The title is not my coinage -- a long time ago a Bengali satirist called Diptendra Kumar Sanyal coined it. The man was a genius at intelligent abuse, but this blog is not for discussing him. This is a blog about what needs to be done to West Bengal, so that it can be resurrected from its present state of Waste Bengal. No one knows who will do it, although it can be said with near-certainty who will not do it. No Left party will do it, because they don't want to do it, because if common people prosper nobody will give them patta, and because, therefore, it is principally they who, carefully and deliberately, brought the state to this state. And Mamata will not do it, first because she is concerned only with Mamata and not with the state or its people; secondly because she is further Left than any Leftist; and finally because she doesn't have the foggiest idea of how to do it, and wouldn't listen to those who do. Maybe nobody will do it. That doesn't detract from the fact that it can be done -- still. Maybe not for very long.
So what needs to be done? Let's list them out, instead of generating a lot of 'froth and gas' -- as my favourite author C. Northcote Parkinson would have put it.
Immediately and in the short term:
1. Shake up the higher bureaucracy to instill in them some work ethic. They are notorious all over India for being self-satisfied and anti-development.
2. Reduce the number, size and stranglehold of the lower bureaucracy by undertaking a crash programme of streamlining governmental procedures. It should no longer be possible, for example, for a Lower Division Clerk to hold up a file involving hundreds of crores of Rupees, once this is done.
3. Introduce Bengali language in governmental work massively. This will bring the government much closer to the people.
4. Make radical public statements (such as outlawing gherao and abarodh and denouncing Bengaleftism) to convince industrialists that the state really wants to become industry-friendly. (NOTE: Bengaleftism is an amalgam of laziness, disrespect for any kind of authority or order, and empty tall talk, all made respectable by packaging it in pseudo-intellectual jargon and Marxist idiom.)
5. Act out a few of these statements to prove that the government means business.
6. Rehash and restate land policy and environmental policy.
8. Assure industrialists that they will have a free hand in recruiting staff and choosing contractors and suppliers.
9. Outlaw trade unionism in police, hospitals and fire brigade.
10. Declare that so far trade unions were being run to further the interests of the political parties of which they were appendages, not in the interests of the members, and this will be reversed.
11. Show, by action, that the Police will henceforth be politically and religiously neutral.
12. Stop -- and I mean STOP -- Muslim infiltration from Bangladesh, anti-national propaganda in madarsahs and flow of Saudi money to build mosques. Instead, use idle Waqf funds for building mosques.
13. Undertake massive rewriting of school textbooks to correct the falsehoods injected into them by Leftists (e.g. hiding the nefarious role of the Muslim League government in Bengal, 1937-47, hiding the eclipse of the Soviet Union or the human rights abuses by Mao or Stalin, giving due credit to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mookerjee, etc.)
9. Convince the people with a suitable PR exercise, simultaneously with all these steps, that this is being done for their benefit, without these the people will literally perish.
So what needs to be done? Let's list them out, instead of generating a lot of 'froth and gas' -- as my favourite author C. Northcote Parkinson would have put it.
Immediately and in the short term:
1. Shake up the higher bureaucracy to instill in them some work ethic. They are notorious all over India for being self-satisfied and anti-development.
2. Reduce the number, size and stranglehold of the lower bureaucracy by undertaking a crash programme of streamlining governmental procedures. It should no longer be possible, for example, for a Lower Division Clerk to hold up a file involving hundreds of crores of Rupees, once this is done.
3. Introduce Bengali language in governmental work massively. This will bring the government much closer to the people.
4. Make radical public statements (such as outlawing gherao and abarodh and denouncing Bengaleftism) to convince industrialists that the state really wants to become industry-friendly. (NOTE: Bengaleftism is an amalgam of laziness, disrespect for any kind of authority or order, and empty tall talk, all made respectable by packaging it in pseudo-intellectual jargon and Marxist idiom.)
5. Act out a few of these statements to prove that the government means business.
6. Rehash and restate land policy and environmental policy.
8. Assure industrialists that they will have a free hand in recruiting staff and choosing contractors and suppliers.
9. Outlaw trade unionism in police, hospitals and fire brigade.
10. Declare that so far trade unions were being run to further the interests of the political parties of which they were appendages, not in the interests of the members, and this will be reversed.
11. Show, by action, that the Police will henceforth be politically and religiously neutral.
12. Stop -- and I mean STOP -- Muslim infiltration from Bangladesh, anti-national propaganda in madarsahs and flow of Saudi money to build mosques. Instead, use idle Waqf funds for building mosques.
13. Undertake massive rewriting of school textbooks to correct the falsehoods injected into them by Leftists (e.g. hiding the nefarious role of the Muslim League government in Bengal, 1937-47, hiding the eclipse of the Soviet Union or the human rights abuses by Mao or Stalin, giving due credit to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mookerjee, etc.)
9. Convince the people with a suitable PR exercise, simultaneously with all these steps, that this is being done for their benefit, without these the people will literally perish.
