MAIDAN-I-JUNG

[This was written in the Telegraph on 26 February 2008. when on a petition of green jihadis, the Calcutta High Court banished the Calcutta Book Fair from the Maidan, the sprawling open space at the heart of Calcutta.]

MAIDAN-I-JUNG

Calcuttans have been fighting a sanguine battle over whether the book fair should be held on the Maidan. The row evokes strong emotions on both sides. On the one side, booklovers, amongst whom Buddhadev Bhattacharya counts himself, think that there is something beautifully Bengali about the book fair, as with Shantiniketan’s Poush Mela. The picture of young women going to the fair and returning laden with books is as romantic to them as one of young women going to the village well and returning with pots balanced on their heads is to less literate Indians. On the other side, the sight of the Maidan being ravaged by uncouth booksellers digging holes, spreading shop-soiled books that they want to get rid of on rickety tables in jerrybuilt stalls, outrages the Bengali who orders his books from Blackwells and would rather use the Maidan for cricket and racing.

In the time-honoured Bengali tradition, the two sides talked at each other instead of to each other. Each wanted an extreme solution, and would settle for nothing less. So typically they ended up in Calcutta High Court, and typically it intervened in a matter that had little to do with law. If law were involved, it would be relevant only to deciding who, if anyone, had the right to dispose of the Maidan, and whether he had followed whatever rules he was subject to. This matter was illuminated in The Telegraph; apparently, the army was the relevant authority, and it was unwilling to host any more book fairs. However, there was still the Park Circus maidan, which belonged to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. It was not charging the usual rent, and there could be doubt on whether it had given a discount correctly or not; this was the full extent of possible controversy as I saw it. But the High Court had other ideas; it simply stopped the booksellers and their benefactors – the government, the corporation, the communist party – in their tracks. Just what it sought to achieve thereby, apart from favouring one side, is not clear to me. And if it was only a matter of taking sides, one hardly needs the High Court to do it; any old Bengali can do it with passion.

But then, Calcutta has the habit of taking its quarrels to the courts. Some years ago, Calcutta was plagued by street processions of disaffected trade unionists. Whereas Shiv Sainiks, when they get worked up about anything, go out, smash taxis and ravage shops, Calcuttans form a procession, shout slogans, and fling their arms about. It is not their intention to disrupt traffic; but if motorists insist on using the roads precisely when the affected processionists have to pour out their passions in public, it is hardly the latter’s fault.

That was not the view taken by an honourable judge of Calcutta High Court when a procession delayed his proceeding to the court. I cannot remember whom he hauled up, but he was quite effective. Nowadays, when I go to Calcutta, I miss the sight of miscellaneous workers enjoying themselves on the roads. It used to be as if people who did not know the ABC of dancing had invented what they thought was Bharat Natyam. It is a tragedy that with the exodus of industry and commerce from Calcutta, the tribe of strikers is dying out. Whilst those who came to Calcutta for board meetings might not have appreciated the screaming workers outside the door, I am sure that many tourists came just to see those workers; if the latter die out, Calcutta will lose many a visitor.

This is a problem that other countries have faced, and some have worked out quite ingenious solutions. In New Zealand, for example, Maori tribes died out long ago. But without them, New Zealand is indistinguishable from, say, Wales. English may be spoken differently there, but then, every speaker of English has a right to murder it in his own way. Hardly any tourist is likely to travel halfway round the world just to hear the New Zealanders speak English. So New Zealand has turned some places into Maori villages, with antique huts and so on. When tourists are to visit them, they gather Maori-looking bartenders and bus drivers, take clothes off them and drape them in cowhide, give them a spear and get them to make warlike noises. To me it looked quite authentic. And if you cannot go to New Zealand, you only have to go to Gujarat at Navratri and see 10,000 young men and women do garba on a Maidan to get my point.

I would recommend this solution to Buddhadev; he must, for Calcutta’s prosperity, get some of his followers to dress up every Sunday morning and march to the Maidan shouting revolutionary slogans. It does not have to be so drab as it used to be. He can dress them up like, say, Santal tribesmen, and pay Indian Ocean, that wonderful half-Bengali band, to compose music for them. If he does it cleverly, West Bengal can make much more money out of tourism that it ever will out of a chemical factory.

But let me come back to the point: is a fair the best way to sell books? I can think of a better way: a book street. One of the most enchanting places I have visited is the old fort of Damascus, which was built by Knights Templar a thousand years ago. Inside the fort, there is no traffic; it is an entirely pedestrian area. Each street in this fort has shops selling only one product. There is a street for jewellery, another for wedding dresses, and so on. It is like walking into a fairyland.

It would be nice if Calcutta, or some of part of it, came to be organized like that, with streets devoted to books (and now, CDs and DVDs). I am told that College Street was one. But nowadays when I go there, it looks little different from the rest of Calcutta; the few books one finds there are mostly textbooks and popular books. A book street is what Buddhadev should work on; he will be remembered more fondly for it than for a car factory.

And fairs – have they any life left in them? I think so. Calcutta is not a linear city, with streets purposefully marching off in one or other direction. It is an engagingly confused city with streets that often go nowhere in particular. Calcutta has many neighbourhoods off main roads. They should be turned into pedestrian areas on Sundays, and residents should be encouraged to spread tables outside their homes and offer all their considerable junk for sale. To attract custom they may make and sell delicacies. They may revive the old Bengali art of making toddy. They may put up posters of film stars. They may start practicing, in a small way, the Gujarati art of buying and selling; and who knows, in a few years they will become the best shopkeepers in India. It would only be jest if they were to inherit the title of a nation of shopkeepers which the British vacated some time ago.

CAN BENGAL INDUSTRIALIZE?

[Bengal was India's most industrialized state still the 1950s. Then its industries got into trouble, their workers were unionized by communists. They won elections in 1977, and have been in power ever since. Industrialists have withdrawn from the state and set themselves up in more friendly states in the west and south. Recently, however, the communist government has tried to attract private industry. Its most conspicuous success in persuading the Tatas to make a small car in India has run into trouble over land acquisition, which has been strongly resisted by people who would lose their land and their jobs. I wrote this critique of West Bengal government's attempts to attract industry in the Calcutta Telegraph of 3 January 2007.]

CAN BENGAL INDUSTRIALIZE?

Being a west Indian, I never met a Bengali till I was through my teens. My image of Bengal was shaped by Rabindra Nath Tagore, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Satyajit Ray. I used to think that the Bengalis were the most talented Indians. When I went abroad, I met my first Bengalis, and the awe in which I held them depreciated; especially after I went to Germany and found even children speaking German, I came to think that Germans were more intelligent than Bengalis.
But then I made some good Bengali friends. So I was pained when West Bengal began after 1965 to make news for all the wrong reasons: strikes, bandhs, gheraos, processions, and economic paralysis. My Bengali friends were, of course, overjoyed that revolution was round the corner. Slowly, though, these disruptions passed out of the news although they continued: West Bengal ceased to matter to the rest of India.
Today, I find West Bengal again in the news – not for the bandhs and processions which continue, but for Singur. The lineup is, however, different. Whereas the communists were the villains of the 1970s and 1980s, angels are on their side today; so also are capitalist devils. Everyone takes it for granted that Ratan Tata’s plan to make people’s cars in Singur is a Good Thing, that it is heroic of Buddhadev Bhattacharya to vanquish all opposition to it, and that Mamata Banerjee is a crazy Luddite.
Ratan Tata is one of the most respected men of my generation. But I find some of his recent actions uncharacteristic. Throughout independent India’s history, the Tatas kept a distance from the government. In the licence-permit raj, the right to expand or diversify became a favour from the government for which businessmen had to fight and bribe. Most of them did both. But the Tatas stuck to their knitting, and did what they could without courting politicians, begging for favours and oiling political wheels. They dominated the truck and bus industry, made TISCO the least-cost steel producer, and built up TCS outside the control net. They did not bend their knee to anyone – not to Indira Gandhi, nor to Rajiv, nor to George Fernandes. When I joined government in the 1990s, controls were still in place. Many industrialists came to pay court or nudge files along; never anyone from the Tatas. For that I respected them – and so did many of my fellow-Indians.
Singur is the first project on which the Tatas have relied on a government – this time the government of West Bengal – and sought its favours. This is not necessarily improper – not unless they raise their contributions to CPI(M) immoderately – but it is unusual; this is precisely the sort of thing they eschewed when it was so much more common and so necessary for success.
What made them change? My guess is that after the passing of central controls, competition has intensified, corruption has seeped from the centre to the states, and in the dirty new world that has arrived, the Tatas have decided that the West Bengal government is the lesser evil. With the opening up of the economy, it has become easy to import automobile components. And for the smaller manufacturers, accessing the export market has become essential if they are to reach the necessary minimum scale. So the entire automobile industry is rushing to the coast. Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are the favoured locations. Tamil politicians are reputed to be economically rational; and the BJP, of which Narendra Modi is the satrap in Gujarat, is equally realistic about the relationship between power and political prosperity. Ratan Tata has publicly rued that the Tatas were kept out of the aviation industry while sundry upstarts approached politicians and obtained licences. It must hurt because both JRD and Ratan have been amateur flyers and because Air India, the Tatas’ pioneer airline, was snatched away by the government. Ratan Tata presumably found Tata Motors losing out because it would not bribe the politicians of the coastal states; he made a bargain with the government of West Bengal that he found acceptable. I would like to know, though, what the bargain is.
I wondered, earlier, about the Tatas’ bid for Corus. The Birlas were the first to go international; today, every Tom, Dick and Harry is buying companies abroad. But the Tatas stuck to their domestic base through the worst years of controls; why are they trying to acquire a foreign company three times the size of Tata Steel? I attributed the decision to the forthcoming consolidation of the world steel industry, of the emergence of big players like Mittal-Arcelor and their likely entry into the Indian market space. But then I realized that the Tatas were not far behind in acquisitions abroad; their companies too have been spreading out since it was allowed. So I now wonder if it has something to do with the competitive corruption emerging between Indian states – whether the Tatas are winning beachheads in markets abroad where industry is freer and governments cleaner.
Coming to West Bengal, it has always struck me how top-down development in this state is. If you look at India’s most developed states – Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat – most industry there is indigenous and small-scale. All the businessmen whom the West Bengal government favours are big and non-Bengali. In the 1980s and 1990s, they were foreign; Indian industrialists were not welcome. Even now they are generally foreign, like the Salims. The Tatas are the first Indian group to have found favour; and they are different. They treat their workers well, and are friendly to trade unions. They are more congenial to communists.
In particular, I have been struck by Buddhadev’s studied neglect of Mukesh. He is sitting on huge reserves of gas of the Krishna-Godavari coast, and is looking for somewhere to land it and sell it. He tried UP, but the split with Anil wrecked that plan. He has been courting Tamil Nadu, so far without success. All that gas would transform the industrial future of West Bengal. What makes Buddhadev hesitate? The spectre of CITU descending on Calcutta with hundreds of thousands of coal miners?
So I am tempted to formulate the following laws of development under communism. The communist state is a slave of its trade unions. It is forced to rely on big industrialists because small industry cannot survive organized, militant trade unions. Amongst big industrialists it prefers foreign ones who would have no constituency in this country. If it cannot get them, it will settle for Indian ones, but only if they accept CITU. And competition in product markets weakens the bargaining power of trade unions; so it would prefer firms that have a monopoly or a niche market.
These are stringent requirements; if the West Bengal government sticks to them, it may attract Tata Motors, but it will achieve little overall industrialization of the state. If I am right, Buddhadev will face increasingly obstinate opposition within the CPM family, will win ever greater admiration from the bourgeoisie, and will be largely ineffective. It is not his fault; it is the party he belongs to. He should bend it to his will, or split it.