years), the left front government was completely against any kind of improvement in the state - the only improvements allowed were those that increased vote-bank inputs. Remember how English as a language of instruction was removed/criticised, by the same government? it surprises me that such a heavily-loaded vehicle could have just taken a quick U-turn on a road that is so skiddy! well, no wonder they skid - because a couple of years back, the same cadres who were all behind the rural folks for collecting their votes, were suddenly up with guns against the poor guys. Questions that come to my mind right now, is whether it is really for improvement, or due to some promises made to some rich guy somewhere, to give the land away, AT ANY COST! and therefore ensuring a flow of money into party funds, perhaps. difficult to analyse, difficult to find the truth.
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