Articles by A M

Calcutta Diary A M THIS is an inexorable process; the shortage of paper claims victims in the remotest quarters. The little magazines are in danger of extinction: the ones with pretensions of monthly appearance have converted themselves into quarterlies; the quarterlies have turned into biannuals; the biannuals have ceased to be so, they have become so much chancy statistic. And all of them have thinned down.


Rs 35.76 lakhs last year. The company claims that its results would have been considerably better but for substantial loss of production at the paper mill because of a power cut of 40 per cent imposed for about 2

Calcutta Diary A M MEET Kamal Bose, son of late Surendra Nath Bose of 11 Surya Kumar Chatterjec Street, Calcutta; occupation: social service worker at Chittaranjan Cancer Hospital, 37 Syamaprasad Moo- kerjee Road, Calcutta; drawing a sum of Rs 34-3 and 55 paise only per month as salary and allowances; a citizen of India, head of household consisting of himself, his wile, and a child of two years.


Calcutta Diary A M MAY DAY is a paid holiday in Calcutta


Calcutta Diary A M THE old order changeth, yielding place to old. Bank chairmen, nearly the whole lot of them, are now part of the nationalised sector. Has it made the minutest difference to their style, of functioning? In their annual statements, these chairmen now-a-days have to add one or two mandatory paragraphs on what they are doing, or propose to do, for the 'hitherto neglected sectors. Come hither, ye hitherto-neglected sectors, be at attention, we are, for the next twenty-two seconds, going to talk about you; nationalisation has made it necessary that we devote, additionally, two hundred eighty to three hundred five words in our annual statements extolling your several virtues. For the rest, 'responsible' banking demands that hank chairmen must continue to meet their obligations to the organised industrial sector, ensure that packing credits for exports are dealt with expeditiously, be solicitous of the whims and foibles of those of their clients whose deposits exceed, say, Rs 10 crores, look into the matter of obtaining a healths return from their investment portfolio, see to it that the pet projects of key politicians in the different states are properly taken care of. make absolutely certain that those who subsidise ministers are a turn themselves duly subsidised. After all this, where does one find the time or resources for ushering in a credit revolution in the country? Yon scan the annual statements which are splashed, at fat cost, across the newspaper columns: even the format of the statements remains unchanged from days of yore, with the inevitable, slightly blur- red, supremely complaisant-looking picture of the chairman and managing director at top, left