Tag: west bengal

• January 1, 2013

  Industrialization in a Land Hungry State – A Lesson from Robert Solow

  If surviving the test of time is proof of quality, then MIT Nobel Laureate Robert M. Solow’s model of economic growth has surely distinguished itself with flying colours. The work was published as far back in time as 1956 and survives in the academic world till this day, despite the ruthless attack it had to face from Professor Joan Robinson of Cambridge, UK and her associates. Rightly or wrongly, the latter questioned the logical underpinnings of Solow’s work and the debate was intense enough to metamorphose childhood friends into bitter enemies belonging to opposite camps in their adulthood. The controversies ultimately waned out though, possibly on account of a workable alternative model of economic growth that the critics failed to provide.
• April 20, 2011

  The Philosophy of Poverty vs The Poverty of Philosophy: Travails of West Bengal

  Neither Karl Marx, who authoured The Poverty of Philosophy, nor M. Proudhon, who wrote The Philosophy of Poverty in 1847 could perceive how relevant the titles of their works would be for the state of West Bengal’s Assembly elections 164 years later. It is not as though the subject matter of the controversy between them has any bearing at all for the election at hand in 2011. Sometimes though, the shell assumes greater significance than the nut itself, or else why should they have coined a word such as ‘nutshell’? And what, in a nutshell, is the situation of West Bengal?
• March 19, 2011

  Figures in the Limelight

  It was a pleasant surprise to watch the celebrated thespian, Mithun Chakraborty, anchor a TV show the other evening in which he restricted his guests from the civil society to answer questions that were sharply posed, instead of out-howling each other. Amongst the many issues he brought up, one in particular stood out. He took us back to the Singur imbroglio and asked the government’s critics to explain why they did not insist that the entire 997 acres of land, instead of a mere 400 acres, be returned back to the owners. At the basis of this question lay two distinct issues that he obviously wished to separate out. The first of these involved pure economics. The opponents of the Singur project have argued that the acquired area for the factory was a highly fertile, multi-crop land. Using it up for the development of industry amounted to an economic loss for an agriculturally advanced state. The second of the issues addressed the unwilling farmer problem, one which is fraught with unpleasant socio-political implications. It is an issue indeed that has stirred up intense emotions and is even threatening to dislodge the leftists from Writers’ Building.
• June 6, 2010

  Bengal Politics: Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi Syndrome

  The municipal elections suggest that there is a “Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi” (SBKBT) syndrome at work in Bengal politics. An unchanging coalition being in power for over thirty years defies not merely the logic of democracy, but every other semblance of logic as well. It reminds one of SBKBT which forced its inanity upon the tired viewers for years on the assumption that the idiot box was meant to produce idiots. The market culture finally played a curative role of sorts in the case of SBKBT. One suspects that its TRP crashed irretrievably with profit seeking advertisers turning wary of patronizing the serial. …