A blog for discussions on media, political and cultural issues of South Asian and international significance

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Reservations: A Civilized Debate

Here is Pratap Bhanu Mehta's letter of resignation from the Knowledge Commission, here's Yogendra Yadav's response, and Mehta's rejoinder. As Dilip D'Souza points out, the exchange is almost unique in the exceptionally polite manner in which it is carried out.

Both the letters agree on a single point - that the new reservations for OBCs are merely an extension of the politics of gimmickery which has come to symbolise affirmative action policy in India today. My position on reservations is here, and this latest drama has done little to change my views, except perhaps to strengthen my objection to reservations of all forms.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Is Calcutta Ugly?

A very strange article in the Telegraph, commenting on efforts to create beautified zones in certain sections of Calcutta. The author asks, first -

"What sort of an eye would find Calcutta beautiful? Some would argue that such a gaze would have to be blinded with love. Or else, foreign enough to find in bad taste and dreariness exotic forms of the postcolonial. There is a certain slant of light in which a garbage heap, a roadside urinal, clouds of exhaust, a shopping mall, NRI apartments, or even a flyover might become radiant with beauty."

Thereby suggesting that s/he has already pre-judged the question of Calcutta's "beauty". S/he then claims that -

"At the core of Bengali public culture lies a form of irredeemable bad taste. This is as evident in the heaped-up gaudiness of the Marble Palace as in the ridiculous statues of regional heroes that have replaced the city’s imperial pantheon."

I don't understand how the Marble Palace, originally conceived as a private pleasure house, rather than a facet of "Bengali public culture" proves the argument (later examples include the New Market, designed by a decidedly non-Bengali architect R Bayney of the East India Railway Company). While one may criticise Bengal (and Bengalis) for a roster of vices, poor cultural taste isn't usually high on that list. In the final paragraph -

"It is surely significant that there has evolved no “Bengal School” of architecture worth speaking of, apart from the still-born Tagorean whimsies in Santiniketan. So that beautifying Calcutta is merely an exercise in conserving its colonial buildings — architecturally, the only good things to have happened to it."

Err, as anyone who's lived in North Calcutta would attest, there are some beautiful houses there, as also schools, University buildings and the like, which could do with some government upkeep, and are just as deserving of praise as the "colonial buildings". Perhaps the author should get out more often?

Monday, May 01, 2006

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