Cycling

London World Naked Bike Ride event, in London,
on 12 June 2010. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

D: This is really lovely!

R: India te-o erom jodi hoto - taley activism e onek lok ashto!

D: Shudhu cheshta korar dorkar - lok aashbe. kintu amader 'activist-neta' praani eto bheetu ki shob kothay boley "lok toiri noy", jokhon ki sotyo kotha to ei ki ora neejerai toiri noy...

R: Kichu ta hochhey o, recently, Bombay te ekta cycle rally holo, young people der, shobai super-hero costume porey cycle korchhilo. Mojaar ghotona, with a message. Amaar ek chaatri, o passionate "active transport" and cycle-related public policy niye lorey jachhey, and besh kichu accomplish korey jachhey. Ekebare "non-political" meye ta, tobu o...

Neta-netri ... joto kom bola jaay, toto bhaalo!

D: Kolkatar ghotonar opor jodi kono report achhe to pathiye dao. Kaaje aashbe. Ekhaneo lokera cycle rally korechhe. BRT niye lorai cholechhe.

R: Kolkatay cyclists der obosthya ekhon bhishon jotil. Onek jaygay cycling banned, dhorey niye jaay. Ami kono din gaari chaalai ni, onek bochor cycle e ghora-phera kortam. Ekhon sheyta korte partam na, raastay jayga nei, gaari eto beshi, jiboner risk prochur. Dekhi, didimoni-ra ashaar por, ebong ekhon thekei, notun mayor ke diye, ki kora jaay.

An Open Letter to Mr Ratan Tata

25 October 2008

Dear Tata-ji

Thanks for your enlightening “open letter” which appeared in a section of the press on 17 October this year. But for this letter, we would never know that you were cherishing a noble “dream of contributing to the industrial revival of West Bengal” – our hapless state, which is foolish enough to disrupt your dream by a “politically motivated” agitation that finally forced your Nano out.

As a young boy in the early 1960s, I would look at the sky-high Tata Centre in Calcutta (Kolkata), awestruck. I was sure that my audacious eyes would never be able to straddle the Centre’s height, to try to touch the firmament. And now, at the age of 55, I once again understand that the experience and education I have gained meanwhile is too small to gauge the depth of your intelligence and imagination.

Two years ago, you had embarked on a small car project at Singur because you had “tremendous” faith in the policies of the West Bengal government, led by Mr Buddhadev Bhattacharjee. I wonder what made you so sure that Mr Bhattacharjee and his cohorts represent the public sentiments of the entire population! You never cared to probe the public mind of West Bengal since you entered into a secret deal with the state government over the said project.

In your letter, you have held out the prosperity that your project could usher in by creating jobs, providing livelihood to the local people and thus “enhancing” the quality of their lives. But why didn’t you make a clean breast of your plan and project to make the imbeciles that we are see how generous you are; to realise that while we are only fond of agitation, you stand for benediction? Why did you rather go to court to prevent the terms and conditions of the deal from coming to light? You have advised us to express our “views and aspirations” as to the future of West Bengal. Being a “good, contributing, corporate citizen”, why didn’t you set the example yourself?

You certainly remember the inaugural chapter of your Nano tragedy, scripted on 2 December 2006. The Singur peasants refused to part with their farm land – the source of their living. The police went on the rampage, pounced upon them and forcibly occupied the fertile land for your project, in your name. Sorry Tata-ji, we are too callous to understand how benevolent you are! By virtue of your wisdom, you have finally chosen the right “M”, but alas, our experience continues to misguide us by (mis)taking “T” for terror, rather than your celebrated surname.

With best wishes,

Sandip Bandyopadhyay

Tata bye bye

Finally, Mr Ratan Tata has announced that the Nano car plant of Tata Motors will not come up in Singur. The reason he has cited for his decision is the agitation led by Ms Mamata Bannerjee, on behalf of the farmers whose land was forcibly acquired for Tata by the West Bengal state govt.

But all thinking people can only welcome this decision. Sure, when someone loses something, they are not going to give it up gladly. They are going to scream and shout and rant and rave and protest and sulk and pout... The shrill cacophony of demolished delight over West Bengal's imagined industrial resurgence is just that.

The truth is that the Tata pullout is good news, for a number of reasons.

First, a resounding slap has been administered on the face of the CPI(M). In May 2006, riding high on a wave of media hype and puff, the party had declared that Tata's Nano unit was going to be located in West Bengal. In less than two and a half years, they have been brought to their knees, and entirely by their own idiocy and arrogance.  The CPI(M) thought (and still thinks) that they own the state, that they can do as they please, that they can snarl and kick people into submitting to its dictates.  Well, they have learnt a lesson, but yes, given what CPI(M) is, it never learns the right kind of lessons.  But learn or don't learn, they have had to face facts. And that is indeed something positive.

Second, in recent weeks the discourse on the Nano project has brought to the fore the fact that the West Bengal govt is in effect subsidising Tata Motors, to enable the car to be priced at Rs 1 lakh (one hundred thousand rupees, or about $ 2,500). Now why should the state subsidise Tata Motors? Why should it subsidise a car project? Why should it subsidise purchasers of a car? Why should it subsidise personal transport? In economists' jargon, the opportunity cost of state expenditure on the Nano project, i.e. what is lost by such support, or the alternatives upon which this could instead have been spent, was simply too high.

Third, from about 2005, the CPI(M) had been hoodlumming through its land acquisition drive, to please its capitalist masters. The Nandigram agitation had punctured that. And now, the Tata withdrawal from Singur has just emphasised once more to the CPI(M), in brutal terms, that it cannot grab farmers' land. It was protest in Singur, from 2006, that had catalysed people's agitations across West Bengal, and begun the process of demise of the mafia mobster party, something most people could never have anticipated. 

All that remains now, the icing on the cake for the people of Bengal, is the verdict of the court on Suhrid Dutta, the CPI(M)'s Singur zonal committee secretary. He is in custody and facing trial on the accusation of organising the rape and murder of Tapasi Malik, a teenage girl who was a member of the farmers' anti-land acquisition movement in Singur. I wonder what ideological obfuscations the CPI(M) would proffer when he is sentenced to death.

If the people of West Bengal want something positive for themselves, then they should not depend upon the CPI(M) or on external vultures like Tata Motors to give it to them on a platter. That will only bring deceit and destruction. There is much that can and should be done. There is public transport. There is public healthcare. There is public education. There are closed industries that need reviving. There are many, many products that can be produced, which would be wholesome in every way. But for that, vision, enterprise and effort are needed. Thanks to the CPI(M)'s noxious nurturing these are hard to find in Bengal today. But unless the people of Bengal come forward to build Bengal's future, the only prospect is submission to CPI(M) and Tatas, the road to slavery.

The slaves and the slave contractors are wailing at the exit of Tata. But if there was ever a bright day for Bengal, then it was 3 October, the date of the Tata pull-out. For this date tells the people of Bengal that freedom won through hardship is more precious than the comfits of slavery.  

Apparently the state industries minister, Nirupam Sen, has said that he does not feel like living in Bengal. Well, I hope he goes away very soon. It seems he has begun to get a taste of what the common people of the land have been feeling for over 2 decades. Thanks to the presence of his wonderful party, there has been a mass migration of people from the state, by choice and by compulsion. Any person in his or her senses, who knew what was best for one's future, left the state. Only vultures flocked to the land, and the party was their lapdog. But with the Tata pull-out, people should start reconsidering. Maybe its time for all those who had forsaken Bengal, all those who had been driven out, to think of returning. There's a future to be built. The rats will be leaving their sinking ship. And for those who held on to hope and humanity and stayed behind, perhaps vindication is finally arriving.

End of days

It has once again been demonstrated that the prime sport or means of entertainment in India is politics, or rather the antics of political parties in their greed for power (which brings immense loot). Sadly, the coming Beijing Olympics will not enable our political champions to display their prowess. Neither will India's incomparable free media, that great pillar of our democracy, be able to exhibit its dumbing prowess.

Like the froth and foam bubbling over a cesspool, the political arena in again in ferment. The CPI(M)-led Left had suddenly found itself in the position of being able to rail against the USA. Like King Canute, commanding the tide to stop. But the reality is that the CPI(M) is just a criminal mafia pretending to be a political party. All their oh-so-pious pronouncements sound hilarious when juxtaposed with what happens in, through and in the name of the party in its base of power, West Bengal.

If the Left had to pull down the govt - there were many reasons to do this. The current inflation; the farmer suicides; the collapse of public systems; the obscene socio-economic disparities - were all ground enough. If they could be so adamantly against the nuclear deal with the USA, why did they not show that same adamant attitude on matters that affect the daily lives of the masses, those in whose name they claim to act? If the Congress has patently failed in the last 4 years, then so has the Left because they were propping up the govt. They thought they would have power without responsibilities. They thought they would have the cake and eat it too. And now they are the laughing stock of the country, fit to be thrown where they rightly belong, the refuse heap of history.

Thankfully, whatever enabled the CPI(M) to keep returning to power has begun to collapse, and the party is facing one electoral setback after another. It can now only sit back and watch its demise which is unstoppable, like a terminal patient. They are helpless against the poison fruits of all that they sowed and nurtured for so many years.

People here are now talking about the end of Ceaucescu. Ministers in West Bengal would now know that they may be pulled out of their cars and lynched on the streets. By their own party members perhaps, for thus the latter could hope to evade a similar fate and have a chance for a future under the new regime. Ironically, it is only the Constitution and the rule of law that can save the lives of the party leaders from the visceral ire of the people, when they cared a fig for the Constitution and rule of law in all their time in power and rigorously supervised over the erasure of the rule of law.

But the passing of the CPI(M) rule does not signify anything positive in substantive terms. Status quo will be maintained, but with the spoils of power now being taken by the Trinamul. For instance, the auto rickshaw mafia and the private bus mafia and the land development mafia will all continue, but they will owe allegiance to Mamata didi.

At the centre - anything can happen. Ants are in everyone's pants. Everyone has egg on their face. But the only party really gleeful right now, the only one whose stock is set to rise metorically, is Trinamul. With the stock markets in a tail-spin and with inflation shooting, the best investment right now would be on Trinamul. The gates for entry into a share of the spoils from their being in power will be closed very soon.

Mayavati is a prime PM candidate in the next national elections. I have had a feeling for some time that Mayavati would be assasinated, possibly with US involvement.

But who is at the centre - does that matter at all in terms of making a positive difference to the people? With global economic forces at play, what can a national govt of a poor nation do? The current crisis of inflation and the govt's helplessness to deal with it illustrates that. What is more relevant is the spread of militant insurgency, of the naxal-maoist variety. This undermines the state from below, even as its significance is whittled away from above.

The inevitable civil war / showdown between people in India, essentially the haves and the have-nots, comes closer. No more beating around the bush, no more mediation of the state. So, in Calcutta, maid-servants, cycle rickshaw-pullers, drivers etc would ransack their babu-masters' homes and help themselves to the swag. Those who can, will protect themselves in every way they can. The business of security will flourish.

Beijing photoblog

Here are some images from Beijing.































































































































View a slide-show of all the pictures from Beijing here.