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By:

Kiran D. Tare

21 August 2024 at 11:23:13 am

Bengal’s Ludwig Erhard

For decades, Swapan Dasgupta made a career of diagnosing India’s political ailments. As a columnist, editor, author and public intellectual, the erudite and scintillating Dasgupta dissected challenged orthodoxies and defended the intellectual traditions of the Indian Right. However, following his new appointment as the new Finance Minister of a West Bengal in economic doldrums, he perhaps faces the most demanding assignment of his career. His supporters however are confident that if there is...

Bengal’s Ludwig Erhard

For decades, Swapan Dasgupta made a career of diagnosing India’s political ailments. As a columnist, editor, author and public intellectual, the erudite and scintillating Dasgupta dissected challenged orthodoxies and defended the intellectual traditions of the Indian Right. However, following his new appointment as the new Finance Minister of a West Bengal in economic doldrums, he perhaps faces the most demanding assignment of his career. His supporters however are confident that if there is anyone most suited to sort out Bengal’s messy economy, it is Dasgupta. His appointment following the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ascent to power in Bengal after overthrowing Mamata Banerjee’s TMC regime is among the more intriguing political transitions in recent Indian political memory. India has seen journalists cross into politics before. M.J. Akbar moved from the newsroom to the Ministry of External Affairs. Arun Shourie, one of India’s most formidable investigative journalists, became a reform-minded minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government. Others, from Manish Sisodia to Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi and Chandan Mitra, have made similar journeys. Yet Dasgupta’s case is distinctive. Unlike many journalists-turned-politicians, he was never merely a ‘reporter.’ Whether in debate or through his prolific and trenchant writings, he has always been an intellectual combatant, a scholar of political ideas with a sweeping knowledge of world history by which he leavens those ideas. Dasgupta has always been one of the most articulate exponents of modern Indian conservatism. Educated at La Martiniere College in Kolkata, St Stephen’s College in Delhi and later the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he earned a doctorate, Dasgupta cultivated a reputation for formidable scholarship. His books, including Awakening Bharat Mata: The Political Beliefs of the Indian Right and The Ayodhya Reference, revealed an uncommon ability to place contemporary political disputes within a broader historical and ideological framework. For his supporters, he was among the few intellectuals capable of articulating conservative ideas in a language usually dominated by the Left. To critics, he was a sophisticated polemicist. Yet, even his opponents seldom questioned the breadth of his reading or the sharpness of his arguments. However, the challenge facing Dasgupta now is no longer intellectual but administrative. The Bengal he inherits bears little resemblance to the state that once led India in industry, commerce and scientific innovation. As he himself quipped in trademark fashion with a sharp historical analogy, the state’s economy resembled postwar Germany. The figures are sobering. West Bengal’s state debt has ballooned to around Rs. 8 lakh crore during the TMC regime. Thousands of companies have relocated or curtailed operations over the years amid a hostile investment climate. The new BJP government has inherited not merely a fiscal challenge but a crisis of confidence. “We are left with a near-bankrupt treasury,” Dasgupta said. Equally troubling, in his view, is the erosion of trust among investors and entrepreneurs. Bengal’s relationship with business has been uneasy to say the least. First the long night of the Left, followed by the TMC’s anti-business, appeasement brand of politics has ensured that the scars of industrial disputes and land controversies remain fresh. In this dire situation, reviving private investment will require convincing businesses that Bengal has changed. In this respect, Dasgupta’s strengths may prove unexpectedly useful. Throughout his career he displayed an ability to engage with ideas, institutions and stakeholders across ideological divides. His early moves hint at a broader vision. Rather than confining pre-budget consultations to Kolkata, Dasgupta shifted the Finance Department’s attention to Siliguri in a moved suffused with deliberate symbolism. North Bengal has long complained of neglect by governments centred on the state’s southern districts. By engaging tea producers, agricultural interests, tourism operators and local business groups, the newly-minted finance minister appears eager to demonstrate that economic revival will not just be a Kolkata-centric project. That said, debt servicing consumes a substantial portion of state revenues. Welfare commitments are politically difficult to unwind and infrastructure deficits remain significant. While public intellectuals excel at identifying problems, governing demands compromises and the acceptance of imperfect solutions. Still, Bengal’s new finance minister possesses as fine an appreciation of history than any Indian politician around. He knows that states decline not just because economic mistakes but because they lose faith in their future. Restoring that confidence may be the central task of his tenure. For years Swapan Dasgupta chronicled India’s political story from the sidelines. Now he finds himself at the centre of one of its most consequential state-level experiments. Whatever the outcome of his tenure, few would deny that Bengal’s finances have acquired perhaps their most learned custodian in decades.

Deadly Arrogance

The death of three Indian sailors aboard the tanker Settebello should provoke outrage far beyond Indian borders. It is not merely a tragic consequence of yet another conflict in West Asia but the result of an extraordinarily arrogant assertion of power by Donald Trump’s United States.


According to the U.S. military, an American aircraft carried out a ‘precision strike’ on the vessel’s engine room after its crew allegedly failed to comply with directions from American forces. That explanation raises more questions than it answers. Since when does non-compliance by a commercial vessel warrant military force? Since when does a maritime blockade empower one nation to unleash missiles on civilian ships carrying foreign nationals?


For months, Washington has justified its campaign against Iran-linked shipping as a necessary measure to uphold security and deter Tehran. Yet the results increasingly resemble a dangerous exercise in maritime coercion that places innocent seafarers directly in harm’s way. Eight ships have reportedly been disabled and more than a hundred turned back since the blockade began in April. Commercial shipping lanes have become theatres of military confrontation, with civilian crews paying the price.


Soon after the strike on the Settebello, another vessel carrying twenty Indian sailors, the MT Jalveer, was struck off the coast of Oman. Thankfully, Omani authorities rescued those on board.


While New Delhi has demanded that such attacks cease immediately, the outrage should go further. The killing of Indian nationals by a foreign military demands accountability. A transparent investigation is the minimum requirement and the International Maritime Organization is right to insist upon one.


What makes the episode particularly troubling is the double standard that often accompanies American power. Had another country launched repeated attacks on commercial vessels, disabled ships in international waters and killed foreign sailors in the process, Washington would have denounced the actions as reckless and unlawful. Yet when America does it, the language becomes sanitised and civilian deaths from non-combatant countries become collateral damage. Military adventurism becomes ‘enforcement’ in U.S. geopolitical lingo. Washington appears increasingly comfortable wielding overwhelming force while expecting the world to accept the consequences.


For India, the issue transcends geopolitics. More than nine million Indians live and work across West Asia, while Indian seafarers form one of the largest contingents in the global maritime workforce. Every escalation in the region places their lives at risk. New Delhi cannot remain a passive observer when its citizens become casualties of other nations’ strategic contests.


The deaths aboard the Settebello are a stark reminder of an uncomfortable truth. The greatest threat to international order is not always posed by those who openly challenge it. Sometimes it comes from those who claim to defend it while acting as though the rules apply only to others.

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