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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.

Endgame Mirage

Donald Trump likes to claim he has already “won” the war with Iran. The trouble is that no one, least of all his own administration, seems quite sure what that victory means while his European allies are tuning him out.


Barely a month into a conflict that began with joint American and Israeli strikes on February 28, the White House has offered a masterclass in inconsistency. At various points, Trump has said the war would last “four to five weeks,” could go on “far longer” and would end “very soon.” He has insisted the United States is not at war even as he describes ongoing “military decimation” of Iran.


The objectives, too, have shifted - from curbing nuclear ambitions to hints of regime change, and then back again. Trump appeared to believe that a short, sharp campaign like his Venezuelan coup could deliver decisive political results. Instead, the conflict has followed the oldest script in modern warfare: initial military success followed by strategic drift. Iranian retaliation across the region, including attacks on shipping and Gulf infrastructure, has widened the theatre of conflict and raised the costs. Energy and oil markets have been rattled across the globe, particularly in Asia.


So far, Tehran appears to be succeeding on its own terms. The regime has absorbed weeks of missile and drone strikes without collapsing. Its command structures remain intact. Authority has been decentralised, allowing operations to continue under the Revolutionary Guards even as senior figures are killed. If anything, the war has hardened the system. Power has consolidated around more uncompromising elements of the Iranian regime, reducing the already slim chances of internal moderation.


By repeatedly declaring victory while continuing military operations, Trump has weakened his own leverage. Iran, far from capitulating, has hardened its demands, calling for sovereignty over key waterways and even reparations. The gap between American claims of success and the messy reality on the ground has only emboldened Tehran.


Trump’s most damaging mistake is perhaps institutional. By refusing to clearly define the conflict as a ‘war,’ the administration has sidestepped congressional oversight while conducting sustained military operations. This semantic evasion may offer short-term flexibility, but it corrodes democratic accountability. Wars that are not called wars have a habit of becoming open-ended commitments. Even on the battlefield, coherence is lacking. Trump has oscillated between threats of a “final blow” and sudden pauses in attacks to facilitate talks. Deadlines are announced and extended. The result has been a stop-start campaign that has confused both adversaries and allies.


The greatest irony is that Trump entered office railing against “endless wars.” Yet his handling of Iran risks creating precisely that: a conflict without a clear endpoint, fought for shifting objectives, and sustained by inertia rather than design.


Unless the United States defines a credible endgame and aligns its rhetoric with reality, it will remain trapped in a conflict of its own making.

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