Articles by AM

In a large number of middle class homes, the children have departed for foreign shores, a fair majority to the United States. Their parents had devoted the best years of their lives and the bulk of their resources to turn the children into finished products. The children are, really and truly, the intellectual property of the parents and the country. But for this intellectual property neither the United States nor the west European countries are prepared to pay the proper price to the parents and the nation.

It is a national malady of the most sickening kind to convert into icons hoary old men after they kick the bucket. A large proportion of the nation's energy and resources are spent in observing birth and death anniversaries of such departed souls. The individual thus worshipped might have been a crook of the first water or he might have had the reputation of an unspeakable despot while alive, but the ritual of hypocrisy continues unendingly month after month and year after year.

Whether the complaints and accusations against the Left Front have any objective basis or not, they have left their mark on the psyche of West Bengal's urban electorate. The non-fulfilment of popular expectations, the swelling number of unemployed registered with the employment exchanges, the shift of sentiment in the refugee belts, suspicion about the proliferation of corruption amongst Left leaders and cadres much in the manner it did amongst Congressmen in the earlier decades, the disillusionment with socialist ideology following the debacle in eastern Europe, and the glamour of life and living in western countries as broadcast by the satellite television channels have gradually led to a steady fall in Left Front support in the urban and semi-urban pockets in the state. Much of what is happening at this moment, the Calcutta Corporation election outcome included, is a reflection of these developments.

There are still a few leftover codes of civilisation which capitalistfeudal systems cannot forsake. The LTTE may have won the war, but those trapped in the Elephant Pass include some of India's close friends from the hoary Madras Cricket Club days; for their sake, the terms of the eelam, so goes the whisper, deserve to be suitably modulated. This is contemptible nonsense, just as most of the other assumptions underlying globalisation are.

The ongoing commotion, the medley of accusations and counteraccusations, does not deter the Indian bookmaker. He makes a pragmatic assessment of the ingredients of ground reality. What poses a challenge of a different nature is that, under Indian law, betting in cricket is a criminal offence. But the way-out is simple. Why not amend the piece of legislation so that betting in cricket is no longer a culpable offence? The solution is indeed breath-taking. We could likewise take out rape and murder from the roster of criminal offences and murderers and rapists would immediately belong to the lily-white species.