Tiger summit at London zoo

Amit Mitra, West Bengal's finance minister, and entrepreneur Harsh Neotia visited London Zoo last week at the behest of Mamata Banerjee to see if any lessons could be learnt for Alipore Zoo.

They were shown round by Lord Swraj Paul, whose £1m donation rescued London Zoo from bankruptcy in 1994.

"It's the best thing I've done," murmured Swraj, who was in his element, as he showed his visitors wild birds, pigs with and without beards, penguins and a huge if dozy Sumatra tiger.

Lesson number one is that the animals should be healthy, according to Swraj - "you don't want children to catch diseases".

If Rudyard Kipling had been in Mamata's delegation, he would probably have recorded the excited chatter among the residents of London Zoo on being visited by the two distinguished Bengal tigers: "Mamata wants to make Nabanna more like London Zoo but they tell us the place is already a chiriyakhana ."

Amit Babu, who has visited tiger country in the Sunderbans, confides: "They don't run and catch their victims because they would get things stuck in their paws."

Suiting action to words, he reveals: "They pounce."

Bit like office politics, really.

There was a time when I would interview Amit Babu, Ficci general secretary.

One evening, he is characteristically generous with his time and answers many of my questions - for example, how he manages to hold down six ministerial jobs (finance, excise, commerce & industries, public enterprises, industrial reconstruction, and information, technology and electronics departments).

"I have no choice," he replies. "I (also) chair a number of groups of ministers which involve other departments."

He is trying to avoid personal publicity, he adds, and came to London only to support the chief minister. "I am trying to remain below the radar."

The English believe cricket is a metaphor for life - and Amit Babu, a batsman, once played for Mohun Bagan Juniors. "I, of course, captained the Presidency team. I used to open for Presidency at university level. My coach was Pankaj Roy - absolutely low profile, absolutely a gentleman."

Despite the workload and his jobs, which mean he and wife cannot go out without being accosted, "I am very happy."

Presi primacy

Professor Anuradha Lohia is keen to bring the world to the 2,500 students at Presidency, in her capacity as the university's vice-chancellor - which explains why she signed MoUs last week with the humanities departments at the universities of Cambridge (represented by Prof. Joya Chatterji); East Anglia (Prof. Yvonne Tasker and Dr Daniel Rycroft); and SOAS (Prof. Michael Hutt).

Prof. Lohia, a molecular biologist, expects to extend the collaboration to the natural sciences.

Her thoughts are turning to the celebration in 2017 of the 200th anniversary of Presidency, where she had once been an undergraduate - she wanted to say thank you because it had given her "golden ideas, some idealism, some dreams".

Prof. Lohia is deeply interested in public health. She tells me of work to be done by a "cancer consortium" since "cancer is a growing thing in India - (it has become) big, big".

Meanwhile, from Prof. Hutt, director of the SOAS South Asia Institute, I learn more about the "Vishwa Bangla scholarships - two master's and one PhD scholarships".

"These will be for students from West Bengal to come and study at SOAS," explains Prof. Hutt. "We hope that, at least, one of the three students each year will do some work on Bengali literature, Bengali society, Bengali culture."

Marital ties

It is reassuring to discover that Sumit Mazumder, president of the Confederation of Indian Industry and a senior member of the Mamata delegation, is a fashionable man who believes strongly in ties - broad silk ties, that is, with matching hankies.

I sent him to Jermyn Street near Piccadilly but he was disappointed to find that the ties on sale were too narrow for his taste.

"So I went back to a shop that I know," said Sumit, who was put off by the Bengali cacophony in the hotel lobby. "Ato chechachchhey - Indian toh (they're Indian, that's why they are making such a racket)."

The Mamata mission had made "an excellent beginning" in his opinion. "People in the UK would want to understand what they are dealing with in India, similarly with the Indian partners. There is a period of courtship before there is marriage. But I believe many marriages will take place."

For once, sex before marriage would be positively encouraged.

Bhog for Britain

The fascinating UKIBC-Ficci seminar, "Bengal in London", heard from several big hitters in Mamata's delegation - among them Onkar S. Kanwar, chairman of Apollo Tyres; Y.C. Deveshwar, chairman, ITC; Partha Ghosh from Bengal Aerotropolis; Sanjay Budhia of the Patton Group; Y.K. Modi, boss of the Great Eastern Energy Corporation; and Jyotsna Suri, Ficci president, who is reviving heritage buildings as boutique hotels.

The seminar was also addressed by Harvard professor-turned-MP, Sugata Bose, who announced that Mamata's project to bring business to Bengal had received the blessings of Amartya Sen.

Later I spoke to the chief secretary Sanjay Mitra, the actor Dev - both accompanied Mamata to Buckingham Palace to see Prince Andrew - as well as several principal secretaries.

If only Satya Brata Mukherjee, from Ambrosia Enterprise, who is hoping to sell the uniquely fragrant and healthy Gobindobhog rice to nearly 10,000 Indian restaurants and numerous supermarket chains in the UK, had brought samples, he would have returned with a clutch of contracts.

Homage to PG

If there is one job I wouldn't mind doing in the West Bengal bureaucracy, it is that of self-proclaimed "fat man", Atri Bhattacharya, IAS, principal secretary, department of information & culture.

He has had meetings with the British Film Institute, which is digitising its entire archive of 10,000 films, including 400 shot in pre-1947 India; and visited Dartington Hall in Devon for talks on possible Tagore festivals.

Atri and Sujata Sen, the British Council's East India director, also went to the Horniman Museum in south London to inspect how it preserves its impressive collection of Indian musical instruments.

En route, Atri deduced a beautiful red brick building was Dulwich College, where his favourite author, P.G. Wodehouse, was educated - the author had described the period 1894-1900 at school as "six years of unbroken bliss".

Atri took a few minutes to offer a silent prayer to the author of Leave it to Psmith .

"Wodehouse is far more popular in India than in Britain," he declared.

Tittle tattle

The UKIBC chair Patricia Hewitt gently teased Amit Mitra at the conclusion of the two-hour "interactive" UKIBC-Ficci conference.

The finance minister declared he would not speak very much, but had to dominate proceedings as master of ceremonies as he encouraged a succession of civil servants and business tycoons to sing for their supper.

"You facilitated this afternoon brilliantly," quipped Patricia to much laughter from the 250-strong audience. "It seems to me you have had a wonderful career in business; you have a wonderful career now in politics; for his third career it seems to me Dr Mitra's future is absolutely assured as a talk show host on television - on the BBC you would be absolutely wonderful."