Articles by Arun Ghosh

The inhabited part of the Sunderbans is forbidding, hostile with enormous practical hurdles in the way of the men who have settled there. But these hurdles can be overcome; and the overwhelming impression one gets is that the Sunderban Development Board is both working on the wrong lines and much too slow.

a problem arose. The loyal landlord, the affluent businessman, the top civil servant, each learned how to adapt to the imperial mould, not so different from the old feudal one. What was called for was only a change in externalities. Forget such minor details as that the British were, primarily, predators and exploiters. We were, after all, shaped into a nation by them. For decades on end, in elite Indian households. Empress Victoria was the emblem of charity and piety; affluent Indian breasts would swell in pride, pride engineered by the thought that they were a part of the great empire over which she presided.

the constituents of the Hindu pantheon. The obscurantists whom the system has nurtured over the years want their Ambedkar only in distilled measures; they would love to admire the Hindu expansionist after editing out his frivolities. It is however later than the system managers think. 'Subaltern' is a precious appellation, and an inappropriate one. Vivian Richards is no subaltern, nor does he intend to be one. He has imperial claims. So too is the case with those who have raised their voice of protest at the government of Maharashtra's dissemblings over the editing of Ambedkar's works. The protest has violent contours, a sure sign of the times. And it is only an overture. The real troubles are going to follow.

Apologists of government policies, both in the government and outside, have been saying that what the economy needs today is a consumption orientation which is likely to provide the required impetus for further economic growth. And it is this philosophy which has informed government policies of late. It is in this context that the twin problems of (a) the possibility of inflation and (b) the financing of development need to be examined.

The impressive growth of the Indian paper industry conceals that the industry has been a major contributor to the increasing denudation of our forest wealth; that it has also contributed heavily to environmental pollution through its effluents which have killed marine life and rendered river waters generally impotable; and finally that it has not been able to save on imports of paper which have been rising rapidly of late. At the same time prices of white printing paper have been raised to levels which have put exercise books and textbooks beyond the reach of the majority of primary school children.