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Wednesday, October 19, 2005
How things change (and how they don't)
Ashis Chakrabarti writes in the Telegraph:
Much as the Left has progressed when it comes to West Bengal, where it is in power, it is as regressive as ever when it comes to the nation, where it has power but not responsibility. It's a sad state of events.
It would be laughable if a political party today were to organize street protests against the use of computers in public sector organizations. But Bengal’s left parties once did just that. I recall a large leftist rally outside the Reserve Bank of India office in Calcutta in the early Eighties in protest against the introduction of computers in the RBI. The computers, the protestors said, were a capitalist evil that would rob people of their jobs. The same leftists today showcase their government’s success in promoting the information technology sector.Read the full piece.
Bengal’s leftists have come a long way since the days of anti-computers protests. If today’s younger lot want to have an idea of what the leftists did in those days, they need only to look at Mamata Banerjee’s brand of politics.
Much as the Left has progressed when it comes to West Bengal, where it is in power, it is as regressive as ever when it comes to the nation, where it has power but not responsibility. It's a sad state of events.
