Calcutta Conundrum

There are many people who are trying to understand Calcutta and unravel the mystery behind the thinking of its people after the Saurav Ganguly episode.

Saurav was kept out of the team after perfectly justifiable reasons. In fact, the performance of the team in the last two series amply demonstrates the validity of the move. The team actually looks much more positive and hungrier. Its fielding is outstanding and it has in large patches looked like the Australians in attitude. Saurav brought an infusion of guts to the team but that does not mean eternal selection.

Most people I speak to are very happy with his exclusion but the Calcuttans would have none of it. They booed Dravid and the Indian team though out the Eden match. Assorted celebrities from the world of cinema and arts come on television and protest against his exclusion. The city, which paints its walls with pictures of Ronaldo and Ronaldino during a world cup, jeers its own team. It justifies the superiority of its emotions over loyalty to country or civility.

Calcutta though has never reconciled the loss of its status as the pre-eminent city of the sub-continent. It still seethes over the perceived injustice of shifting the capital to Delhi. It is sensitive to issues, real and imaginary .It does not accept anything, which does not follow its way of thinking and living. In reality, this precludes this from being a great city. Great cities are known for their tolerance and universality of spirit, their ability to accept diversity of thoughts. Bombay lost its claim to being a great city the day it had the riots.


But it is not so easy to explain Calcutta. It celebrates Christmas and Durga Puja with fervour. Every family in Calcutta tries to buy cakes for Christmas. It has the some of the lowest communal hatred amongst Indian cities. It has a large heart. But the city also is a bundle of contradictions. I remember the issue of the person who was getting hanged after having raped and murdered a thirteen-year-old girl. There were candlelight marches and processions in his support. The newspapers were full of front-page stories with sympathy about this man. And this in a place, where diseased and dying masses confront you at every stop. In my stay in Calcutta, I have not seen the average Calcuttan exhibiting this trait of compassion over the people he sees everyday. But when it comes to deaths supposedly over a principle (death penalty), he is all eager to hit the streets. They fill up concert halls to listen to classical music and book fairs to buy Kafka and Camus showing their proclivity for fine things in life but they do not mind living with filth on the roads outside their doors.


So the Saurav episode is also another page in the book of contradictions that is Calcutta. There is no point in trying to understand it because it can never be understood.

Manjunath

Manjunath’s murder is symptomatic of the malaise in the system.

The earnest officer was being honest and fearless. He was perhaps too idealistic in the state of U.P. Here, you are expected to buckle down and accept injustice and unfairness. Here, you are expected to only see all the corruption and decay around you silently and possibly crib about this to your wife and friends. You are expected to slowly become a part of the same rotten system and start making money by being a player yourself. You are expected to throw the teachings of your conscientious parents and maybe Ayn Rand into the nearest dustbin and start chasing the average Indian dream of a three bed-room house with two airconditioners and one sedan. So what, if on the way to the dream, you do not recognise yourself in the mirror and you just see hollow eyes and a charred heart.

Manjunath refused to do that and he paid such a heavy price. I am appalled that the perpetrators of the crime even thought of committing such an act in cold blood and then getting away with it. In the process the utter lawlessness in the state of UP has been exposed.

It is a tribute to the Indian media that they have painstakingly followed up the story and given it the necessary exposure. NDTV and other channels besides several leading newspapers (led by Indian Express) have played an outstanding role in building up public consciousness.

However the IOC management and the government remain silent. Is it the silence of the guilty or the silence of the cornered?

The other question is that obviously the adulteration is not happening for the first time. According to some news reports, it is a racket of ten thousand crore rupees. So for the scam to be of this extent 1) either the other persons in charge have turned a blind eye out of fear and/or self-interest 2) or, the checking processes are inadequate. On both counts, it indicts the IOC top management and the oil ministry.

Manjunath’s sad end can be sanctified only if these larger issues are addressed.

HDI and GDP Growth

The joyful pandemonium over economic growth faintly amuses me and reminds me of the games that able gentlemen play in the corporate boardrooms and corridors. It goes like this.

When we are talking about the progress of the country we must consider the overall growth not only economic. This holistic growth status is better described by Human Development Index in a very useful annual exercise by UNDP. This is a composite indicator which captures the achievements of the country on three basic dimensions of human development namely income, health and education. It is a much more comprehensive indicator than simple GDP growth.

Economic growth is one of the requirements of poverty reduction and human development. It is probably a very good indicator for developed economies which have reached desired levels on parameters like infant mortality, life expectancy or literacy. So in one sense, the only play the developed countries can actually have is economic growth. But poor and developing countries have a lot of work to catch up on the other parameters and the obsessive focus on economic growth alone after ignoring other indicators of progress is callous and insensitive.

It is analogous to the situation, for example ,in FMCG companies where the progress of the brand is projected depending on the requirements of the managers. So based on the context the state of brand could be described by a) current marketshares(ms) b)ms growth over last year c)urban ms d)growth in urban ms e)growth in ms vis-à-vis last quarter f)primary sales growth (sales from company depots to distributors)g)offtake (sales from outlets to consumers) and several others. So in most likelihood, some factors would be showing high growth or a positive trend and the trick is to focus on those factors, hide the unpleasant indicators thus ignoring the holistic health of the brand.

Similarly, economic growth today is being focussed on because it is positive and it induces a feel-good factor. The media is the champion of this drum-beating and I almost see the country’s politicians and industrialists thumping their chests with pride when they meet their counterparts in various seminars and conferences and saying “Mera economic growth tera economic growth se zyada hai”.

They tend to forget that four hundred million of their countrymen go to bed hungry everyday and 2.5 million child deaths ( the highest in the world and one fifth of it) occur in India every year. They forget that even though we are making progress, in absolute terms we have only dented the mammoth poverty obstacle.Illiteracy, hunger, pregnancy related deaths, gender inequality and incidence of disease are rampant and we fare just above sub-saharan Africa on these parameters. The situation in Bihar, MP, Rajasthan and UP are almost as sorry as sub-saharan Africa. These unpleasant truths are captured by HDI but hidden in the metric of economic growth.

So even though India is amongst the top ten countries in economic output on purchasing power parity basis, it is an abysmal 127 on the HDI rankings.


Maybe, it is time the states are ranked on these parameters and they are incentivised on their performance(if not being done already) and this is given wide publicity. ‘India today’ attempts a ranking on these but awareness about it needs to be spread more. At least, the middle classes could use this as pointers to their voting.