The real enemy

From The Ramparts
By Ashok Mitra, Tulika, Rs 450

Sceptics and dissenters may not change things, but life can be intolerably dull without them. And, if a dissenter has as sharp a mind and as felicitous a style as Ashok Mitra?s, the experience can be something of a treat. This selection from his famed ?Calcutta Diary? in Economic and Political Weekly is a case in point. By comparison, his column in The Telegraph is rarely as incisive and vibrant.

These short essays are not meant to be detailed analyses of the issues and events they deal with. They are brief commentaries on significant contemporary happenings, trends and issues that have been shaping nations and the lives of people. All the essays have, however, one thing in common. They reflect a mind that is disturbed over the turn of events. The analyses are, therefore, meant to be disturbing, the wit and verve notwithstanding.

Nothing ? and nobody ? is sacrosanct. The contemporary world, according to the author, is a big, bad place run by an axis of evil. The United States of America, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization lead the axis. The led include their vassals in governments in countries around the world, in non-government organizations, in the academia and in every other place. It is pretty much a crook?s world where success, money or fame depends on how best one plays the crook. And, since the world is now flat, it is a global game, whose rules are set in the White House.

Indian issues dominate the essays. But the question about India, to Mitra, is not whether it shines or stinks; his worry is that it is so steeped in sin. The crooks and the fools may make a song and dance about the free market doing wonders to this ancient land. Mitra?s judgment is loud and clear: ?The free market is basically a crook?s market presided over by share-forgers, past masters in insider trading and similar types with whom bank chairmen and managing directors are in eternal cohort.?

This cannot be music to the ears of the votaries of reforms and the free market. But then, Mitra is perpetually itching for a fight. The archetypal iconoclast that he is, he has no sacred cows. He has as much contempt for fraudulent businessmen and corrupt politicians as for the post-modernist intellectuals who arrive in winter from foreign universities to savour ?recognition in the countries they have deserted.?

So, does he have any heroes and hopes left? In essay after essay, Mitra laments over the unstoppable advance of American imperialism and over the world?s capitulation at its feet. He sees, however, a faint glimmer of hope in Latin America, where Hugo Chavez and lesser stars are challenging the American might. There were other heroes who could have taken the bull from the Big Apple by the horn. Like Joseph Stalin. If Stalin were around, the author is prepared to bet that America would not have ?dared to indulge? in Vietnam or to rape Iraq. His hope in India would have been the Left. But you can never tell with the New Left that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has come to represent.

It might read like a cynic?s chronicle of our times. But the dissenting note is refreshing, especially because there is such a conspiracy of consensus all around.