Articles by Sumanta Banerjee

Source : Medical Officers, Chubwa and Nahortoli estates. For Nahortoli the figured are for calendar years.
figured are for calendar years.
that Finlay had special responsibilities. Conditions there, they claimed, were probably the worst in the world. A report for the UK Overseas Development Ministry in 1977 had described a situation of declines in real wages since 1977, labour lines 'considerably short of international standards', 'almost non-existent' latrines, 'low nutritional standards' and a workforce apathetic because of its ignorance and malnutrition. While the report does not specify that Finlay's estates had all these features it does not .specifically exclude them either. Sir Colin's only response was to claim that "our native workers overseas . choose to work for the company on the open market, which proves they are happy and eager with their lot". The fact of course is that there really is no 'open market' on tea AGRICULTURE estates, with their ethnically distinctive populations. In Kenya the situation is different, in that most workers are temporarily migrant, leaving families behind and returning each year. Here it is more difficult to specify company responsibilities and the extent to which they are neglected.

Timeless Emergency Sumanta Banerjee Indira Gandhi's India: A Political System Reappraised edited by Henry C Hart; Westview Press, Colorado, USA, 1976; pp 313, $ 7.50. THIS book stands out in sharp contrast censorship".

Academicians THE controversy over the text-books on Indian history which broke out soon after the new ruling party came to power at the Centre and which has led to debates in newspaper columns and conferences in Delhi and other places, unfolds important lessons for Leftist intellectuals in India. It sheds a murky light not only on the current communal offensive against attempts at a secular interpretation of the past, * also on the intellectual dishonesty opportunist careerism of a section of the so-called Leftist academicians

January 28-February 4, 1978 IRAN The Shah Visit Sumanta Banerjee AS India unrolls the red carpet for the visit of the Shah of Iran, we are reminded of the Freudian theory that a defensive striving against ideas which can awaken painful feelings can lead to forgetting. In the ease of Iran, the world appears to he consigning to oblivion not only the recent past, but a very disagreeable present.

November 19, 1977 POLITICAL PRISONERS Pledges Unredeemed, Promises Broken Sumanta Banerjee THE endeavours of the ruling parties at the Centre and the states to deliver the political prisoners from jails appear to be quite tortuous. The Janata and the other non-Congress parties who fought the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections were unanimous in their pledge to release all political prisoners immediately on assuming office. The pledge is yet to be redeemed in its totality.