Articles by Sumanta Banerjee

Recent developments connected with Indian Express raise important issues of civil liberties: the freedom of proprietors to bring out the newspaper at whatever cost, against the freedom of the workers to strike for higher wages; the freedom of journalists to select news against the freedom of others to gain access to the press to publish their part of the story; the freedom of the public to have access to information against the freedom of the government to suppress news.

Suppression of the voices of the lower orders has taken many forms, ranging from administrative intervention to ideological manipulation by the elite. In 19th century Bengal, the educated Bengali gentry's campaign

sisting in the matching of national resources with needs on a priority basis, can only succeed if the resources are freed from control by vested interests. Unless resources are so freed, and made available, no planning can take place despite the organisational and ceremonial paraphernalia. Hence the crucial question in the present situation is as to how far the elected rulers are prepared to curb the powerful vested interests. Thus, whether the nation becomes technologically self- reliant or dependent will be decided by our preparedness to grow new knowledge according to needs and to compete on the basis of the quality of our products. However, if our entrepreneurs try to fulfil their narrow short-run interests rather than the long-run national ones, they will rather buy technology from abroad than invest in research and development, and this is what they have been doing: "Efforts have been made to link various streams of industrial production with institutions imparting technical education in order to obtain not only the mandate for the direction of technical education but also mobilise some resources for at least R and D work in technical institutions. There is enough evidence to show that the expected response has not been forthcoming from entrepreneurs either because their expectations of returns from investment are not very high or because it is cheaper to buy modern technologies from abroad" (p 107). In other words, buying modern technology from abroad makes our research institutions redundant, leading to even more need to buy from abroad. This vicious circle of dependency is a serious problem; dealing with it requires struggling against international monopoly capital and its collaborators within the country. Trying to deal with it by methods such as distributing 2,000 computers in schools in 1984-86 "to demistify the computer" (p 71) is like treating cancer with aspirin.

Contradictions with a Purpose Sumanta Banerjee WHAT happened in Delhi and several other parts of the country in the first week of November, epitomised in an exacerbated form the all too familiar record of brutalisation of the political system and corruption of civil society which marked Indira Gandhi's regime. We found the incinerator's love of bride burning escalating to mass burning of living beings. The brigandage of Congress(I) students at Nagpur in September graduated to the organised slaughter of Sikhs in Delhi in November. While the callousness of the administration and the police towards the security needs of the citizens sank to the level of utter immobility when Sikh houses and shops were in flames, their communal partisanship reached the climax with their active particiption in looting of Sikh shops and killing of Sikh youth. Even after her death, the tradition of ostentatious display of pomp, set by her, continued to hold sway: The clamour of grandiose international gatherings like ASIAD, NAM and CHOGM, found a magnified echo in the demonstrative arrangements for the foreign dignitaries at Teen Murti house, where the nation's entire security force was being concentrated to protect a single dead body, while thousands of living beings were being allowed to be butchered. The flourish of protocol at Shantivan was as irrelevant for the widows and children of the slaughtered Sikhs as the pomp of ASIAD was for the bonded labourers who built the stadia and hotels in Delhi.

PUNJAB The Best Lack All Conviction, White the Worst Are Full of Passionate Intensity Sumanta Banerjee AS the caravan of reaction rolls on in Punjab