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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.

Uddhav tears into BJP’s claim

Mumbai: Shiv Sena (UBT) President Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday launched a blistering, wide-ranging attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led governments at the Centre and in the state, targeting what he termed as a ‘toxic political climate’, rising crimes against women, and a ‘hire-and-fire’ culture hurting workers.


Addressing the 58th annual general meeting of the Bharatiya Kamgar Sena, Thackeray delivered a strong political cocktail laced with jibes, concerns over labour rights, women’s issues, unemployment, and governance priorities.


Attacking Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for his recent remarks about ‘tearing the burqas’ of the Opposition, Thackeray questioned sarcastically: “We are Hindus… So what ‘burqas’ are you going to rip off? Were you even present in the Lok Sabha?”


Referring to atrocities on women, Thackeray sharply questioned the government’s priorities saying while the CM is campaigning in other states, women are being molested right here, fake babas are multiplying and drug rackets are flourishing in the state.


On BJP’s claims of commitment to women’s reservation, the SS (UBT) chief asked “why the President (Droupadi Murmu) was not invited to key national events such as the inauguration of the new Parliament building or the consecration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya”.


“This is not a new issue. We are ready… Implement women’s reservation today,” Thackeray asserted.


Veering to national politics, Thackeray said that the BJP today lacks personalities of (the late) Arun Jaitley’s stature, and described West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee as “a fighting tigress who is bound to win”. He claimed that ‘two lakh CRPF personnel’ were deployed in West Bengal while barely 20,000 were stationed in the violence-hit Manipur. “Security forces were once used by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel for integrating states into the Union, but now they are being used to win elections,” Thackeray said.


On the alleged misuse of central security agencies, Thackeray dared the BJP to ‘set aside the CBI and ED’ and face the elections in a fair fight. “You deploy security forces to ensure your party wins as you lack the capability to win on your own merits, or unleash the ED-CBI. It is better to live like a tiger for one day than as a goat for 100 days,” said Thackeray.


Alluding to the debates triggered by RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat’s views on population, he asked: “Encouraging more children is fine - but who will feed them? What about unemployment problems?”


Thackeray expressed concerns over delimitation based on population, warning it could skew political representation. “Some states are implementing family planning programmes quite effectively… Is practicing family planning now considered a crime?”


Turning to the distress faced by the working classes, he flayed the current employment model as a ‘constant cycle of hire-and-fire’, with the government ignoring the security of workers.


“Why are workers being compelled to leave the state, or even the country, for employment. They are the architects of the nation’s destiny. Now reports emerge that workers from north India are being employed in Dubai. The country is calling them to ‘return’. They ignored the calls, preferring to die by a bomb rather than returning to India only to die of unemployment,” said Thackeray, in a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.


He compared the current bout of global tensions, including the ongoing Iran-United States war, as a repetitive spectacle, triggering multi-fold domestic economic anxieties.

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