Dean boards the Heritage Tram early on a Sunday

Are you ready to bid farewell to Calcutta?

I guess I am ready but I am not happy about it. It’s been a wonderful couple of years, but, you know, in addition to having a good time here, there’s managing a career and managing a family so now is a good time to make a move.

Why did you choose Calcutta?

I had served a couple of times in South Asia, in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and in the last 20 years, in different ways, I have worked on US-India, US-South Asia relations. I’d never been in India for an entire tour, so when the Calcutta opportunity was open, it is one of the most interesting parts of the country and it was a great opportunity. We’ve had a wonderful history here of US-India and US-West Bengal relations and I wanted to be a part of that.

What was you first impression of the city?

Let me clarify the question… do you mean when I first came here 15 years ago or... (two years ago)? (Laughs) I first visited Calcutta in 1995. I was living in Bangladesh at that time. It was a fascinating place then, but the Calcutta of 1995 that I visited has little resemblance to the Calcutta of today. Most evident from my drive in from the airport in 2011 when massive hi-tech buildings are going up all over the place, the infrastructure’s built up considerably, there’s obviously quite a bit more development and prosperity that’s been happening. So, it’s been neat to have those two points of comparison.

Pulling off a secretary of state visit for a huge embassy is a tough job and for our small consulate it was fantastic! It was a greatexperience for everybody involved

Your first visit, was it for work?

No, I was just travelling. I came for a weekend, stayed at the Tollygunge Club. I was just here with Jane (wife) and my son at that time. We rode the Metro north and south and got off and saw things. It was kind of interesting; I met Mother Teresa on that trip. We were just walking around interested to see the area where she works and this little kid came up to us and ‘Hey, did you want to see Mother?’ and I though I bet he doesn’t mean that but I said ‘sure’. He just walked us right into her office (laughs). That was kind of fun, you know, to meet a figure of that prominence back then.

You know what is interesting is that I think Calcutta in that period was more defined by Mother Teresa and the type of work she was doing. Today, it’s defined much more by its location, as the capital, in many ways of east India, as a central hub of what’s happening on this side of the country and really, I hope, setting itself up for a future as the hub for India looking east. Vice-president (Joe) Biden is going to be here this week, not in Calcutta but in India, and one of the things he is going to talk about is India as a part of a larger Asia. We are very excited about the prospects.

After two years, what about Calcutta is the closest to your heart?

Oh, boy! Everybody we’ve met has been wonderful. I’ve said a number of times and a lot of people have said it, Calcutta is the biggest small town in the world (laughs). I hate using a cliche, but we’ve met so many wonderful people and made so many good friends here, that’s clearly going to be what I hold closest to my heart. In terms of the larger question about what are some good memories we are going to take away, we’ve spent some wonderful time here with our family, we went off to Darjeeling for a wonderful few days in the tea gardens, just a little relaxing time in a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful part of the country. We went to Kaziranga a couple of times. I have to count myself extremely lucky for having had multiple opportunities for some once-in-a-lifetime trips and events. I’m going to take all of those experiences away in a really positive manner.

What do you think is the best way to experience Calcutta?

Walking. I have done a lot of that actually. I don’t travel light (laughs) but I have to do a real shout out to the different tours that are setting up walking tours, particularly Calcutta Walks and Calcutta Photo Tours. These walking tours, in my opinion, are hands down the best way to see the city. Where we are we can do a lot of fun stuff. We can walk from the consulate up to Dalhousie Square, see a lot of that area then get on the tram, take it over to Howrah Bridge, walk across the bridge then after you’ve been around the flower market for a little bit you can take the ferry back. That’s a great afternoon!

In front of the Nakhoda Masjid

What has been your biggest surprise in terms of Calcutta?

The warmth. The warmth of everybody in this city. What are we, a 15 to 20 million people at any given time? It’s a huge, enormous megacity and I expected a more aloof, a more cool sort of reception, particularly with the people who live here. I just come and go, I mean people like me come and go, but everybody’s been incredibly warm and incredibly gracious and you can make really fast friendships here. And I just didn’t expect that, it’s such a big city. My expectation was it would be a little harder to crack into. And don’t get me wrong, I know that after only two years I’ve barely scratched the surface, but it feels like I’ve been able to plug in more than I might have thought.

What for you is quintessential Calcutta?

A walk around Dalhousie Square, looking at the old Fort William wall lines there in front of the GPO, grabbing some tea from one of the stands on the other side of the street by the [Reserve] Bank, looking at St. Andrews and thinking about the debates and everything that took place back when this was the heart of the Raj.

Another one I’ve got to say is all the time that I got to spend with students from the high-school level all the way to the university level. Obviously, Calcutta and West Bengal is the centre of education and centre of higher learning for India in many ways. So, having engaged on that front you can’t help but note that that’s a big part of what being in Bengal is all about.

What will you miss the most and miss the least about Calcutta?

I’ll miss the honking the least (laughs). I’m going to miss the most all the good friends that we’ve made here and I’m going to miss just the fact that every day can be a new experience. Calcutta’s one of those places where you can spend a couple of years but every time you turn down a new street, walk down a new little alleyway, walk into a storefront that you think would end right at the storefront but opens up a whole new world, a new connection, a new part of the city that you haven’t seen before. That kind of fun exploring a new place, I’m going to miss that.

As the consul-general, what has been your biggest challenge and your biggest achievement?

The biggest challenge has been I think trying to do everything we can to help network different organisations that work on different issues, whether it is environmental issues, trafficking in persons issues, education issues.

You know, we all as human beings get very focused on the things that we like to work on, the portion of an issue that we like to work on and one of the things we noticed was that we had what we called a bit of a convening power. If I invited people to, say, lunch, they would usually come (laughs), so one of the things we tried to do was to use that in a way that helped more people meet each other and connect up. So, you know, figuring out who knew who and who didn’t know who and how we might connect people who had similar programmes.

We did a lot of this on the trafficking in persons front and, I think, to great success. I think we’ve really helped raise awareness on that issue in a big way. Certainly not by ourselves, certainly not only something we’ve done, but I think we’ve helped on that front. And obviously, being able to bring secretary of state Hillary Clinton here to focus on our bit directly is a big help for something like that.

At Lal Dighi

Was that one of the biggest achievements?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, pulling off a secretary of state visit for a huge embassy is a tough job and for our small consulate it was fantastic! It was a great experience for everybody involved.

Calcutta has seen a lot of cases of violence against women of late. What would be your advice on how to make the city safer for women?

You know, first off, this is a problem in every single place in the world, whether it is a big city or a small town. It is not unique. So, the first thing that I think everybody has to do, and it is happening, that’s good, is we are raising awareness about this issue and we are letting people know it is not okay, that this type of thing is not acceptable and that’s important and that’s good. I think the police have been doing a very good job at following up and doing the investigations.

It’s really not for me to give advice, I am not an expert in any of these areas, but what I can say is that everybody needs to be aware, everybody needs to know ‘how do I keep myself safe’, ‘do I know where I am going’, ‘do I know the people I am going with’, ‘if it’s really late and there are not a lot of people around then maybe I should make sure somebody is with me’.... These are some of the common-sense things that have to be part of the equation and have to be on everybody’s mind, whether they are male or female, it doesn’t matter.

What I am happy to see happening is that people are standing up to say ‘this is wrong’, ‘this shouldn’t happen’ and that’s going to be an issue that continues, I think, across India, across Asia and across the world as women continue to see their rightful position rise. There is still too much of a sense that we don’t all have equal value, so we’ve all got to get to that point where we recognise everybody has equal value, everybody has a role, an important contribution to society. And we can’t pretend or feel threatened or believe that anybody is worth less or not equal to me.

And I’ll point to the fact that men have a huge role to play in this as well. We have to really redefine masculinity in a way that doesn’t objectify women, that doesn’t say that I can’t be a co-worker, that I can’t be an equal in every realm of society.

Dean in front of Swami Vivekananda’s House

During your tenure the US consulate general has been very actively involved in fighting against trafficking and violence against women. How do you hope it will be taken forward?

I am confident that the consulate will carry on the work because it is an important issue for the US government. The State Department has an entire office that deals with trafficking in persons, Congress has mandated that we look at this issue and write annual reports on it. I think it is a great issue for us to be involved in because it is one where we’ve done a good job in recognising that it is not any one country’s problem. It is a global problem and we are all in it together. There is every bit as much of a trafficking problem in the US as there is in any country in Europe, as any country in Asia and so we want to continue to work together and find ways that we can raise awareness, help countries write the kind of laws that make it a crime and then enforce those laws through prosecutions and imprisonment when it’s appropriate.

How open has Bengal been to American investment since the new government came to power?

Oh, I think they have been extremely open to investment. There is no question about that. I mean, at just about every meeting I have, they are always asking ‘what else can we do’ and ‘who else are you bringing through’? We’ve tried to raise the awareness level of US companies and that’s just going to take some time, right? In some ways we are dealing with the after effects of 2008 and the recession and all that has happened. There is a lot of money sitting on the sidelines, in America, in India, and so what we all have to do now is to work together to figure out how we can increase confidence levels and help people see where the good opportunities are.

The WBIDC is working on that, we are going to continue, through our foreign commercial service office, to look at opportunities both for US companies here in West Bengal and Indian companies, especially companies from West Bengal that might be interested in the United States.

What areas do you think will see more partnerships between the US and Bengal?

Obviously energy comes to mind first. Renewable energy is going to be a big part of what we do. Right now it is a very small part of India’s overall mix but it’s going to continue to grow, I think. So, being able to bring in the kind of technology and opportunities that that represents is good. This is an important area for mining and probably going to be an important area for gas and oil in the future as well.

Health care, a hugely important sector, that’s going to continue to grow and that, I think, represents a fantastic market for US products and US know-how.

The IT sector is going to continue to grow and flourish here. We consider education an export, so when people go to the US and study and then bring that back and work here, we think that that’s a huge benefit to both countries so that’s going to be another area.

Finally, I think agriculture and supply chain. It’s too bad that so much of the produce and agricultural products in India continue to not make it out of the field let alone all the way to the market. We’d love to find opportunities for US companies to come in and help with supply chain, with cold storage, with the backend processing of orders and things like that.

Inside the Heritage Tram

Do you plan to come back to Calcutta for a visit?

Oh yeah! Whenever the opportunity presents itself. I’m going to be switching my focus a little bit for a few years, so I’ll be in Europe for my next tour, which is new and somewhat exciting for me. It’s something I haven’t done before. But South Asia will always be very close to my heart. India is a wonderful country with wonderful opportunities and because of the growing India-US relationship I am sure the opportunities to serve here are going to continue to grow. So, I have no doubts that I’ll be back.

Rapid fire:

Favourite Calcutta destination: Raj Bhavan (laughs)
Favourite Bengali dish: Fried Bekti
Favourite Calcutta restaurant: If I have to answer that question I am going to make a lot of people mad! But if we strictly go by where I go the most, Fire And Ice. If we are eating pizza.... If it is my favourite Bengali food then it has to be Kewpie’s
Favourite Indian author: Santosh Desai, Aravind Adiga and Mitali Bose
Favourite Indian filmmaker: Satyajit Ray

Chandreyee Chatterjee

Pictures: Rashbehari Das

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