Kolkata charms Kautilya

KOLKATA: When Congress leader and economist Jairam Ramesh met the Chinese ambassador recently, the envoy said he did not want to visit Kolkata. “Kolkata is too Communist,� he reportedly said.
Ramesh, who was in the city for the release of his book Kautilya Today, hastened to add that there were three types of people: Kolkata-haters, Kolkatabaiters and Kolkata lover.
He said he fell in the last category. According to Ramesh, the quality of learning was amazing in the city, but he wished it had “more quality of earning�.
In a lively interaction with ex-bureaucrat D. Bandopadhyay, Ramesh brought up the comparison between the Communist regime in Bengal and the ones in China and Kerala.
“Thirty years ago Kolkata was far ahead of Shanghai. Now Kolkata is a dump compared to Shanghai,� Ramesh said.
He credited China’s success to three factors: the overseas Chinese, labour laws and lack of reservation for small-scale industry. Ramesh wondered why the Communists in Kerala had delivered on health and education whereas the Left had failed.
But he saw a ray of hope in chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who he considered capable of turning things around compared to his predecessor Jyoti Basu.
In his exchange with Bandopadhyay, Ramesh admitted there has been a rural transformation in West Bengal.
But he said it was time for the state to move to agribusiness. “We must get beyond ideology,� he said. Kautilya Today is a collection of 200 pieces written by Ramesh for India Today.
He said the theme of the articles was change as expressed through political decentralisation, social empowerment and economic globalisation.
The book was released by industrialist Sanjeev Goenka who described Ramesh as an “elder brother�.