Basudeb Sen's Unfolding Stochastic Voyage

To Muubai For Development Banking: My Unfolding Voage 082

2012-01-15T02:33:00.000-08:00

It was difficult to leave Kolkata. At a much younger age, I had told myself and my sister in law that I would be the only brother to stay back in Gurudham Residence. But now I have to go to Mumbai and start living there. Additional problem is that shifting of my family would take another nine months when the school session in Mumbai would begin and I would be alone in Mumbai missing my small kinds and wife. I would have to leave behind my mother, practically bed-ridden and helpless with the inability to speak. Yet I was looking forward to Mumbai.

April 28th was a Friday, the last day I worked for Coal India. I took the train to Mumbai on April 29th evening that would reach me Mumbai on May 1, the day I wanted to join IDBI. I had developed the pain in the back before I left and took the pain-killer tablets, Zolandin Alka to see me through. The train journey would take about 32 hours. The only companions during the trip were my cigarettes: smoking on the train was not yet banned in India.

When the train arrived at the Victoria Terminus in Mumbai, I noticed that my shoes, left under my seat while I was asleep, were stolen. I had to depend only on my slippers now. I checked into a nearby, inexpensive lodge that I had stayed in my previous trips when I visited Mumbai for interviews a few months earlier. The first thing that I had to do was to buy a pair of shoes. Then, I took a cab that dropped me at the Nariman Bhavan at Nariman point, near Oberoi Towers (a 7 star hotel) within five minutes with hardly any traffic on the road. I found the IDBI office closed. I gathered from the security guards that April 1 was Maharashtra Day (the State of Maharshtra was formed on this Day) and therefore it was a holiday in Mumbai, the capital and the entire State. I walked back to the lodge for the next twenty minutes laughing at myself about my decision to join IDBI on May 1. I had joined Coal India on April 1: later I thought that it was not a good idea to begin office on April Fools Day. So, I though May 1 for joining IDBI and experienced a self-inflicted May Fool event.

I joined IDBI on May 2. The office at Nariman Bhavan where the top executives and major functional departments were housed, directed me to go Mittal Court, a two minutes walk. It was the same building where I was interviewed and the personnel department was located. The same lady officer who had asked me for the ‘no objection’ certificate from Coal India before the interview, greeted me and took the relevant papers from me including the letter of acceptance of my resignation and my release from the services of Coal India, a proof that I was, as on that day unemployed and not a public sector employee. Soon however she would come back and ask me a low and hesitant voice, “Dr. Sen., you are supposed to be a PhD in Economics or Statistics, but your certificate from the Indian Statistical Institute mentions that you were awarded a doctorate in Philosophy!” I understood her doubt and explained to her that ‘PhD’ means doctorate in philosophy but my area of PhD dissertation was in the area of applied mathematics/ statistics. I could not guess what she understood of my answer, but she nodded her head and went back again. After sometime, she came back made me to sign some papers. Later, her senior colleague escorted me to the office of Mr. Philip Thomas, the General Manager (later this same position would be re-designated as Chief General Manager), just on the opposite half on the same floor of the office. Mr. Thomas welcomed me, offered a cup of tea, called Mr. SK Ganguly to come over to his cabin, and told him to take me along to my office cabin and arrange for my introduction to the colleagues in the Department. Mr. Ganguly did all that and also took me to lunch at IDBI officers’ dinning room at the Nariman Bhavan. There I met some other officers including a Bengali gentleman, Mr. Bhola Nath Bhattacharya, who had recently been transferred from the Kolkata office to the head office at Mumbai’s Loan Accounts department. There were exchange of greetings and efforts at building cordial collegial relations, though Mr. Bhattacharyya, an officers’ association leader, also whispered to me that normally the association is against new recruits at such senior level but he welcomed me because I am a Bengali and offered all help and assistance.

Later, Mr. Thomas would call me to his cabin and explained the responsibilities that I have to deal with. My immediate assignments included IDBI’s Management Information System, preparation of Annual Report and Development Banking Report, Parliamentary Questions. The officers who would assist me included three Deputy Manager, Messer, SK Ganguly, Harpal Singh and S Srinivasan – all deputy managers, Mr. Venkataraman, Industrial Finance Officer (IFO), and two very young Staff Officers (SOs) in Mr. Pradip Godble and Mr Manohar Iyer with a few assistants with them. He said some new IFOs and SOs would join soon and my sections would be further strengthened. Mr. Ganguly however would continue to look after Administration directing reporting for this function to Dr. RH Patil, Deputy General Manager, through whom all the four Managers including me would report to Mr. Thomas. The other managers in the Department were Mr. PV Narasimham and Dr SK Sharma both of whom worked on special assignments with virtually no manpower support except their Secretaries, and Mr. Venkanteshwrlu who headed the Market Research Section with two IFOs and a secretary. I got a lady secretary. The allocation clearly signaled that the new recruit manager in me was meant to be tested with as much chore as possible right at the beginning and test my manpower management skills. Besides, placing all the three Deputy Managers with me was kind of an arrangement to keep this new guy Dr. Sen under close observation. But soon I would also realize that the Department functioned at a very relaxed pace.

I returned to the lodge that evening both satisfaction and relaxed.

Letting Black Diamond Express Go: My Unfolding Voyage 081

2012-01-14T04:50:00.001-08:00

India’s Independence cost our family the touch with our roots in the Khulna district (now in Bangladesh) – a district which was reportedly part of India on 15th August morning but traded off with the Murshidabad district by the evening. Fortunately for us my father had already set up his own business in Kolkata and built a house in the suburbs in Dum Dum in the late 1920s and early 1930s: the entire family including my grand-father could live together in Kolkata after 1947 permanently: the property in Khulna had been declared as enemy property by the then Pakistan Government. Nearly three decades later my father received a meager compensation against a part of his property he had lost as a result of partition of India into India and Pakistan (the ancestral property was in East Pakistan, now called Bangladesh). The parents gave us the money to renovate their 1930s’ building, named Gurudham, so that we brothers could have separate apartments for use. In 1981, the renovation was completed and my mother had allocated half of the second story for my use, while my parents and the younger brother lived in the other half of the same floor. My eldest brother lived in the ground floor and there was enough room to accommodate my other elder brother when he would return to Kolkata. I was in the process of shifting from the rented apartment opposite to the renovated Gurudham, things had suddenly started changing in many ways for me.

In Bengali there is a saying “Sukhe thaktay, bhute kiloy’: in a happy phase of life, a person is driven by some invisible force to get into trouble”. Coal India’s job was becoming increasingly stereo-typed with very little challenge. To reduce the stress, I had taken the full correspondence course of the three parts of the intermediate examination of the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants over a period of mandatory 18 months in 1980-81. In early 1981, two of my junior colleagues in Corporate Planning Department brought a copy of an advertisement for the post of a Manager Economist of Industrial Development Bank of India head quartered in Bombay (now called Mumbai). I had to apply first for getting the form in which I would be required to formally apply. Around the same time, advertisements were released by the National Insurance Academy, Bombay for faculty and by the Kolkata-based Industrial Reconstruction Bank of India (IRBI), later converted to Industrial Investment Bank of India (IIBI), for an Economist. I sent my resume to these two companies. The IRBI never responded. The application form from IDBI did not reach me. My young colleagues inquired about IDBI and suggested that I send a resume to IDBI mentioning that I had not received the application form. After a few months, I received a call for interview at Mumbai from the National Insurance Academy. I was interviewed on the same day in three locations by three persons: the director of the Academy, the Chairman of the General Insurance Corporation and the Managing Director of the Life Insurance Corporation. I was told during the interviews that they liked me and that after the initial one year or so at the temporary campus at Mumbai, the faculty will have to shift to Pune where the Academy’s building and facilities including faculty apartments are being constructed. So, I had to request them to provide me an accommodation at Mumbai which they said they are unable to provide but are willing to pay whatever reasonable rent that I may have to pay for hiring an apartment on my own initiative. I knew nothing of Mumbai then and so was reluctant to get into the job of searching out a rental accommodation on my own. The MD of the Life Insurance Company suggested that I should consider in buying a small flat in Mumbai because that would be good investment and make me wealthier soon. He was right but I did not have enough money to buy a flat and was unwilling to borrow money for that purpose. I wanted to the employer to take the complete responsibility for my residence. So, I had turn their offer and come back to Kolkata.

Within a week, I received a telegram from Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) asking me to appear for interview scheduled a seven days later at their headquarters. So, I went to Mumbai. Before the interview, the personnel department officer said that I had not submitted the ‘no objection’ certificate from Coal India for releasing me: this was a peculiar socialistic requirement imposed by Government on the public sector employers, probably copying the idea from Soviet Russia – utterly undemocratic and draconian rule to exploit public sector employees. I told the officer that I had not been called for interview by IDBI notwithstanding the absence of the no objection certificate nor had I been told in the telegram to bring such a certificate. And, I did not apply in the prescribed application form because I had not been supplied one despite my request. So, she reluctantly allowed me to go in for the scheduled interview. I told myself that for the second time, I succeeded in bypassed the obnoxious rule of the public sector treating employees as their slaves rather as citizens of a free country.

I was interviewed for about 40 minutes as scheduled at IDBI. I got the impression that these people liked me and may give me an offer. They told me that they would let me know soon. And, I told them that I would be able to join only after three months of the receipt of their offer as I have to give three months’ notice to my current employer (actually, I needed to give only a month’s notice). I came back to Kolkata. There was no response from the Industrial Reconstruction Bank of India (IRBI) where I had sent my application of candidature against their advertisement. I gathered that IRBI has probably changed minds whether to recruit an economist or not. Little did I expect IRBI to recruit an economist some years later and still would be searching for a senior economist in the late 1990s? At that time I did not expect to ever have some relationship with IRBI much later in the new century.

Back to work and started preparing for all the papers in three groups of ICWA Intermediate examination. The examinations went of fine.

Meanwhile, there was a sudden set back in the family. My parents had gone for a two-month visit to my elder brother Mejda who lived and worked at Birmitrapur (near Rourkella in Oriya). After a few days of stay there, my mother had a cerebral attack. My younger brother and I rushed there to see her. She had come out of danger but the attack had that paralysed her left side and damaged her power to converse. By the time, she was brought back to Gurudham residence; I had already got the offer from IDBI.

I was so comfortable with the Coal India job with most colleagues accepting me as one of their own, yet I had been feeling the urge to change for nothing else but to learn different things and to get rid of the stigma of having worked only in Kolkata environment that Chairman Grewal during his interview did not appear to like. An elderly co-passenger in the chartered bus in which I used to go to Coal India’s office in the morning worked at the Kolkata office of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and was very affectionate to me. He commented that the IDBI offer was very attractive: normally one would take 18 years in RBI or IDBI to reach to the position that I was offered by IDBI. The compensation was about 20% higher than what I was getting in Coal India and subsidized accommodation in a decent large apartment in Mumbai was assured by IDBI within a few months of my joining. I was little hesitant because my mother was in paralysed condition and my in-laws would be missing us, my wife being their only child. But my elder brother Dada with his family and my younger brother was living at Gurudham to take full care of my ailing mother and aged father. I therefore decided to accept the offer of IDBI.

I sent my acceptance letter to IDBI and indicated to them that I would join them in the first week of May 1982. I took about a month’s leave from Coal India and completed the shifting to Gurudham residence. I could spend more time with my wife, children and my mother. She was under physio-therapy and was making some progress in moving the limbs on the left side affected by the cerebral attack. But there was no opportunity of full-scale conversation with her. We could not make out what she was telling us except through her gestures. She was able to understand what we were telling her. It was so sad that a lady who not only devoted all her mind and efforts to not only her own family, but also of relatives and friends and was so generous in extending her support to the weak and the poor even at the cost of sacrificing her own needs, was at this state at an old age. And, I would no more get a chance to enjoy the lively conversation with her.

After resuming work at Coal India, I submitted my resignation letter to the Personnel Department through my boss, Mr. Mishra, the Chief of Corporate Planning. Everyone wanted to know where I was going but I did not disclose the name of my future employer for fear of someone trying to create problems if they knew that I was joining another public sector company. Mr. Mishra might have told the Coal India Chairman to retain me by offering a promotion. Soon, the Chief of Personnel (the same bearded IAS officer whom I had spotted attending the Seminar on Incomes and Wages Policy at Delhi some time back) would call me to meet him. When I met him, he told me that Chairman wanted to talk to me regarding my decision to leave the service of Coal India. I replied to him that since I have already made up my mind, I would not like to meet Chairman and disappoint him even after he assures me of an immediate promotion to the next higher grade. I knew that with a promotion, the compensation would increase and I would not have to shift from the City I had lived till my birth to a distant city in a different province that I knew little about. But something inside me was compelling me to get out of Coal India and try my luck in Mumbai with a new organization about which I had little knowledge. Within a week Coal India sent the acceptance of my resignation: the three months’ notice requirement could not be imposed on me because the Personnel Department had erred in not sending me a confirmation letter after I had completed one year’s of service with them. But they insisted that I talk to my new employer so that they would transfer my balances in the Provident Fund Account to the new employer Provident Fund Trusts Account. That would be in my best interest. They settled all other bills and claims promptly.

After a few days, I bade adieu to my colleagues and friends individually. Only my dear friend, Sourav Mukherjee, informally gave a farewell party: he took me to sweetmeat shop cum restaurant where we had spent an hour together. Within a few days, towards the end of April I finally signalled out of Coal India and the Black Diamond Express go without me.

Waning Interest in Coal: My unfolding Voyage 080

2012-01-11T01:22:00.000-08:00

Coal helped power the Industrial Revolution and was the dominant industrial fuel till petroleum oil was discovered and began to be exploited. The 1971-73 oil crisis resulting from OPEC cartel decision to raise oil prices substantially and control oil production and supplies. This in turn led to a resurgence of the coal industry even while researchers, scientists and technologists gave a thrust on energy conservation, energy use efficiency and development of commercial ways to exploit non-conventional energy as well as new ways of exploiting coal for energy generation. By that late 1970s considerable progress has been made, especially in the advanced western countries. The subject of energy had by then become a hot subject of discussion among corporate managers. My teacher had written an article on the economics of nuclear power in the Economic & Political Weekly, which published my comments a few weeks later.

For a while I tended to become an energy economist with emphasis on Coal. The opportunity to give a lecture on Coal Industry’s future at a seminar organized by the Tata Training Orgagnisation at Jamshedpur brought me in touch with the US Information Service local director, one Mr. Dasgupta, a former Professor of economics or political science. I used to get regular invitation to lecture and discussion programs organized by him at Kolkata and even got gifts of books on economics and got into the mailing list of Span, a US publicity magazine. Mr Dasupta would one day invite me to his residence to share coffee with him. His wife had arranged delicious snacks. While we were discussing various things, the couple took some interest in my parents and family. It seemed to me that they were surprised to know that I had already married and have two sons. But I did mention that I have a younger brother who was still a bachelor. Probably, the Dasguptas had thought me as an interesting bachelor to be explored for matrimony!

But besides economics of energy, I was getting interested in the discipline of business management and the attitude and behaviour of people within organizations. I recall that at the Seminar at the Tata Training centre at Jamshedpur, the West Bengal industries secretary or director participated in a panel discussion. I had asked him question when the discussions centered on industrial relations and production loss. My question was how his department and offices in the districts of West Bengal monitored the incipient worsening of industrial relations situation in individual factories or industrial belts and took proactive steps to nip a strike or lockout in the bud. His reply was astonishing but revealed the difference between professional corporate managers and bureaucrats. He mentioned that his department can only act after the news of an industrial strike, lockout or violence has already occurred. The perspective of government bureaucrats perhaps continues to be the same even now in West Bengal.

The interactions with the US Information Service were open and transparent and the lady economic attaché who participated in the seminar was cordial. But I had also an opportunity to meet people at the Russian consular office. A letter from a Russian company had landed in Coal India. My engineer colleagues thought that they could pass on at least one running about task to my corporate planning department: the job of getting a translation of the letter from Russian language to English. I contacted the local consular office for help. They asked me to visit their office. And, that was an interesting experience. From the gate, I had started sensing an air of suspicion as I was being led from one vacant room and corridor to another. It was probably after half an hour of long walking and waiting in the sofa in a room, I could meet someone who would try to know the purpose of my coming there and examine the documents we wanted to be translated from Russian to English. He kept a copy of the document, said that his office did not have the facility of such translation and assured me that they would get back to us if they could provide and translation help over phone. I was then escorted out through the same process of walking through corridors and rooms one after the other. I do not remember of ultimately getting any help. Te reception at the Russian consular office and the little interaction gave me the impression that the people there looked at me with considerable suspicion and they were reluctant to help. But I continued my subscription to Soviet Land, the Russian promotional magazine. I also used to get the monthly promotional magazine of the communist eastern Democratic Republic of Germany. These foreign country image promotion magazines, despite their covert brainwashing literature, did contain interesting knowledge about the people and their life styles as also about their technology, culture and socio-economic environment. Those days Indians had very little access to information on what was happening in foreign countries. It was not the globalised world that we see today four decades later.

Whether for the Chairman, or for the Corporate Planning documents or for my own articles for the newspaper, my quota of handwriting and dictation to stenographer-secretary (a category of office employees along with the category of typists have been under the phase of extinction with almost everyone now keying in their compositions on the desk-top or lap-top computers) had tremendously increased during the Coal India days. I must have composed equivalent in magnitude to the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana combined. The speed of writing had also increased. I was getting increasingly bored. I tried to get back into academics. I applied for a post-doctoral fellowship at the Economics Department of the Presidency College (now University) and met my teacher for a discussion. But I had to regret his kind offer as the scholarship was hardly 40% of my earnings from Coal India and with no medical benefits. After all, I had to manage a family of four now. I tried a US Foundation scholarship for young managers, got selected from the eastern region but was unsuccessful at the all-India selection stage as I had not yet arranged any tie-up with an American University. I tried directly with one American University with a proposal on what I intended to work on in the area of managerial economics. The Professor there asked me to come and join but said he cannot upfront provide any funding. Meanwhile however, I completed my compulsory correspondence course study for all the papers for the intermediate examination of the Institute of Cost & Works Accountants, learning in the process some elements of financial accounting, cost accounting, commercials laws. This would help me in future.

Even as I was serving Coal India my direct relations with coal in life was coming to an end. From our childhood days we were used to food cooked on portable clay-tin- steel rod ovens that used coal (I came to know in Coal India, that this was called soft-coke) as the main fuel with cow-dung cakes that would help the initial lighting of fire. When I had joined Coal India, soft-coke coal was still the dominant cooking fuel in the city of Calcutta though the use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) was being supplied by Oil companies bt it was difficult to get a connection and regular supplies, besides being costly. For my own small family, soft-coke oven was not suitable, apart from being messy. So, we used the coal-based oven once or twice a week but largely depended on kerosene fueled burners (stove) for cooking. But kerosene itself was scarce and often sod in the black market at high prices. So, we were looking for a solution to this cooking fuel problem. An elderly mining engineer colleague, a bachelor, suggested me that I use the electric –powered oven. I purchased a Kathlene electric oven though I knew the electricity (being energy converted from coal) would be costlier and there was this additional problem of safety. I was already using a small electric dip heater my younger brother brought from Poland (he married a Polish lady he picked up while on a training programme there) for us to warm up water for tea and bath (we were still not using electric water geysers). But as it turned out this was just the transition period before we had to move over to LPG as domestic cooking fuel. My direct association with coal was in the last phase.

Amidst People Missing Powers & Status: My Unfolding Voyage 079

2012-01-07T22:42:00.000-08:00

One of the tasks at Coal India was to attend external training programs and workshops and seminars as a delegate from Coal India: they needed someone with no link to emergency work available to represent Coal India in these programs and workshops. Some of the interesting programs that I had attended during my five year stint at Coal India included a workshop on Managing Restructuring of Sick Units organized by Indian Institute of Management Calcata, a workshop on Systems Management by some professors of IIM Bangalore, and a seminar on National Incomes Policy in Delhi, a course in Cost Benefit Analysis by a Calcutta-based Research Institute and a seminar organized by the US Information Service, Kolkata in collaboration with the Tata Training centre at Jamshedpur. In Delhi, I found a short, bearded and quiet gentleman, an IAS officer of West Bengal cadre, attending the three day seminar on Incomes Policy: he was although out keeping quiet and did not appear to be interested in participating in discussions. A few years later, I found him in Coal India in charge of Personnel Department. I could not fathom what this gentleman was doing but later I found him heading a Govt. of India enterprise in West Bengal. Some IAS officers seem to enjoy doing nothing except managing to get into positions that demands very little but earns you better compensation.
In the course on Cost Benefit Analysis, I found my former economic teacher at the undergraduate college giving us a series of lectures: by that time I had already earned my Phd with a thesis on social cost benefit analysis. I had asked him a question at that time and is yet to find a satisfactory reply: my question was: ‘if a project was set up based on shadow price-based viability while the project was down right commercially unviable based on market price based economics, how would the company with such a project survive?’ I myself had later given lectures to bankers on social cost benefit analysis: my plea was that in a controlled economic regime of India then (prior to 1991), bankers must first reject those that did not have an internal rate of return higher than the cost of capital on a market price economic calculus as well as based on shadow price calculus and then accord priority to those among the projects found commercially viable on market price calculus that have with higher positive social rate of return net of social cost of capital. My guideline may not be strictly in accordance with welfare economics but may help protect the banks’ interest of getting their loans back while being socially responsible in financing. Economic practice is sometimes a confused art in planned, government controlled economies.

Towards the end of a session in the evening a professor of IIM Bangalore gave us a problem and asked to come up with the solution next morning. A person traveled along a straight road for twelve hours between 7AM to 7PM from point X to Y at varying unknown speeds and he returned back the next day starting from Y at 7AM and reaching X at 7 PM trotting at unknown variable speeds. Could there be a point W where he would have been at the same time of the clock on both the days? I thought over the problem during my sleep at night and came to conclusion that this problem could be solved through the Bower’s fixed point theorem in Mathematics. But when we met in the class next morning I said the answer to the question was yes. He asked me to prove. It struck me then what was so simple: imagine the person’s twin brother traveling from Y to X on the same road at varying unknown speed on the same day during the same twelve hours period. Of course, the twins will meet at some point W on the road at some point of time. The whole class got the idea as to how academicians make simple things look complex and fool the business executives.
One of the tasks of the Corporate Planning Department was to coordinate management studies assigned by the company to external consultants. The interactions with the consultants provided an insight into how the company’s management at different levels functioned. Some assignments were carried out by Administrative Staff College of India, which I would happen to visit after I had left Coal India.

Another source of learning was the interaction with a few young management trainees at Coal India headquarters. All of them were in the marketing department and appeared to be inadequately utilized except for brain storming sessions. Two of them would go back to the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta as Research fellow to obtain PhD degrees. One would (Raghunathan) later become a Professor of Finance Indian Institiute of Management Ahmedabad while the other (Sudip Chatterjee) would return to Coal India at a senior position. Another trainee would shift to a private sector firm headquartered in Mumbai (Devadasann). Two others (Roy and G) continue in Coal India. I had chance meeting with Devdasan and Chatterjee later in life.
Ms. Anjali Sen, the Public Relations Officer, was an interesting person and would often interact with me regarding press communications and in-house magazine. This sophisticated elderly lady would call me over inter-com to announce that Mrs Sen was on the line and once I could not resist the temptation to say that Mr. Sen was responding.
Sulav Mukerjee, the Statistician was the closes friend I had in Coal India. We were in the same age group and visited each others residence with family. His boss RN Sinha would sometimes spend time with me: he would never hide the importance he enjoyed as the Chief Information Officer of the company. His bosses, both mining engineers, Mr. Chatterjee and Mr. Balachandran were intelligent persons but did not seem to be busy beyond monitoring the daily/ monthly coal production and dispatches. The six/ seven mining engineers in the Proudction Department at Coal India headquarters were a great source of learning some basics of the mining operations life. All these officials seem to be busy but I found them completely relaxed: they seem to be fish out of the water of mining life. The engineers (mostly electrical/ mechanical) in the Engineering Department were monitoring the performance of heavy equipments at the hundreds of coal mines. Interaction with them suggested that they were also relaxed and had time to explain to me the issues of productivity and idling of costly mining machinery. Most of the engineers seemed to be missing real operational activities and reluctantly adapting to corporate staff function requiring continuous updating of technology knowledge and interpreting MIS data. The power and status enjoyed by an engineer of any rank seemed to decline as the distance from the mining activity location increases.

With the departure of Chairman Lt. General Grewal, the corporate planning activities lost much of their glamour. But we could do virtually whatever we like in undertaking studies and connecting ideas. My boss being a mining engineer, the Chief of Corporate Planning virtually worked as another of Chairman’s technical adviser cum executive assistant, while I worked with the help of two junior officers, Kalyan Sen and Dulal Goswami. My colleagues were very affectionate and co-operative. My secretary, Mr. Sensarma, a very reserved kind of person with hardly any intimacy with office colleagues, had an initial trouble with his perception of his work being that of taking dictations and typing them out rather than also typing out large statistical / analytical tabular statement with numbers, became a very helpful and affectionate. He had given up his initial resistance as soon as I started dictating from manually prepared statistical tables for him to convert into stenographic notes for typing on typewriters: he would always deliver his output in the quickest possible time and virtually without errors.

Full of Life With Little Pain: My Unfolding Voyage 078

2011-10-08T10:13:00.001-07:00

I had crossed thirty and life had become for the first time full: a dear and caring wife, our two kids growing up, parents and two siblings next door, frequent get-together with childhood and school friends and their souses as neighbours, lots of former office colleagues and their families still in touch, lot of current colleagues who became family friends, established recognition as an effective, contributing manager with descent workload and considerable freedom, articles published in journals and business dailies with token honorarium, assignments as visiting faculty in a business school for a small honorarium, invitations to participate in intellectual discussions organised by local information centre of a foreign government, frequent participation in executive development programmes, workshops and seminars of various business schools and academic or professional institutions and of course a descent salary and other benefits from the employer.

There was of course one trouble: a pain on either side of the back at the end of the spinal chord would recur frequently making me unable to walk or even move the body even by a fraction of centimeter. It was amazing that the pain would slowly develop while I would be returning from office in the evening, would respond to hot water bag treatment around the area of the pain for two/ three hours to enable me to watch TV and take dinner and then go to bed, would become severe again some time around 4 AM, requiring heat treatment with hot water bag again for two hours, before I got up around 6 AM. With lot of difficulty I would get up from bed, have my tea, visit the toilet and take my bath by which time the pain would go and I would be ready to go to office. Soon my wife would be expressing doubt if there had been any pain and lot of suffering during the only the 12 to 13 hours I spent at home! Even my colleagues did not have any chance to know that I had suffered excruciating pain and nearly immobilized for a greater part of the period when I was not in the office.

I had observed that the pains developed mostly when the intensity of acid and constipation would increase and/ or when I would have strained the back or legs while lifting or moving heave furniture or something like that. The pain always responded to heat treatment but never responded to strong pain killers. I had consulted many doctors, general physicians to specialists and homeopaths but the problem did not go. I got reconciled with the idea of living with the problem throughout my life. But some thing helped to reduce the incidence of such attacks and the period of suffering each time an attack would occur. The office doctor at the United Bank had prescribed a tablet, meant for arthritis pain. I had taken one or two courses but forgot the name of the medicine after I joined Coal India. The office doctor, at Coal India, Dr. Sarkar, after some experiments prescribed zolandin alka that worked, especially if I could start taking this tablet as soon as the pain started developing. For each attack, about 6 tablets of Zolandin alka over three days would completely cure me, while butazolandin tablets had no effect. Soon after I had left Coal India, zolandin alka was withdrawn and not manufactured any longer. I had to find out another pain killer that was mild and yet worked. That was Dolonex 25 mg. Until I had reached 50, I had to consume 6 x 8 = 48 dolonex tablets a year. Since then consumption of this tablet has progressively reduced to a maximum of 10-12 tablets a year, mostly for milder pains here and there. But my younger son developed a similar problem during his late twenties and found dolonex useful for a three / four years before he virtually discontinued taking this or any other pain killers as incidence of attacks came down. That was the unfolding story of my major association with pain killers of a particular variety.

Notwithstanding the bouts of attack of excruciating and immobilizing pains, life was so pleasant, busy and engaging. While in Coal India, we had two special tourism trips with travel expenses paid for by my employer. Once we had been to Bhubaneswar and Puri in Oriya. Four of us stayed in a hotel, probably named Puri Hotel very near to the blue waters of the Bay of Bengal in to which Sri Krishna Chaityana had disappeared. The hotel was ordinary meant for low budget tourists but was clean, spacious with adequate water, electricity and bath facilities besides a restaurant serving really good food. It would hardly take two minutes straight-line from the beach to the hotel.

Topu would not allow our sons to step inside the water beyond the point where the water level touched their knees and that also for a few minutes. Despite the lessons she had taken as a school girl in the swimming pool of the Ordinance Factory Club in Dum Dum, she was herself most reluctant go beyond the point where water level touched her knees. She did not allow me also to enjoy sea water touch my naval even with the available swimming assistance service in the Puri beach. So, apart from the time it took us to take some pictures of our in the midst of the sea water, most of our time on the beach was spent looking at the waves rushing towards us and cleaning our ankles as we sat on the sloping sands enjoyed strolling over them. Occasionally, however, waves did drench us enough. But I could not repeat the experience of my childhood when my younger brother and I jumped along with the incoming waves while holding our father’s hands. Of course we walked along the roads to visit the Puri temple and many other temples and religious spots there. As we went deep inside the Puri temple to see the idols, Jhupa looked at them and observed ‘Bhunrosilyali’, a children story book character - ugly and scaring jackal that scared kids). We offered flowers in worship to deities.

With Puri at the centre, we took trips to Bhubaneswar, a city of small temples all around and a huge temple. Also, visited the new Capital city of Oriya and the Nandan Park, some kind of an open, miniature zoo that the children liked as much. we did. We also took trips to Udaygiri, Khandagiri and the Sun Temple at Konarak: the children liked the big statues of lions there.

It was an enjoyable trip. The children liked the overnight journey by train. At this time, both the sons were studying in the kid schools. But two years before this trip, we four had a trip to Delhi. At that time, Chupa was not yet in a position to walk on the roads and Jhupa was yet to start going to school. We stayed first few days in a hotel, then moved to an affectionate cousin’s apartment and for a couple of days enjoyed the company and care of Khokada - my cousin, Gouri Boudi- his wife, Baro Mashima, my mother’s elder sister. Then we moved to the apartment of another of my cousin Murali (the fourth son of my other maternal aunt) who lived there alone. Topu had to cook food for us there. We took a trip to Agra and Vrindavan. At Agra we spend quite a few hours at the Taj Mahal. Chupa had to be carried in the lap most of the time. Separately, we took trips to visit the various tourist spots in both old Delhi and New Delhi. This was my second visit to Delhi and I was somewhat familiar with these cities – at that time with very little traffic and population in New Delhi city.

Equally interesting were the small trips that only two of us took when the son’s were still small and we had to keep them under the care of my mother while we were away from home. One such trip was by bus to Bankura, Bishnupur, Nabadwip (including the ISCON temple) and Kamahati in Midnapore. This was arranged by my former United Bank of India colleague, Suhas Talukdar: conducted tourist tour business was one of his businesses at that time. He also arranged another trip to Digha sea beach when our sons also accompanied us. We had lot of fresh fried pomfret (perciform sea fishes belonging to the family Bramidae) one evening in a hired cottage in Digha.

Once we had a long, widing trip: four of us as also my parents. We went to Durgapur by train one morning to visit my cousin's home where my aunt (father's younger sister) also lived. The next day, we went by bus to Burnpur to vist my father's cousin and also to my wife's maternal uncle, a doctor, in Assansol before returning to Durgapur. The next day we went to Purulia by bus, spent a night before leaving for Jamshedpur, where my father's another sister lived. Finally, we went by train and bus to Birmitrapur, off Rourkela where my elder brother Mejda worked. My parents stayed back there, while we four returned back to Kolkata on the sisth evening.

There were however worries too and some turned to be funny or brought great relief soon. Topu’s mother was worried that Chupa, her second grandson was not showing teeth in time. The pediatrics assured Topu that there was still time and hope. I told her not to worry, if Chupa did not develop teeth, she might be one of the wonder child with potential to earn lots of money. Chupa would ultimately get all the thirty-two.

Jhupa took some time to learn pedaling and riding the tri-cycle they brothers received jointly as a gift from the grand mother weeks after our pulling and pushing the cycle with both sons enjoying the. Even after Jhupa started cycling on his own, Chupa was still lazy enough to prefer a ride on the back. By the time Chupa learned to cycle, they became more interested in exploring Topu’s bicycle. And it was the chain that attracted them the most. One day, the bicycle from the stand with both the sons tumbling down and chupa’s toe stuck between the chain and the teeth of the wheel around which the chain moves. Chupa was crying allowed. I somehow managed to take the toe out to find a deep bite with blood coming out. I washed the wound with Dettol, let it dry for a while and then applied homeopathic liquid Arnica. Since the children had been already on various protective shots program for immunization, the wound healed within a day or two, though for quite a while Chupa kept crying, " Oh what a great damage Dada (elder brother, Jhupa) has inflicted on me. I shall not be able to walk again.”

The children get saved from accidents some how. Another evening when, the two sons were on their rounds of exploring various corners of the house, we heard the sound of a heavy weight falling on the floor. We rushed to the spot to find the children dumb-struck and apparently unhurt. They had pulled some curtain strings that led to the electric steel iron fall from a high shelve: it seemed that the electric iron managed to dash against the corner of two walls to miss hitting the children before landing on the floor. An external examination and observation for a while showed that they were normal.

Coal Comfort for Entertaining Life: My Unfolding Voyage 077

2011-08-15T04:11:00.000-07:00

Life during the Coal India employment period was becoming increasingly
interesting as time passed. A decent pay and coverage of all medical expenses of my family and colleagues, mostly mining engineers, finding me acceptable though the thrill of working with inspiring and caring Chairman like Lt. General Grewal was lost soon after he was forced to go, provided a decent support to life at home. I had already shifted to a sprawling flat just opposite to my parent’s residential home resulting in daily interaction with my parents and my two sons growing up with daily sessions with their grand parents, uncle, aunt and elderly cousins, enjoying their time, attention, care, love and affection and making daily evening one-hour session with my in-laws living seven minutes walking distance away. At the same time, we had all the privacy and fun at home with the sons growing up – learning to walk, talk, play and entertain. My younger son was taking a longer time to grow his first tooth and my mother in-law was very worried: I had to tell her that I had never heard of an infant growing up to be a toothless man or woman and if my son happened to make a record, he could be a great source of money. He did not get to making money for me that way.

Running an independent family gave us the freedom to invite friends and
relatives for lunch and dinner at my residence. We would have special beer-
dinner sessions: the most common participants in such parties were recently-wed couples – Ashis and Ruma, Pai (Tapan) and Ruby, Chanchal and Mahua. Some times other friends like Gopal and Robi Ghose (Tapan) would join. One of them would become intoxicated even before the bottles were opened. Ashis, Chanchal and Gopal played soccer with me in my school days. Chanchal was a classmate in the higher secondar school.

At United Bank we had six days a week but in Coal India, it was five day a week. Two days of great fun. On Saturdays I would make the weekly purchases of groceries, mutton, chicken, potatoes, vegetables and fish. Sometimes I would take my elder son along to the market place. We would go walking and return in a cycle rickshaw. My father in-law felt he could help me as he goes to market daily: so, I gave him the opportunity to ensure that he still would select the daily fish for his daughter but at my expense. He would deliver the fish and have some sweet exchange with his grand children every morning on weekdays after I would have left for office around 8-15 AM.

Soon we had the first TV at home,thanks to Suhash Talukdar, an ex-colleague
at United Bank of India who had already turned an entrepreneur and whom I had
provided some services twice a week in the evening in exchange for 8
rossogollas as evening snack. He and his family loved us very much. He took us to various places like Bankura, Bishnapur, Kamarhati, Digha, Nabadweep-
Mayapur (ISCON temple) in tourist buses: he operated a tourist transport
operation business, publications business, matrimonial matching services and
newspaper business. He gifted us a black and white TV manufactured by
Cinevista (manufacturer of Mumbai that closed operations after a few years).
Those days, TV telecasting was limited to few hours in the morning and evening on weekdays. We used to go to my parent’s residence or my land-lord’s flat to enjoy the Sunday films or Calcutta soccer league and shield final matches, especially those between East Bengal and Mohan Bagan or Md. Sporting clubs. With the TV at home, we could enjoy all that at home now. But my wife did not like the idea of sons looking at TV all the time as this could affect their eyes and concentration: we had to allot a limited time for them. But if they were at home and we two were only watching TV; they had to be forced to play elsewhere. One afternoon when we two were enjoying a film, my wife suddenly found two pairs of eyes under the curtain of the entry door to the TV room: the two sons quietly lying down on the floor outside the TV room door and watching the film! My grand daughters are luckier: my sons and their souses allowed virtually free access to
TV and computer viewing to their children at least during the first three/ four years of life.

Since Jhupa and Chupa was already walking and running, it was time to get
them a tri-cycle. I got a tri-cycle with an additional seat at behind the saddle: funding was by my mother in law. Jhupa learned to cycle quickly, Chupa was lazy enough to be satisfied with getting the ride for quite a while. On a winter week-end, four of us went out to the Zoo, had lunch at Chan Gua, a Chinese restaurant, now not as popular as it was then and then enjoyed a circus show: wild animals were still on the show those days. The children had a ride by a double-deck bus. On return home, Jhupa asked me to buy him a double-deck bus. When asked him as to where we could keep the bus, he had pointed out to the 30 square-feet vacant plot of land near our residence. It took a little while that the idea of buying a regular double-deck bus was not a feasible idea. But both were happy when I bought them a toy chariot car each that they could pull along with the help of a string and a toy steam driven steamer that would move along the water in a large vessel when a candle inside was lighted.

Jhupa would often go with me along to the market walking down the lane.
Sometime, I would buy him some candy on the way back with some to spare for his brother. One day he would suggest to me that I buy him some chocolate
while we were on our way to the market. I told him that he could buy the
chocolate now if so wished but might like to consider using the money later to buy the same thing or something else of his choice later. If he would chose the option to buy immediately; he would be foregoing the option to buy something later as the money available is fixed and once spent cannot be reused later. I had felt then that he scarecely understood what I had said at that age: probably he wanted to take more time to understand and decided to buy chocolate later. Once when four of us went to the Rathayatra festival, we brought some toys for the sons. While returning, Jhupa suggested “what if we had tasted some fried papad sold at the fair!” His mother would not agree to allow children to take fried papad from wayside vendors. So, all of us had to return home to enjoy papad fried by the Lady of the House.

A three-minute walk from the residence, we had a nice, clean restaurant called Quality. Being on the main highway Jessore Road and beside a petrol-pump (gas station), it had roaring business during the day but was relatively less crowded late in the evening. Sometimes Topu would call off cooking the dinner and we would walk down to Quality to enjoy Chicken Curry or Punjabi Traka (special pulses preparation) served with hot roti straight from the oven. The boys liked the Tarka very much. On our way back home, we would buy hot loaves and "S"-shaprd biscuits, fresh from the small counter at the wayside bakery.

Jhupa being 15 months elder to Chupa got eligible first to get into play school. But those days there was shortage of play schools and I had already been influenced by the Soviet Land Magazine that children should not get into formal education until five years old. So, I would postpone getting Jhupa admitted to a play school. My friend suggested that I was committing a mistake and must find a good school for my sons soon. Thanks to Chobi Didmoni, our next door neighbour. She was the Assistant Headmistress of Girl’s High School about 10 minutes away from our residence by cycle rickshaw. The School had started a Nursery Kindergarten section in theSchoola few months back. She had been observing and conversing with my wife and children everyday over her first floor balcony having a clear view of my children’s open verandah play site. She suggested that we get Jhupa admitted to the Nursey class, even though the classes had already started a few months ago. The next day, Jhupa, aged three, got admitted to the School. That marked the beginning of his long 21-year journey in formal education ending with three master’s degrees including two from US universities.

Leontief's Input Output Matrix : My Unfoolding Voyage 076

2011-08-01T06:26:00.000-07:00

My elder son, Jhupa, was about 15 months old and the younger one, Chupa was just a year old. My wife had terrible time dealing with the pangs of growth of the little ones. So, I though if I could give her some relief. I had a meeting with Dr. Guha, the economist on deputation from the Indian Economic Service to the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute at Ranchi. A train would take me at around 8 PM from Kolkata (Howrah Railway Station) to reach Ranchi around 7 AM next morning. I took Jhupa along with me: he had his cereal mixed milk at night and slept comfortably beside in the First Class Air Conditioned Coupe. I dropped him at my relative's residence for the day and went to the meeting. After two day's meeting, we returned on the fourth night back to Kolkata. He enjoyed the trip. We had another such trip (free for children below the age of three), but we missed the train on the onward journey for the third trip. He was unwilling to get down from the cab to enter home: he was extremely disappointed. This was the only time I had missed boarding a train because the train departure time was advanced by two hours in the winter season and I was not aware.

I was already aware that the Government was still pegging coal prices below the cost of production. What was surprising is that by pegging coal prices below cost of production, Government India encouraged unscientific and unsafe mining leading to loss of precious coal reserves and corruption. This socialist technique was further consolidated by Mrs. Indira Gandhi by coal nationalisation. Coal price and distribution continued to be controlled by the socialist brained Government: safety improved, modern methods of capital intensive long wall mining and opencast mining was introduced at a rapid pace, coal workers were now together to bargain better leading to galloping rise in wages and benefits. Coal India's cost of production soared. But Government kept the prices of coal below cost of production, bearing the losses of the coal companies and the burden of rising capital expenditure on coal capacity expansion. Experts Committees were formed to recommend price revisions: one would have had to read those Committee reports to believe that such poor quality reports could be prepared for signature by esteemed economists - clearly the coal department must have been staffed by the less brilliant material from the administrati8ve services. Four decades later, India is currently in need to import both coking and non-coking coal.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, we had argued for a more rational, long-term coal pricing policy. Many notes were prepared and sent to the Government with little effect. When I remarked that these efforts that we were making were sheer wastage, Mr. Nagar, the Executive Secretary to the Chairman consoled me that at a later date in future the value of these notes would be realized. I knew it would be too late then.

Lt. General Grewal of course had another concern at the same time. He pointed out that increase in coal prices to cover cost of production, however desirable would increase the cost of production of coal itself. I understood his point in terms of the inter-industry flow of materials that we learned through the Leontief Input Output Models. I had learnt that the Planning Commission in its attempt to check consistency of the five year plan material balances used some less than 100 by less than 100 industry models. But I did not ever come across evidence of the use of such models for pricing policies. But Chairman Grewal's point was valid. Coal goes as input for both electricity generation and steel making. A rise in coal prices would increase the cost of electricity generation and steel making. This will lead to rise in prices of electricity and steel both of which are needed in huge quantities to extract coal and hence coal costs would rise. The coefficients were known and it would have been rather easy to calculate approximately the impact of letting coal, steel and electricity prices to work themselves out through their inter-linkages. Indian policy makers however were not comfortable dealing with such quantitative analysis in the 1970s or 1980s.

One implication of Chairman's concern over the above price linkages was that each of these sectors conserved energy and materials use to save on costs on a continuous basis. Mr. R.C. Shekhar, the then Director Finance of Coal India was very affectionate to me: he asked me to present a paper on Energy Conservation at the Annual Conference of the Society of Internal Auditors in Kolkata. I had access to various news bulletin and journals on energy conservation published in the UK and the USA. Remember energy conservation had become a priority after the two successive petroleum oil price shocks of 1971 and 1977. I presented a paper on energy conservation and energy audit and Mr. Shekhar liked it enough to refer to me as his protégé in after my presentation at the Conference.

But despite all efforts, we could not produce an empirically valid cost function for coal. Part of the reason was that our team consisted mostly of cost accountants and charted accountants who were more comfortable in computing and allocating costs rather that allow cost observations to throw up a cost function. It was unfortunate that despite having recruited an econometrician in me, they failed to estimate a cost function that had sttistically significant regression coefficients and R square. In retrospect, I knew the reason why I could not contribute to make the project a success. There was no data analysis and validation before mounting on a main frame computer to obtain regression results. The computer time was hired from outside agency. The modelling did not take into account mines of different types: open cast, inclines and shafts or their vintages with proportion of development workings and actual coaf face extraction using different technologies. Nor, was the objectve of estimating a cost function was clear. When I arrived at Coal India, they were already having the comoputer results and I was consulted if the results were acceptable. Those days there were no dek computers available to play with various models and the data. I could provide them very little help except commenting that the results were not statistically acceptable and the possible reasons why the regression results were different from what they had expected. Besides, my knowldge of econometrics was already dated - I was not aware of the advances in econometrics that had taken place in the previous seven/ eight years.

Learning From Observing Colleagues: My Unfolding Voyage 075

2011-08-01T02:22:00.000-07:00

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Coal India was still an organization trying to integrate a wide variety of work cultures and management styles reflected in diverse groups of miners, workmen, office employees, managers, engineers of various disciplines, geologists, doctors, accountants and others who got into a single umbrella due to nationalization: the nearly six lakh manpower of Coal India had come from a large number of relatively small and medium coal mining companies, largely in the private sector. And, there was the large number of new recruits in various engineering and professional disciplines that Coal India recruited in the first few years. It must have been a huge challenge to the Chairman Lt. General Grewal and his successor Chairmen.

The managers who came from private enterprises did not like each other because they had all been reduced to the same category with the special images that some of them enjoyed being part of a foreigner owned business group with special privileges and compensation. As a group, they also disliked the importance the erstwhile public sector NCDC managers enjoyed because they were more conversant with the public sector culture the new Coal India had to adopt. Almost all top and senior managers had very little exposure to management functions at the higher levels of an efficient corporate bureaucracy that a large organization like Coal India had to develop. Many of the senior and top managers were now in the headquarters of the holding company and subsidiary company headquarters to work on strategies, business plans, management development, accounting integration, technological up gradation and marketing plans, monitoring the execution of the strategies and plans, and provide analytical inputs for Board-level decision -making. Many of them felt fish out of water having lost the great kingdoms they enjoyed in the far-flung collieries with their bungalows, clubs and cars. Those who remained in the coalfields found their colleagues at the headquarters intrusive and wasting their valuable time in meetings, telephone calls and visits.

This is an environment that gives birth to funny behaviorial patterns, good for keen observers to pick up and entertain colleagues over lunch and tea breaks and at evening get together. I was fortunate to have some of these keen observers as my close friends: one of them was a mining engineer about six / seven years elder to me and another colleague of my age, a brilliant M.Sc Statistics who had a variety of interests and expert in caricature. Some of the interesting episodes they and some other colleagues shared with me are worth sharing on the blog to give a flavour of those days.

A Chairman and Managing Director, Mr. X of a subsidiary had gone on tour to the coalfields. On return to his headquarters, two days later, he found that his Chair has been occupied another person Y who showed him the copies of X's appointment letter and the transfer order served on X.

A Chief General Manager went with his tem to make a presentation to the Chairman & Managing Director. The Chairman criticized him left and right in the presence of his team during the presentation. He kept saying sorry to the boss and at the end when he went back to his own office, he consoled his team. "Do not get upset my boys. Everyday does not go the same way. This was one of those few bad days. We can hope for better days in the future." He had no regrets in his face.

Mr. E, an excavation engineer developed his own style of getting successive promotion every four years by adopting what was referred to as Udipi Strategy by his colleagues. One year before the promotion interviews were due, Mr. E would activate himself and get involved in various kinds f work tat were discussed and monitored by the bosses meetings. He would be able t please the bosses with his hard work, specially his presence around whenever the bosses needed some assistance. He would get good reports and clear the promotion interview with ease. Soon after promotion and generally a posting at a different police, he would suddenly feign incompetence and slow. Bosses would scold him for non-performance but with a smiling face he would promise to rectify errors and do the same work fast again. Frustrated the bosses will tell." are you a dullard? An ass?” With smile he would respond " Yes, Sir.” He would always respond with "Yes, Sir”. Even if he had been asked to keep mum. The bosses would soon stop giving him and involving him in any work. He would spend the next two and a half years without ay work or interaction with the bosses and then he would resurface into activity to prepare grounds for his next promotion.

Coal India subsidiaries used to recruit assistant in large numbers after a gap of two years or so. These were supposed to graduate assistants. One candidate could not answer any question the interviewer asked. So, finally they asked who India’s Prime Minister was." He pleaded ignorance. He was given a clue: the Prime Minister was a woman. He replied, Mrs. Nandini Satpathy", Nandini was a Chief Minister of Orissa a few years back and this candidate did not know the name of Mrs. Indira Gandhi! Another candidate who turned up one day after the day of scheduled interview explained that he could not come the previous day as the local buses went on strike and added that the passengers also protested against that strike by not paying the bus fare on the next day when the buses started plying again!

The list of selected candidates would run into four/ five pages. Even after the Selection Committees had finalized and authenticated the lists, names of some candidates would be deleted and some others added by replacing the pages other than the first and last ones.

Then, there was one on one of my bosses when he was still a manager of a colliery. He had gone down the shaft around 10 AM on his daily inspection of the coal faces where miners were extracting coal. There was some special problem somewhere and he had to solve the problem with the assistance of his colleagues. Message was sent down to him from the pit head that his wife was enquiring about his delay in coming back home for lunch. He sent message that he would return in thirty minutes. Wife sent message again at 12-30. A similar reply was sent by him from the underground to the pit head. This went on for another two half hour intervals. When the fifth message arrived from his wife at2 PM, he sent baclk a message: "Salee ko bata doe aaj lunch off: tong na koray" (tell the sisterin-law not to harras me any longer as I will skip lunch today). Refering to wife as sister in-law!

Mock Committe Role: My Unfolding Voyage 074

2011-07-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

My little sons were growing up fast Jhupa has already started talking in our language and Chupa was picking up words here and there. I bought a Phillips audio recorder player. I started recording their voices, my wife's Rabindra Sangeet renderings and my father's Prayer in Sanskrit (Chandipath). This piece of instrument would soon have yet another application that I never imagined when I had acquired it.

A Parliamentary delegation would be meeting Coal India's Chairman and top officials soon to discuss the company's performance and problems especially those related to coal costs, pricing, subsidies and marketing arrangements. Chairman called a meeting of Directors, senior officers and some select specialists like me. He discussed the subjects of interest to the visitors and then arranged some mock Committee sessions. Along with the Director Finance I was part of the three members mock Parliamentary Committee and all others present were assigned the role of responding to the questions asked by the members of the Committee. The mock committee sessions continued in the Chairman's presence for three successive days. Many senior officers were very angry with Chairman's selection of a recent recruit like me on the Committee to ask questions to them. I understood why Chairman had selected me: first, I would be as much close to members of the Parliament as possible given my lack of knowledge about the Coal Industry and Coal India to be able to come out with dumb and awkward questions out of ignorance so that the management can get prepared to deal with them, and second, provide me with a quick opportunity of picking up knowledge. But the senior managers felt offended that I was asking questions to them.

At the end of three mock sessions, Chairman selected me to prepare a detailed note on the relevant subjects based on the learning at the mock sessions and allotted three different officers to help me get further material as may be necessary. In about four/ five days, I prepared the draft notes. These were circulated to select senior officers, discussed in a meeting at Chairman's office and I was told to finalize the Notes and prepare a booklet to be given to the visiting Parliamentary members. I received excellent encouragement, cooperation and appreciation for my work from seniors during this period: people had started accepting me.

Once that was completed, Chairman called me and assigned me the task of presenting the subject matter of two of the notes to the visitors with slides (PCs were yet to come to Indian offices in 1977. After two days, Chairman asked me make the slide presentation to him giving me just 10 minutes. I did as desired by him and then he asked me if I had a Tape-recorder at home. I had the one recently purchased. He advised me to rehearse the 10-minute presentation in the front of a mirror at home and getting it recorded, listen to the recording carefully and improve in the subsequent rehearsal. That was a great lesson that I had picked up then: the military forces give so much to rehearsing in simulated war conditions!

Two days before the event, Chairman instructed me and some others to visit the Rotunda Hall in the State Secretariat (Writers' Building) to do a kind of stage rehearsal with presentations equipments. The actual went off well. I got two special increments in salary on the recommendation soon: though Chairman had recommended for six increments, the personnel department pointed out that the Chairman's powers were limited to only two. Chairman was a little disappointed. He would soon suggest to me that I write articles for the journal published by the subsidiary CMPDI. I wrote probably two articles for the journal in the next one year.

But soon this Chairman would have to go. The political party that ran the Central Govt. and appointed Lt. General Grewal as the Chairman would lose the elections. The new Government would like to have someone else who would listen to the commands of the Coal Secretary and act less like a leader of all employees and miners of the Coal India. The subsidiary company chairmen, all from within the coal industry, did not like to be commanded by a former military General. Government had already constituted a special committee to evaluate the performance of Coal India and suggest measurers for improvement. When the Baveja Committee report was sent to Coal India for comments, I was given a copy of this. I prepared a point by point rejoinder on the Committee’s findings and gave it the Chairman. He was pleased with my note but had probably no intention to fight back as he was anticipating an ouster. He told me to get my note edited and publish in the Newspaper op-ed column. I arranged that in the name of a special correspondent.

But before the Chairman changed, my directed bosses changed a number of times. The first boss, Mr. Asa Singh, having worked for long in the private coal mining sector found it difficult to work in the public sector environment dominated by personnel from the erstwhile public sector coal company, the National Coal Development Corporation: he resigned to start his own business in Auragabad. For about a month, I was forced into the cabin vacated by Mr. Asa Singh to directly head the corporate planning department for a month. Then I had to shift my office again to report to the next boss, the Chief Mining Engineer in charge of coal production activity monitoring at the Coal India headquaters. He admitted that he had no idea as to what corporate planning he should engage me in and left it to me decide whatever I would like to do. But he spend at least an hour every week discussing with me on various subjects and showed some affection towards me.

After a few months, an experienced mining engineer, Mr. Kapila from the coalfields got transferred to the headquarters to head the Corporate Planning Department. He was there for about five months but met me not more than three/ four times. I has started working out my own areas of activities: writing speeches and articles for the Chairman, acting as consultant to the Director Finance and the Deputy Chief of Finance on special projects, have brain-storming sessions with young MBAs in the marketing department, collaborate with CMPDI economist, Dr. Guha, on specific planning assignments, attending various training programmes and conferences as the Chief of Management Development Department considered me free for such assignments and occasionally deliver speeches on behalf of the new Chairman when he had to be away on other important assignments. It was all good time but I felt I was not getting utilized properly. I tried to get alternative jobs: a cement company Chairman in Calcutta needed an economist but the company was not willing to spend much on the economist’s pay.

A permanent Chief of Corporate Planning would soon join after the new Chairman; a former Tata group coal mines manager, assumed office. Mr. Mishra, the new boss was a serious but pleasant boss with intellectual orientation. He had earlier worked with the new Chairman when he was the Chairman of the subsidiary Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. Mr. Mishra was quiet affectionate and encouraged me to work on various assignments that he would bring as well as those I had felt I should be working on. But equally interesting were gossip sessions with very interesting and experienced observers within Coal India: these sessions brought out various aspects of management in Coal India.

MiningTravails: My Unfolding Voyage 073

2011-06-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

It was a sprawling bungalow in which I retired to bed one evening after a sumptuous dinner and then get up early morning, brushing my teeth and looking from the window in the big bathroom attached to room where I had slept, to enjoy the beautiful garden with peacocks roaming around. It was the guest house of the Easter Coalfield Ltd. in Sanctoria, an hour's drive from the Asansol Railway Station that I had reached after a five hour train journey from Kolkata (Howrah station). My visit to coal mines had just begun. Over the next few days I would visit a number of departments of the company from Planning to production control and personnel to finance and from engineering to workshops. As scheduled I had to walk down an incline to enter a coal mine and negotiate through slippery, muddy paths underground to reach the entry to a very thin coal seam where an operator was riding on a scrapper machine to scrape the seams to take coal out and then shovel the material on the belt that was evacuating the coal pieces and dust and hauling them to the surface bunkers. The manager of the colliery explained me various things throughout my voyage in and out of the dark tunnels deep under the ground. After the 150 minutes trip I was completely exhausted, even though excited by the ingenuity of engineers in devising the technique of scrapper mining. I went back to the Area General Manager's guest house, had a bath and then had a luncheon meeting with him and his engineering and finance colleagues.

During the visit to the incline mine, the colliery manager had asked me a question which I could not figure out and was haunting me. He had asked me, "Mr. Sen, what is carpet mining?" I had to admit that I had no idea and found the manager quite disappointed. It was during the lunch that I could figure out how this question arose. Some of the engineers assumed that I am a new specialist recruit engineer with knowledge of carpet mining technology: the confusion arose because I was coming from the Corporate Planning Department of the holding company and somewhere down the line pronunciation of corporate got distorted into carpet. If there could be scrapper mining, there could also be carpet mining of coal!

The next mine I vested was the Chinakuri Coal mine. We went deep underground, as usual with long boots, helmets and other accessories, through a shaft (lift/ escalator) that two quite a while before we reached the level we got of the shaft to enter the broad, illuminate channels leading to coal faces being mined. I was told that we were already underneath the bed of a river flowing over our heads. It was a sprawling mine, looked very modern and well developed and was cool with very little seepage of water or coal dust fines floating around. It was a rather comfortable journey. I do not remember now if the coal faces I had visited were mined under Board & Pillar system or the new long wall mining machinery was installed. This was a colliery that had seen devastation with many miners losing their lives in 1958.

My next trip would be to the Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. headquartered in Dhanbad. I think I had taken an early morning train, probably called the Black Diamond Express, from Kolkata (Howrah) Railway Station to Reach Dhanbad around mid- day, about 6 and half hours journey. Dhanbad was a tough terrain with little greenery and full of dust. But it had all the mines that had the reserves of coking coal required for making metallurgical coke - an important input for steel plant blast furnace operation. Here I vested an incline mine and a mine that had to be entered through shaft. The experience was similar to that of Easter Coalfield mines and offices, except that more people conversed in Hindi in Dhanbad while more people conversed in Bengali in Sanctoria. Bharat Coking Coal organised a day's visit to Dhanbad School of Mines and the Central Fuel Research Institute (now renamed as Central Institute of Mining & Fuel Research) Research Institute. It was interesting to find lot of research papers were being published but it did not appear that the coal industry was using such knowledge as one would have wished. The researchers I had met did not seem to show much vibrancy and enthusiasm.

After two weeks, I would visit Ranchi, an overnight train journey from Kolkata to Ranchi that headquartered both the Central Coalfields Ltd (CCL) and the Central Mine Planning and Development Institute (CMPDI). The seven-day program here was similar except that I spent two days at CMPDI’s various departments including two lovely long sessions with Dr. Guha, an Indian Economic Service officer who joined CMPDI on lien for a few years. At CCL I had the first exposure to really big open cast mines with dumpers, shovels and draglines operating all over the surface and excavating coal through blasting of coal seams near the surface. If the underground mines were a scare to people on the ground for the risk of the subsidence due to inadequate sand-filling of empty spaces created by extraction of coal, the open-cast mines were a sore to the eyes, besides being lost greenery and ecological imbalance unless restored properly after coal extraction. To round off my coal-belt visits, I traveled next to Nagpur, the headquarters of Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL) where I visited one each of opencast mine and underground mine. Not all managers of collieries were as careful as one would have wished: at one colliery, the manager ran out of vehicle resources to reach me back to Nagpur guest house of WCL and put me in an auto rickshaw that took about 200 minutes to reach me there.

The four weeks in the coalfields was indeed a brief but useful exposure to coal mining operations and its environment required for a corporate planner in a coal company. The discussions with various departments of subsidiaries and CMPDIL provided an overview of the organizational structure and dynamics, besides building a network of helpful colleagues. Equally important was to get a sense of the management styles and deficiencies at different subsidiaries that I had to report to the Chairman as unbiased observation of a fresher. I had, within this short period, gathered lot of anecdotes about the coal mining managers/ executives and their office politics at various levels. A good start to corporate planning exercise relating to internal environmental scanning!

Times Travel: My Unfolding Voyage 072

2011-05-26T05:42:00.001-07:00

When airplanes were not available on the planet, intercontinental travel was the quickest by sea from one port to another. On ships, one would spend two-three months to reach United Kingdom or the United States. Since then the ships have increased the speed and ferry goods over the same distance in a couple of weeks or less. Air travel reduced the time spent on travel but over the last few decades the times taken to travel by air has not declined but in some cases have increased substantially. The speed of aircrafts has indeed increased. But the numbers of passengers the latest aircrafts haul are much higher than it used to be decades back. But the overall travel time did not decline as a result. For, the airlines take more time to screen and load baggage of 4 to 5 times more passengers, the security screening takes more time. Passengers spend more time walking longer distances between boarding gate to the aircraft (sometimes involving a bus trip, between check-in to security check (sometimes involving a sky train trip) and between arrival gate and immigration check. Immigration takes longer time. The aircrafts have to wait in the queue for long before they can speed to take off or wait in the air in the queue for landing. And, more often than not the airlines staff would express regret for delays in departure on account of delayed arrival of the incoming aircraft (as if that makes the delay acceptable and legitimate.
But air travel is limited for most people: highly frequent fliers on flight every other day/ night are a small percentage of people on travel. All have to spend more time moving through the city roads. And, some cities grow and expand to make a bus/car kilometer consume more time rather less time despite widening of roads, construction of flyovers and introduction of metro rails that moves along the surface, above the ground and through the tubes underground. The population of vehicles has been growing at a faster rate than the capacity to deal with their movement over the same distances. My city Kolkata has been struggling with this since my childhood. Travel time does not seem to be capable of reducing: it just expands notwithstanding technological developments for quick transportation. One speeds faster on a tube rail but once has still to walk or ride an automobile to reach the tube stations and get out of them to reach destinations.

A significantly large part of life goes on travel to and from work place in cities. My sons drive for 100 to 150 minutes at an average speed of 100 -120 kms. per hour to and fro work place. This is about 3% to 5% of the total time available in a full year and 20%-30% of the time they spend at the work place. So, now many work a day or two every week from home with their computers and cell phones connected to their colleague network. But my father used to spend about 70 minutes to and fro work place in the 1950s in Kolkata (Calcutta) to cover a distance of about 45 kilometers by bus and electric trams. In the 1970s, the same distance took me initially 105 minutes by bus. It would soon increase to 135 minutes in overcrowded buses negotiating congestion in the peak office time. When the Calcutta tube rail project was under construction, the time taken to cover the same distance increased further. On the onward journey, it took about an hour but the return journey would take more than 100 minutes including standing in the queue to board the more-expensive Minibuses at the Dalhousie Square (now called the BBD Bagh). Thus to & fro office travel would take around 4% of the available hours in a year or about 25%-30% of the time spent in the office.
What a colossal waste of time just for traveling to and fro work! Besides, such journeys would take away a considerable part of the energy and sap the enthusiasm and productivity at the work place.

When I joined Coal India in 1977, another mode of travel became available: chartered buses. I became a member of chartered bus that would not stop anywhere except at three places in the office district unlike public buses and mini-buses would stop at about at 19-20 places for passengers to board and alight on the 22 km route. My cost of travel between office and home more than doubled as a result to give a time savings of 25% in travel time. The chartered us travel was comfortable: you could take a refreshing morning nap (that children usually take) and also have some gossip with the passengers sitting nearby. Also, smoking was not yet banned on privately operated chartered buses. In contrast the travel by bus made it almost difficult to have a nap, especially as a few would get to seat with almost 60% of the passengers standing although the journeys with very little elbow space to do anything other than standing: smoking was banned.

I would leave Kolkata for about two decades in 1982. City would have grown in all dimensions: human population, daily commuting population, population of vehicles, and number of flyovers, new by-passes and new roads. But congestion would continue with peak time travel by any kind of vehicles one would travel (except for those who walk to metro-stations for five minutes) travel for 120 minutes. The congestions seem to be never ending. The City planners have done a wonderful job by ensuring that people continue to spend more or less the same long time interval time in unproductive use and return home from office completely exhausted physically and mentally. More on that later. Before that I have to return to my second commercial organization employer, Coal India's wonder world of management.

Project Black Diamond: My Unfolding Voyage 071

2011-05-09T09:32:00.000-07:00

It was the April Fools Day that I met Mr. Asa Singh, a very soft-spoken, rather reserved, yet smiling gentlemen, somewhat short by the Punjabi Sardarji standards, at his office. I was required to meet Mr. Singh, the Chief of Corporate Planning with my appointment letter. I liked him from the very first meeting and felt a feeling of affection flowing from him. We discussed about us, the work ahead and the responsibilities for a while, before he rang up the Chief of Personnel, who would soon send down an officer from his department to enable me to complete the documentation formalities related to my joining as the Econometrician of the Corporate Planning Department of Coal India Ltd., my new employer.

As per the organization chart, my code was C-3 (most departments were denoted by X followed bu a number like 1, 2, 3, etc: in the case of Corporate Planning the symbol was C and my division was 3 and therefore my code was C-3). Mr. Asa Singh told me that Coal India had already prepared a 10 year plan code named as Project Black Diamond. He gave me a copy of that document to read and re-read as much of our work in Corporate Planning would be centered around and related to updating, revising, elaborating, projecting, estimating, reviewing the various aspects covered in this document. He also said that C-1 and C-2 would join the Department to had the other two divisions of technology and finance (till the time I had been with Coal India, no X-1 or X-2 would join).

I was assigned a big room which was earlier used by the visiting consultants from the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad. They would be visiting again and again from time to time and would be sitting and discussing with me. One of my tasks therefore was to coordinate the work of the Consultants and follow-up with the implementation of their reports. Eventually, I would happen to be transformed into an in-house consultant.

Soon we would be having a meeting with Mr RC Shekhar, Director Finance of the company and Mr. Asa Singh told me that I have to associate myself with the study on cost of mining coal under Mr. Shekhar supervision. We were about five/ six officers who would be associated with the study. Mr. Sengupta, a chartered accountant and third in command in the finance department was the team leader (Mr. Sengupta would after 25-18 years become the Chairman of Coal India): two of his colleagues, an elderly Cost Accountant and newly appointed MBA (Finance) from IIM Ahmedabad, Mr. Bhowmik would be in the team besides me.

Even as I was trying to settle down to this new environment and trying ti figure out how to productively spend the eight hours in the office, I received a shocking telephone call from the Chief of Staff one morning 20 days after I had joined that the Coal India Chairman has desired to interview me at 3 PM in the afternoon. I was not very clear why the Chairman would interview me after I have joined and not before. I was rather very uncomfortable when I entered his room that afternoon. I was with him for an hour. When I came out of the room I was filled with joy and enthusiasm: I got the impression that the Chairman rated me so high as an asset of the organization and how he has planned my utilization with care and affection. I was completely sold to him. We were three in his room. He, his Executive Secretary, Mr. Mathur, a mining engineer and I. The chairman just asked me questions about me, my family, my education, my previous work experience and so on.

Every answer that I gave to the Chairman's questions was received by him with appreciation, affection and encouragement. His Executive Secretary, Mr. Nagar, had already done some research on me and was telling the Chairman about some articles that were published in the previous one or two months in The Business Standard: he even showed the clippings of my article on Management Information System and Research in Banks. The only question my answer did not receive immediate positive reaction was that I hadn't earlier worked outside Calcutta. That day, I wished that I my next job takes me outside Kolkata: little that I could imagine that this would happen and I would land myself in Mumbai a few years later.

Chairman finally told me that he was instructing the Executive Secretary for my 7-day visit to each of Coal India's (then five) subsidiaries, the Easter Coalfields, the Bharat Coking Coal Ltd, the Central Coalfields Ltd, the Western Coalfield Ltd and the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute. The program of visit would be spread over 10 weeks and would cover besides each company headquarters and Area Managers' offices, six underground mines and 2 open cast mines.

When I came out of the Chairman's room, I felt that I have joined an organization that really values my worth and has real interest in utilizing my skills and potential. I understood for the first time that the army generals really knew how to win hearts of the people they would work with and keep their motivation and morale high. In a few months, I would learn more about managing people from Lt. General Grewal, the Coal India Chairman.

Managing First Exit: My Unfolding Voyage 070

2011-04-30T11:48:00.000-07:00

Around early December, I picked up a casual conversation with a junior colleague from the Management Development Department and mentioned to him that I would be soon leaving the services of the United Bank as I might get some offers from the private sector. This was deliberate planting of information: I knew that he would soon carry this information to his boss Captain Ghosh, a retired army officer, who has been looking after development of managerial personnel but not a part of the usual personnel administration department. I loved United Bank as my first employer and did not really leave but was seriously afflicted by a perception in my mind that the Bank was not taking care to reward me in tune with my capabilities and aspirations. Sometime back, my boss' boss had remarked in a closed group dinner party in response to a suggestion by one of his close friends that it was high time that I had been given the second promotion: 'Sen is getting his PhD soon and then we will kick him up'. It was good English from a B.Sc in economics from London but I was rather annoyed by his rather middle class sentiment and reluctance to think what I could have been thinking about myself and the Bank. So, I did not want my boss and boss' boss to know that I was seriously consider leaving. But I wanted that this information travels up to the top management through a different route. And, it did as I would find out later.

I did not have any job offer yet. Earlier in August, a public sector firm had advertised for the post of Econometrics. I knew I could not apply except through proper channel: public sector employees were obligated to route their applications for jobs in other public sector companies only through their existing public sector employers (a kind of Communist-Socialist State oppression on employees to distort the market for human resources : something I strongly deplored as State mafia-ism). I did not want to use this route because the the personnel department would take a long time and the Bank may use its influence to ensure that I was not recruited by the other public sector company. So, what could I have done. Try my luck: my wife forwarded my resume to the company Something else would happen. I would receive a telephone call from my professor, head of economic research unit at the Indian Statistical Institute: he said that the Institute had received a request from the very same public sector company to recommend candidates from its past and current students and that he considered me as the most appropriate candidate to be recommended if I were interested. I immediately agreed with him that the Institute could recommend my name. In early November the company called me for interview. Before I could meet the interview board, the usual public sector company personnel department staff there would ask me for a no objection certificate from my current employer United Bank of India. I told them that they had not mentioned this in their letter advising me to to turn up for interview and I could get such No objection certificate in the event of my selection after the interview. They let me go in to meet the Selection Board. There were three persons on the Board: the Director Finance of the company. He asked me all the questions and I found him taking lot of interest. The second person on the Board was my teacher of econometrics at the University. When he was requested to ask me questions, he observed that he knew me well as his students and that I had got the highest marks in Econometrics at the University. So, he would not ask me any further questions. Then, there was the Director Personnel: he inquired why I had not routed my application through my current employer. I would reply to him with a question:"Did I apply?" The smart Finance Director immediately quipped: " Sean's name and resume was received in response to our request to the Indian Statistical Institute". Finally, I was asked when could I join if I were selected. I told them my current employer would require me to give three months' notice.

In the middle of December, Captain Ghosh telephoned and asked me to meet him as soon as possible. I knew that my colleague in his Department would have informed him about the conversation we had about 19 days back. I met him in his office room. He said that he had learnt that I was thinking of leaving United Bank of India but wondered why. I replied that I was happy with my job but felt that I was constrained by opportunity to shoulder higher responsibilty challange as a reward my performance. He told me that I should not worry because I was one among the blue-eyed officers of the Bank whose career in the Bank would be bright. Some thing would be done for me soon. And finally he said, "Don't jump on the next bus." I thanked him and came back to my desk and did not share this interaction with Capt Ghosh with anyone else.

I got the job offer from the company that interviwed in early January and I replied them I would join by early April. But I did not immediately resign because I would really require to give one month's notice to United Bank of India to leave them. By mid- January 1977 I received the letter of promotion to Staff Officer Grade II with immediate effect and they designated me as Assistant Economist, the position held by my boss who had been recently promoted to the position of the Economist in Staff Officer Grade I. I happily accepted the promotion. Everyone would congratulate me, especially as the promtion came suddenly. I worked in my new position for 10 days and went on leave for a month with cash back for another one month's leave. Colleagues thought that I went on leave to celebrate my promotion. I had then two little son's to play with.

I resumed office towards the end of February and soon thereafter submitted my resignation. Colleagues were surprised and wanted to know where I would be joining next. I told them that's a secret. Bosses were unhappy especially because the resignation soon after a promotion was viewed as insulting. My boss's boss was so angry that when I visted the Bank after a month of my quitting the Bank, he virtually asked me leave the Bank's premises immediately. I knew that his reluctance to promote me earlier must have earned him some comments from his bosses when I had quit immediately after a promotion. I learned that a manager must know how not to lose a useful resource on which investment had been made. I bade good-bye to United Bank of India as my employer in March 1977 after serving them for 75 months.

Jubilee Pains & Resolve: My unfolding Voyage 069

2011-04-28T15:58:00.000-07:00

My employer United Bank of India celebrated its Silver Jubilee in 1975. In the same year, I had both Golden (50) and Diamond (60) Jubilee of my employment with the Bank in terms of months of pay-checks received. I had not been with any school or college or university for so many months. I had developed some degree of endurance with the increasingly old environment at the Bank. But Jubilees led me to review my achievements: I had a decent job with reasonably comfortable earnings, I had good romance and got married to the girl I chose, I had a little son to play with. I had already submitted my PhD dissertation submitted and two technical articles published in the National Institute of Bank Management's journal. By bosses were pleased with me and I had got a promotion. I received admiration from colleagues and come to gather a fairly good overview of banking and bank management in India as also an insight into various aspects of my employers strengths and weaknesses.

Yet, something would bug me. I had lot of time to take up new projects both at office and outside. The Bank was not prepared to let young officers to get into diversified areas of management responsibility with any fast track movement upward in hierarchy: rather would require me to continue doing whatever I had so far demonstrated that I was capable of doing efficiently and effectively.

All this was generating a sense of urge for getting over the constraints to a movement towards a more varied and higher level exposure. By this time, I had picked up, from an article in Harvard Business Review, a hypothesis that power does not lie in the position you enjoy but in the ability to influence colleagues, peers, bosses and other minds through your depth of knowledge,innovative ideas and communication. I needed to enhance that power for in India in the foreseeable future public sector would only generate opportunities for growth and that would accrue to anyone with seniority irrespective of your capability, potential or performance.

So, I was in search of new challenges in 1976. How do I make my old parents happier? How do my wife get more happiness? How do I get into an office environment that would make me learn more things at a fast pace as had happened in the first 36 months of my service in the United Bank? And, of course, what else could I do?

I tried behavioral management tools to develop transparent, "u r OK, i am OK" sessions with my wife for better mutual understanding and failed: she would suspect that I was trying to brain-wash her further. My parents were happy that we were staying again with them with our baby son. My wife had been on long leave, beyond the three months' maternity leave she was entitled to. Now she would need to resume office and my son would be taken adequate care at home by my mother and sister-in law during her absence of eight/ nine hours a day. So, one fine morning, she reported back to office. In the evening she announced to me that she would never go back to office as she was unable to bear the few hours of separation with the five-month old child. So, she would immediately resign. And, we got a new challenge cropping up: she desired another kid.

Since my wife wanted to resign from office, we went back to our rented apartment. Jhupa was growing up fast. The landlady who lived on the second-story of the same building, Maya-di and her daughter were very affectionate to all of us. So, was Jyotirmoyee-di, who lived in the adjacent apartment ed. This short, beautiful lady had moved in to this flat recently after she had retired as a Professor of History in a college in Patna in Bihar. She had lost her husband when she was just 13 and then went on to study in school, college, university and had gone to London for higher studies. She was also a guest teacher in the Sarada Mission Women's College nearby. Through her we cam in touch with the College's Principal, Saradaji (Prabrajika ...Prana), a very affectionate Sanyasin of the mission. Jyotirmoyee-di was very fond of Jhupa and she enjoyed see him crawling and then learning to walk, dance and speak. The next door neighbor were also very affectionate to us. One of their relatives, a professor in the university at Gauhati, had come on a visit. Jhupa would try to talk to him from the small balcony that we had opposite the neighbors backyard. One day this professor told my wife that when Jhupa would grow up he would be a mathematician. My wife was very happy.

We would be visiting our parent's residence, 20 minutes away from our apartment, every week. That would make them happy. But I thought I could make my parents happier if we could go for a trip[ together. I was by now entitled to get reimbursement of another family trip to anywhere in India by train. This time I chose Guwahati (formerly Gauhati) in Assam because the 50 minutes air trip from Kolkata to Guwahati was admissible for reimbursement because the train journey involved two nights over an unusually log stretch. So, in August-September 1976, five of us (my wife, mother, father, one-year old son Jhupa and I)flew off to Guwahati, and then straight from the Airport went in taxi to Kamakshya Temple on the top of a hill about 45 minutes away from the airport. At the temple, my parents would offer a special puja worship ceremony that would take about two hours. Then we went in a taxi to the city center and took a bus that would carry us along the sloping and winding roads up the hills to Shillong, the beautiful capital of the State of Meghalaya (Residence in the Clouds). We stayed in a hotel at Shillong for three nights. It was so exhilarating and romantic roaming around the hilly terrain with clouds touching you. It was a romantic environment as well. My father told me the name of a relative whom he knew lived in Shillong. I searched out from the telephone directory (there were not many people who had a telephone in the sparsely populated town those days and the Bengali's among them would have very few) probable Bengali candidates with the surname my father had said and ultimately got in touch with the person's daughter in law and wife: the person concerned was no more but his son and the family were still in Shillong. We visited them one afternoon. Shillong was cold and we had to use blankets at night. One evening when Jhupa was with my mother and she was taking her dinner of mutton-rice, my wife inquired about what Jhupa was doing? My mother replied that he was sleeping under the blanket beside her. Soon, my wife would ask about from where some peculiar sound was coming from and then find Jhupa was enjoying mutton juice from my mothers fingers while enjoying the warmth under the blanket. We would down from Shillong on the fourth day to stay at a hotel in Guwahati for three days. Here Topu had a relative. Again, I tried with the Telephone Directory to find out her cousin's husbands telephone number, contacted them and visited them one evening for an hour or two.

Back to work after 10 days vacation and I started exploring for an opportunity somewhere. I have to get out of United Bank. But before I could do that in November, Chupa, our second child arrived 15 months after
Jhupa, his elder brother. In the case of Jhupa, when the gynecologist had confirmed and I shared the information with my mother, she was so happy. Then, on a Monday morning, as I was getting ready to go to office, Topu said that the arrival date seems to have arrive. I took her to my parents' place and deposited her there. By the time I had come back from office in the evening, mother had already got her admitted to the hospital five minutes walk from the residence and late at night the nurses rang up so that we can walk to the hospital to welcome Jhupa. In the case of Chupa, Topu felt uncomfortable at around 10 PM on a Saturday night as we were just about retiring to bed. We left Jhupa under the care of the neighbor, rushed Topu to another hospital near Shyambazar Five Point Crossing, half an hour away by taxi from my rented apartment, admitted her to the hospital, returned home by mid-night, took back Jhupa from the neighbors and passed the night with Jhupa sleeping for the first time without his mother beside him. In the early morning got up to feed Jhupa, gave him a bath, dressed him up first. Then I also had a bath, took some breakfast and both of us went to my parents' residence. They had already received the telephone call from the hospital about Chupa's arrival in the early hours of Sunday. I left Jhupa with my sister in law, informed my in laws walking down to their residence three minutes away and then proceeded to see Chupa and Topu at the hospital. On Tuesday, I would bring them straight to my parents' residence where we would be staying for the next seek weeks. When Topu arrived home with Chupa, Jhupa received some kind of a shock: as she approached Jhupa to take him in her lap after a hug and kisses, Jhupa suddenly felt shy and jumped on my lap loo kin asking at the infant baby in the cot! That is the beginning of a new journey for the two brother growing up together.

I resumed office on Wednesday and explained my absence for the previous two days sharing the good news with the colleagues. Malay Babu quipped. " Basudeb, you had just been back from the hills a few weeks back and we never imagined that your wife could have been already pregnant! How do you keep secrets?". It was really amazing that my wife's movements and appearance would not give any perceptible signals of pregnancy to visitors or passers-by during the relevant two periods.

But now an opportunity would come for a new work experience, besides a new family experience.

Playing with Analytic Rigor & Terminology: My Unfolding Vogage 068

2011-04-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

On an invitation from the Entrepreneur Development Cell of the Indian Institute of Kharagpur, I along with my wife, travel led about 3 hours in a car to reach the IIT campus a few years ago. The organizing students extended a very warm reception and looked after us with care. I was scheduled to address them on the subject of 'Rise of the Knowledge Entrepreneurs' on the following day after lunch. The students took us around the sprawling old campus. We also visited a students' hostel and also the Management School building. Then, it struck me and I requested the students to find out if there was a professor of economics named Partha Basu in the economics department of the Institute and in case he is in station whether I could meet him after my address was over. Partho came to meet us at the IIT Guest House where we were put up, took us to his residence and we had nice time together. He was my colleague at United Bank of India and we were meeting after a gap of 30 years. Parto was two years junior to me in the University and joined the bank probably three years after I did. He was a serious researcher and had lot of problems satisfying himself with the adequacy and representativeness of stratified sampling for a survey he was conducting for an office note. He would accept and write only on the conclusions that come out after satisfying all statistical tests: he could discuss and even have a conviction on a particular hypotheses being true, but would not justify the hypothesis being true unless it has passed the r. rigorous statistical tests of inference. The problem of office communication is that the readers and users of these communication cannot tolerate pleading ignorance. One cannot just say that I did not get support for any of the alternative hypotheses I had tried to test with statistical rig our. One needs to make a personal judgment based on whatever statistical tests one has conducted and whatever theoretical arguments one could marshal for and against all alternative hypothesis, and say this is the most likely Truth and the cost of not accepting this Truth in case if it is really True while formulating policy / making a decision is such and such. Office communications cannot say that one is unable to arrive at a conclusion. The art of drafting an office communication lies in taking the reader through the notes in such a logical sequence that the reader gets increasingly convinced at every stage without any question occurring in the reader's mind so that by the time the person finishes reading the note , the person starts believing that he/ she himself has discovered the Truth contained in the Note and takes responsibility for agreeing with the office Note. Unfortunately, very few researchers would combine their expertise in statistical inference testing and expertise in building a case for a particular hypothesis being true on the basis of knowledge and analysis other than inconclusive statistical tests of inference. Businesses decisions and policies cannot wait for conclusive Truth to arrive,: they are continuously made and revised based on new knowledge and past mistakes identified. Academically, this may look like playing with scientific rigor. I learned that the hard way in the United Bank and later: but serious researchers would interpret that as compromising with scientific rigor. Partho, a very nice gentleman,strongly against male domination over women in families, and with lot of flair for argumentation, would soon leave United Bank and join the Indian Institute of Technology as a economic teacher and would have enjoyed his life thoroughly thereafter.

There was however more things to learn about playing with scientific rigor and terminology. My boss and his boss drew my attention to a two line paragraph from the minutes of a meeting at the Ministry: I do not exactly recall those few sentences but they had recorded that the Secretary or Additional Secretary had advised the banks to formulate models of business plans covering matrix of parameters for rural branches so that these branches turn viable in a shortest possible time. The bosses wanted to know what did the word 'matrix' signify in this context and whether I can build such models. I told them although these sentences conveyed very little extra meaning than they would have if the words 'matrix' and 'parameters' were not used. But I could draw up such a model where I could safely use the terms 'matrix' and 'parameters' and yet these terms would really be insignificant in the essence of building of the model. I also, told them probably the Secretary / Additional Secretary had picked up these terms while visiting the World Bank on an assignment or he must have faintly recalled some terms he had learned while studying mathematics at the undergraduate level. But I could use the terms matrix in the general sense of an array of numbers and parameters as various elements of costs and income rates that along with business activity variables determine bank branches profitability. The bosses relied on my knowledge of undergraduate linear algebra and theory of equations and crossed check if my definitions of matrix and parameter made sense by looking up at the dictionaries. Then, they told me to go ahead and quickly prepare a Note as the Chairman of the Bank had expressed the desire the our Bank should be first to respond on having taken action on this part of the minutes of meeting at the ministry attended by all nationalized bank chairmen and representative of the National Institute of Bank Management. I started my work and also sought their permission to visit a few rural branches so that I could make my model empirically realistic.

I chose the Kolaghat Branch for a five-day visit. It was then a rural / semi-urban location with rural command area. I used to take a daily trip first by bus and by a local train from Howrah station to reach Kolaghat in about 75 minutes. The daily trips cost me in terms of getting an attack of 'conjunctivitis' eye sore that would also pass on my fiance resulting in one of her eyes appearing smaller in size than the other for a weeks before we got married. However, all the five days of my association with the Kolghat branch meant a two hour visit to some parts of the branch's business hinterland for finding prospects of business growth over the next few years, examining the branches past record of performance in these areas and discussing a complete five year business plan for the branch covering deposits of different categories, advances under different categories, staff productivity and manpower deployment, variable and fixed costs and profits. Back to the office, I would access information on all these variables for a sample of relatively new rural branches to mind out the mean and variation in the business activity level and composition, manpower deployment and cost elements for the first three/ four of their operation. Once this information was analyzed, it was easy to develop .internally consistent, feasible and yet challenging time paths of the growth in different business activity levels and the costs, the net interest margins and the profits. The idea was to generate three four alternative time paths of these variables for the first 3 to 5 years of their operations that would be consistent with their reaching the break-even point within that time frame. Thus, I would now have only to present these time profiles, of variable with underlying parameters relating to staff deployment, staff productivity and interest rate margins and etc in the form of an array of numbers that I could call as Matrix 1, Matrix 2 and Matrix 3 as business development plan models to guide the new branch managers to pursue the objectives of meeting priority sector targets as well as reaching break-even point at the earliest. I wrote out the Note and after the bosses were satisfied they sent copies of the Note to the Ministry bureaucrats and to the representative of the National Institute of Bank Management. The latter responded quickly appreciating the work but pointing out that the concept of matrix had not been really applied: he was right, he knew his undergraduate linear algebra well. I was given the task of replying to him, which I did in a language that would close the issue and yet bosses would be satisfied. The bureaucrats would not respond. And, the funny episode of playing with scientific terminology would end with my bosses satisfied.

Researcher-conducive Environment: My Unfloding Voyage 077

2011-04-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

In the academic research environment, there maybe more serious interactions among research colleagues- both in their offices / seminar rooms and in the cafetaria. In the Indian Statistical Institute I was therefore a disturbing element, debating issues other than the areas of reserch and leg-pulling gossips. In the area of in-house business research and planning, work went hand-in-hand with gossips and leg-pulling across the work desks and cabins. MaloyBabu would not spare Dr. Chatterjee's claim that his Kasba residence would fall under the Calcutta district once the fly-over connecting Gariahat to the areas to the east across the Railawy line gets over. Those days smoking was freely allowed inside the office and storms over the tea cups was regular part of daily research routine. Mrinal Vaishya would always have a smiling face even if leg-puuling attacks were turned towards him and occasionally make an interesting observation to fuel a laughter among others. He has always been a nice guy. Once both of us went to Gauhati on an official program to conduct training. Being a local person he took me to his paternal residence, got an invitation for me to attend a wedding party at his relative's residence and took me on a tour to various places like Panbazar, Fancybazar, etc. Thirty-years' later he would be at the Bank's headquarters at Kolkata as Chief General Manager and would with great affection help my wife to get the best of services at the Bank's Old Court House Street Branch. He would also introduce her to his colleague Mohanty who continues tio provide her with help in conducting her mother's pension-related banking transactions.

Dr. SC Chatterjee had got his doctorate, probably in Urban Economics, from Warsaw, Poland and before joining the Bank was working for the Calcutta Metropolita Development Authority. He used to narrate to us about his special adventures in Poland. Pratul Mukherjee, a Statistician, also shifted to the Bank for the same organisation that Dr. Chatterjee had served: he was another person who was always smiling and was very affectionate to colleagues. Once he had invited some of us to his residence for an evening party. After three decades I had the opportunity to meet Pratul Babu again at a private music party. As a retired person, he would be enjoying his freedom as a singer - with fame that would help us see him in TV shows.

Maloy Gupta, senior to me in the university by a few years, had been teaching in a college before he joined the Bank, six months later than me. His special 'u' and 'ee' touches to commn Bengali words like 'bheeshon', 'ekhon' still rings in my ears. He specialised in determining the origin of a Bengali by observing the words used in conversation: between 'Manriye' and 'Pariye', he identified my origin in East Bengal (now Bangladesh). As a Ghati, he supported Mohan Soccer team, and my support to East Bengal Soccer Club was linked to my being of Bangal origin. MaloBabu was very particular about treating women as flowers and was highly romantic picking up a flower from the college where he taught economics. Thirty eight years later, I would receive a phone call from him: he had retired from the Bank by then and was the Director of a management school. He had picked up his doctorate degree while he was still working in the Bank.

Every year, before candidates were interviewed for recruitment, boss would tell us this time he would ensure that real good economists and statisticians were selected. What he probably meant was that he would be able to find freshers who would be more quick in adapting to his high standards of drafting office research notes and other written communication than those the Bank had hired in previous years. Every year he failed in his mission. Those who were recruited earlier would feel offended for being categorised as inferior stuff and murmur behind bosses back. Some of us who had experienced this for long would console them and smile away knowing that boss would continue doing this.

I would take this chance to get some brilliant economists to the Bank. I had to pursue a lot with Dipankar Coondoo and Pradeep Maity, seniors at the University and reserach scholars at that time at the Indian Statistical Instiute. Both of them applied for the Bank's job and got selected. Dipankar-da joined. Pradip-da hesitated and then declined after he got a faculty position assurance at the Institute. Dipankar-da worked for a year, got bored and then returned to the Instiute as facaulty member.

A Silver Coin: My Unfloding Voyage 066

2011-04-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

Socialist banking in India would slowly develop a new Indian economic theory and practice of banking - some kind of a mixture or khitcuhri of banking as it had developed by the British rulers and political and bureaucratic ideas of populist gimmickry and wastage. Nationalisation of 14 major Indian banks in 1969 paved the way for completion of socialistic, state monopoly banking edifice in the country. The nationalised banks became the hotbed of trade unionism that would push up banking costs, declining customer service on the one hand and politically directed lending on the other hand. The statutory liquidity ratio would soon make banks transfer one third of their deposits resources to the State and state-controlled financing agencies as banks were obligated to invest in securities issued by the Government and its approved agencies to the extent of 35% of their incremental deposits every year. In the name of controlling inflation the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, would progressively raise the cash reserve ratio to the 10% region. Of the remaining, 55% of the banks' deposit resources, as much as 40% would be required to be deployed in what was termed as priority sector at concessional rates. Thus the banks' would have freedom to invest at their will only to the extent of Rs 33 out of every Rs 100 raised in the form of deposits. Banks would be permitted to lend some amount by borrowing from the Reserve Bank of India or other refinancing agencies of the Government. The interest rates on deposits and bank loans were fixed by the Reserve Bank of India and that ensured adequate spread to cover high labor costs in banking. There was little to apply mind for formulating an independent monetary policy for inflation control and macro-economic stabilisation in this banking regime.
The banks' continued the practice of understating income to create hidden reserves against probable loan losses and there was no way of knowing whether such secret reserves were adequate (the prudential provisioning norms were introduced only after the reforms in the 1990s when most banks took a heavy burden of loan loss provisioning and write-offs along with income de-recognition against impaired , non-performing assets to an extent that would erode their capital significantly). In 25 years of the Indian economic planning regime, banking had become an instrument of both economic development in accordance with politically dictated priorities as well as a conduit for hiding lost / wasted financial wealth of progressively rising amounts. It is only in the 1990s that the requirements of prudential loan provisioning and income recognition norms caused these huge, accumulated hidden losses to surface as high percentage of non-performing assets in banks.

United Bank of India (UBI) created through the merger in 1950 of four Bengali banks: Comilla Banking Corporation (founded in 1914 in what is now Bangladesh), Bengal Central Bank (founded in 1918), Comilla Union Bank (founded in 1922) and Hooghly Bank (founded in 1932) also completed 25 years of its existence in 1975. As an employee, I received a silver coin commemorating the Silver Jubilee year and there was a grand celebration event at the Bank's headquarters. We were all happy to be part of a Bank that originated in Bengal and survived competition for 25 years - merging into itself or acquiring, Cuttack Bank and Tezpur Industrial Bank in 1961, before getting nationalized with its 17 branches, along with 13 other major Indian commercial banks in July 1969 and then in 1973 acquiring Hindusthan Mercantile Bank and in1976 UBI Narang Bank of India.

Another 25 years later, the Bank would celebrate its Golden Jubilee: I would be so happy to be present at the celebration event at the same building in 2001 as the Chairman of a public sector development bank - thanks to UBI Chairman Biswajit Chowdhury's affectionate invitation.

First Whirlwinds of Expectations & Perceptions: My Unfolding Voyage 065

2011-04-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

As a student or as a bachelor, it did not matter much to me as to what others expected of me or perceived of me, so long as I knew clearly about own goals and remained honest to myself. But as I became a part of a family of senior and junior colleagues and peers in the office or as I brought over a girl from elsewhere as part of my own existence in the family at home, I slowly started realising that I are now a suspect in the eyes of all. Without my knowledge, someone so close to me turned envious, jealous or even rebellious against my evolving existence. A few seemed not to be as happy with me as they had been before. Nearly all appeared to start thinking about me in a completely different perspective, treating me as an unfair competitor, a manipulator or attracted to an undesirable camp within the broader family. I seemed to be not fulfilling their (unknown) expectations on me. Some showed up their feeling of being hurt by me, some were explicitly angry with me and I failed to fathom why? I was suddenly in the midst constant whirlwinds of conflicting expectations and perceptions altering my simple, straight-forward relationships with each member of the family into a cobweb of complex and incomprehensible relationships. Three years before I could got exposed to concepts of theory X or theory Y or "I am OK. you are OK", through the middle management executive development training program of United Bank of India, I got caught into those whirlwinds, responding as a novice rational element in what people call family and office politics.
In the process, I got hurt, became more constrained in living freely and started picking up elements of managing the family environment to protect myself from falling into traps laid down by members of the family, especially those who tended to live in their imagination about others.

First about the family in the office. I had left some few pages of manuscript with a steno-typists( stenographer-cum-typists) assistant to type those out and indicated some urgency that the boss may like to look at that Note before I return from a guest-speaker lecture at the Bank's training school that would take me about three hours. When I returned from the school, my assistant colleague complained to me that another colleague of mine who had joined a few months back had demanded that the typing job he had given earlier should be completed first. As a result they had some verbal interaction that was not pleasant. I told him that he need not worry about this incident and he his decision to complete my assignment a little later than what he had planned for did not cause any difficulty to me. I knew that the stenographer colleagues had developed an idea of what assignments flowing to them from different officers had what kind of priority. I kept quiet on the subject and did not raise the issue with anyone or the boss. A few days later, the new entrant officer colleague, two years' junior to me in the University, came to me and told me that he regretted his behavior motivated by his understanding that since I was not his boss, he had interpreted that we were all equal in terms of priority for the stenographers assisting us. He explained that his 'I-am-a-rookie-so are you' was wrong as the priorities arise from the bank's requirements and boss's specifications which were not as clear to him as they were with the stenographer assistant who has been in our department for long. He also said I must be a good man for not having raised the issue of his behaviour among the office colleagues. He would soon become a kind of my fan and younger brother.

Another colleague who had joined the Bank at the same time with the colleague I had just mentioned was also very close to me. Both them used to visit my residence, share food with my wife and me and occasionally stayed overnight with us. He was indeed an intelligent guy but probably slower in picking up the office communication skills. He had also taught me a few yogic aasanaas (exercises). While the Calcutta boy was more demanding in drawing on my affection, the Delhi boy was somewhat reserved in this. We loved them equally. But he probably felt that we were being more affectionate to the Calcutta boy and gradually started distancing from me, though remaining still warm.

A senior colleague who was very affectionate to me used to spend about 40 minutes a day discussing various things. We had gone to restaurants and pictures together. Suddenly, one day he was so cool when I visited him at his desk. He was explicit and curt in communicating to him that I had been using the clues I had been picking up discussing with him against him and in favour of our boss. I was almost in tears. I had lost an affectionate elder because of his sudden change of perception about me though I had not done anything that could hurt his interest. It was just a possibility that our boss would get transferred with higher responsibility and both of us would be sharing the charge of the present boss.That did not happen either: my boss did not go out to become the managing directors of the regional rural bank that our bank was setting up.

At home, the mis-perceptions and misunderstandings created stress on relationships with the parents and they preferred that we shift to a separate residence. I resisted but ultimately shifted to a small flat in Bangur Avenue. It was indeed a boon in disguise: my wife would resume her work, taking the trip to her office accompanying me in the same bus, waiting at the bus stop where we got down till I waived my hand from the 10th floor f our office and then she would take another 7 minute bus trip to reach her office. She would return home earlier than me on most days: otherwise we would return together. We had all the time to go wherever we liked: cinema shows, restaurants, friends places, parents' residences, shopping. Most evening would be so enjoyable and some times we would fall asleep to get awake around 11 PM and then I had rush out to buy some dinner from a nearby eating house. My Mom would visit our flat over lunch one day. She seemed very impressed over our living and felt happy. A few months later we would return to her house, Gurudham, for a four/ five months' stay there.

At office, I would continue to enjoy the affection of most of the seniors. A special friendship would develop with Mr. D. K Bose, the Librarian at the office. It is through interactions with him, I would get to really appreciate how valuable a Librarian could be to a researcher or a seeker of information or knowledge. It was much easier to search books/ documents with the help of a competent and user-friendly librarian. Those days Internet search engines were not available but Mr. Bose will be always helpful in trying to understand what I was looking for and guide me to the accessing the relevant material if these were available in the office library or other libraries he had contact with. It is through him I got to get an idea of the work flow in the library and the essentials of library management. Decade later this would help me in contributing to the efforts of librarians in other offices. By observing his motherly relationships with the books and other resources of his library, I could sense what responses ticks the librarians and get the most out of them: most office library users however tend to ignore the mental make up of librarians, perceive librarians' work as unskilled work and in the process failed to get the best out of the potential services of librarians. The very nature of the work of a librarian, Mr. Bose, had to deal with large number of library users, from the most senior officials of the bank to the most junior and treat them as his valued customers, who would not normally regard an office librarian as a productivity raising agent in the office. And, yet Mr. Bose treated all of them as his valued customers in need of help. Mr. Bose through his own behavior with the library users showed how one could deal with whirlwinds of complex perceptional and expectational relationships in groups in the office and home. For, when a library user did get what he wanted in the library seldom perceived that as a contribution of the librarian and when he failed to get something he wanted perceived the Librarian as useless or unhelpful or inadequately responsive to office colleagues needs.

Multi-tasking Exposure: My Unfolding Voyage 064

2011-04-15T20:56:00.000-07:00

Throughout 1971, I was busy working hard on my office assignments to establish my credentials and enhance my skills as a business economist. The speed with which I tried to complete my assignments and my willingness to handle more than one assignments at a time was amply rewarded by the bosses in exposing me to jobs of various nature, often to be handled simultaneously. By early 1972, I could return to work outside office along with increasing volume of work assigned to me the office. I set out on my next two years' goals: (a) continue to beat colleagues in getting and completing larger number of office assignments than others, (b) speed up my PhD dissertation-related reading and writing, (c) publish some technical paper in the research journal 'Prajnan' of the National Institute of Bank Management in India, and (d) search for a life partner.

With regard to (a), it was easy to achieve for anyone willing to become reliable, dependable in delivering outputs meeting short deadlines. For PhD dissertation, I had already identified the basic books and articles for reading and digesting: these included a Survey article on social cost benefit analysis, a book on collection of articles on the theory and applications of social cost benefit analysis, the OECD manual on project appraisal, the UNIDO Guidelines on Cost Benefit Analysis of projects, a particular issue of a journal published from the then Soviet Union on the cost benefit analysis and project selection in communist centrally planned economies using both mathematics and Marxian vocabulary, and a large number of other articles and books on the subject of cost benefit analysis, articles on trade-off between economic growth and employment growth - both theoretical models and empirical data analysis, articles on project choice criteria in various issues of the Engineering Economists and other books, and etc. Soon I would have charted out my PhD thesis chapter composition: the thesis would have to have an introduction chapter on the Choice problem to be addressed in the framework of Social Cost Benefit Analysis, followed by an extensive survey of literature and another chapter on the inter-relationships between various choice criteria (mathematical formula), and then a Macro economic model that would capture the relationship between employment growth and output (GDP) growth with varying time path of capital intensity and labor productivity, and then propose a weighted linear combination of output growth and employment growth and show how it could be derived from the Macro-economic model of the preceding chapter and workout the shadow wage rate implications in terms of the relative weights given to the national objectives of output growth and employment growth in an economy. The final chapter would deal with the prevailing Indian context of economic and employment growth and how the proposed weighted criterion could be used in the selection of projects for financing by banks with data on a sample of projects actually financed by banks, and then indicating scope for further research. Once the basic structure was available, it was easy even if time consuming to draft the Chapters. And, by the end of 1973, I was ready to deal with a reasonable draft of the entire dissertation for discussions and doing further work based on comments and suggestions by my guide Professor Dr. Deb Kumar Bose.

With regard to technical article on banking for publication, I tried out many topics including bank credit multiplier, but ultimately focused on the topic of Inter-branch Transfer Pricing in public sector banks and repayment scheduling for loans to small business enterprises in tune with the time profile of cash flows. During 1973-75, three of my papers would be published in Prajnan. When the first was published on Single and Dual Rate Transfer pricing policy, even before I could get my copy of the issue of Prajnan, Mr. PK Sen, Deputy General Manager, the third most senior in the top management of the Bank called me to his cabin, showed me the copy of the Prjnan, complimented me for the paper published, told me to continue writing such articles and said that he had already ordered for procurement of sufficient number of additional copies which he wanted to distribute to all directors of the Bank at the ensuing Board meeting. Next day, the Chief Accountant, Mr. Ranjit Dutta (who would later become the Chairman of the Bank) cam down from his office to meet me at my desk and gave the original letter addressed to him by a Chief Officer of the State Bank of India, who had worked with him on a Committee on Banking Costs: in the letter my article and its implications were appreciated. Soon thereafter the Bank itself changed the inter-branch transfer price for its branches: while discussing on the subject, Mr. Ranjit Dutta had argued that a change in the transfer price would improve inter-branch profit comparison but would distort comparison with the immediate past year's profits and Mr. PK Sen retorted to him saying that such an argument would never allow any change at any point of time. A remarkable comment that would guide me as a change agent in the course my career ahead. At the same time, the poor Personnel department officers would still try to explore if they can take me to task for not taking the Bank's permission before publishing an article. I knew that given the top management's favourable view they might to have the courage to complain against me. Still, I warned them that if they had read the relevant staff conduct rules of the Bank carefully, they should have noted that my article being of a purely technical, scientific nature and had not used any confidential information of the bank, I was not required to take the Bank's prior permission. I had started learning about the control phobia and jealous nature of Personnel departments of public sector firms.

My fourth task was to find a suitable life partner quickly. There were two criteria: (a) I would know her to be of the nature that best suits me and (b) that I would be most attracted by her appearance. But girls just do not fly in the sky to be shot at for capture. First, I tried if my Mom would find one quickly. She did not seem to be in a hurry. I identified some girl she knew and identified some peculiar criteria that would help my Mom to identify the same girl. She identified one such good looking girl but rejected her because the girl's mother had died of cancer. So, I had to take up the job and ultimately married one whose father died of cancer 11 years after my marriage, while the girl rejected by my mother ran away from home with her Romeo. I was saved on both counts: my father-in-law did not get inflicted by cancer before my marriage and my mother rejected a girl who would soon fly away.

But it was not that easy to get hold of a partner. It is just by mere chance in the spring of 1972 that I got formally introduced to her by a friend when we went together to enjoy the stage performance of a common friend who requested me to write a review of their play performance for publication in a daily newspaper. At the end of play, we walked along the street for about 15 minutes and then shook hands to part away. But I knew that she would have fallen for me. Next morning, she was there at the bus stop to travel together on my and her way to the office. Then it all began flying. I was getting to know her better, though I had seen this girl for the previous eight years smartly roaming around our lanes in her bicycle with her braided-hair twin-tails dancing in the air. She bothered less about my idiosyncrasies and abnormalities that she would have to bear with later. My spreading rumour that my marriage has already been fixed with someone else only helped intensify our relationships and after weeks of being together at movie halls, taxis, restaurants and her residence over the next six months, we agreed to marry on the understanding that covered the following three:
(a) that she would quit job for ever (actually, she did quit, then joined again in her job in the Mass Communications Division of the Govt. of West Bengal after a year handing over her salary cheques to me every month as my fees),
(b) that we would remain childless to enjoy our love (actually we didn't and so he decided on her own to finally quit job), and
(c) that she would dress in Saree's the way I prefered (actually she did but within a decade would start shifting away from Saree's to Salwar Kameez as her main attire). Given all these understanding and knowledge, it was worth taking the risk that I knew that I got the partner of my life. I would then advise her to play appropriate strategic threats to her father to agree to our proposal to get married and God had to advise her father during his meditation that she should readily agree. My mother would not agree till knew who was my chosen girl, I would not tell her about the girl before she gave her consent. After a few days of tussle, my father intervened saying that if I had already made the final choice of the bride, there was no point in wasting time. Her parents cam to our residence to make the proposal and dates were finalized. I would then take my mother along to their residence to meet my love. We married in the Spring of 1973 and, I happily lived thereafter.

Secular, Gender-equal Banking: My Unfolding Voyage 63

2011-04-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

Indian Constitution implied India was socialist democratic republic. I had felt socialistic meant equal treatment and opportunities to each and every national / citizen, irrespective of income status, caste creed, gender and religion. Somewhat superfluously the Constitution was amended to make India secular as well in the 1970s, instead of making the State and public sector non-religious. The State continues to support religious communities of different types. Constitution has not been amended to make India gender-equal: the voting rights accrue at the age of 18 irrespective of gender, but men cannot marry before they are 21 years of age - three years later than a female is legally entitled to marry. But a public sector bank must practice secularism, gender-equality, backward caste/ tribe reservation and spread the use of National language Hindi. United Bank of India as a nationalized bank must contribute to these characteristic objectives of the State. When the first women employee joined the Bank in the mid-1970s, it was a radical departure from the traditions. United Bank Employees organised Hindu's Saraswati Puja while being secular and lead by Marxist leaders.

Some Hindu Temples practice gender equality but others do not. Some God men practice gender equality, others do not. Many religions and communities do not believe in gender equality. Individual families do not practice gender equality. So, the State has difficulty in calling itself gender-independent or relion independent. So, it calls itself secular, rather than being religion-independent. The Bank however encouraged its employees to go to different places or visit native village once in four years accompanied by their families by reimbursing the cost of transport up to a certain monetary limit, I took advantage of this facility twice while on the rolls of the Bank. On the first occasion, within six months of my marriage, we went to Hyderabad along with my parents. This is first time I had gone to keep a promise I had made to my wife before we married. She wanted to visit the abode of a Godman. We stayed with my cousin Ashokda for in two spans of 3 days each and in between travelled to and fro Puttapurthy where we stayed for two nights and three days. Puttaparthy is a small village with Prshanta Nilyam (Satya Sai Baba's abode of Great Peace) as the main centre of its attraction. We saw Satya Sai Baba from a distance as he strolled around through the crowd of devotees, followers, and visitors sitting on the lawns. My wife, Pramita (Topu) felt delighted for having fulfilled her desire to see Sai Baba at his abode. We also attended the evening prayers there. It was a great time that we spent there in cold winter, living in a rented slum's room, eating out in make-shift way side restaurants and observing the foreign visitors eating South Indian food. Satya Sai Baba is the only living Godman in my life time. He preached no religion but love, though his prayers are mostly offerings to Hindu God and His different deity forms. I heard lot of criticisms and controversies about Satya Sai Baba before and after visiting him. These however did not appeal much to me. The fact that appealed to me is that here was a person who attracted so many devotees and followers including people of various religion from various countries and allowing the rich among them to spend their wealth and energy for various philanthropic work in the ares of medicare, education and spreading message of love practising secularism and gender-equality without being part of the State or being an elected democratic leader or as an instrument of State policy. We returned safely and as per schedule to Hyderabad despite our worry following the mid-night accident that we experienced when the bus in which we were going to Puttapartti fell down from the road to a low-lying farm land on the side- a sudden fall through the air by about 4 feet and wait there for 5 hours for the bus to get repaired.

On our way back from, we visited my elder brother who was then working in limestone quarrying company in Birmitrapur, near Rourkela. After staying with my brother's family for two days, we returned back to Kolkata leaving my parents with my brother for an extended stay in Birmitrapur.

I was convinced that gender-equality and secularism was not something that need to be a part of State's policy or practised under directive by banks as an instrument of State policy. Legislation and legislators cannot imbibe the love that make them practice equanimity and benefit the society: they are in the business of selling concepts of various discrimination's and distinctions in the name of equality, freedom and socialism.

Business Strategy & Policy: My Unfolding Voyage 62

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The association with the work relating to the director's report increasingly gave me the impression that the Bank really had not even an implicit long-term vision or goal that would explain the rationale of its management. The top management were more interested and focussed on how to please the sole owner, the Government of India, in particular, the State Minister of Finance for Banking and the Additional Sectretary Banking, especially in meeting targets of performane in relation to priority sector fiance, branch expansion and the like. There was not even a desire to be a much larger bank than the close competitors. At that time, the top most banks in terms of business were the State Bank of India, Central Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India and Bank of Baroda, followed by United Commercial Bank and the United Bank of India. Canara Bank and Syndicate Bank ranked further down the ranking table. United Bank of India top management seemed to be satisfied with their rank and felt better if the Bank could just beat the United Commercial Bank in terms of depoits level: they would not envision a future of the Bank being among the top three banks in the country: for the owners of the nationalised banks, it did not matter which bank had achieved whuch size so long as all the banks were growing every year at a reasonably fast pace to bring more resourses under the control and direction of the Government.

The lack of an explicit or implicit (underlying) long-term vision got reflected in the absence of long-term strategies and plans and focus on the immidiate future: as one Chairman of the Bank had indicated that his horizon of planning for the Bank was limited by his remaining two years or so to retirement - the owners would not appoint a Chairman who was relatively young, nor would allow even a successful Chairman to continue after the Government stipulated retirement age of 58 or 60 years. The Syndicate and Canara Bank Chairmen had been slightly younger when they were appointd and could envision for a longer period: they would soon come up the ranking table, leaving United Bank of India behind.

Business analysis and policy work in the Bank therefore was focussed on immediate requirements of changes in methods and systems, recruitment and training and deployment of staff to achive the targets set by the owners, rather than on career planning, radical reorientation in organisation structure, diversification outside the contours of the Government policy, innovation and enterprise. One knew that one's growth opportunity in the Bank would be decided by how fast the Bank is able to grow rather than by the challanges taken up to transform the Bank to realize a clearly articulate long-term vision.

Business policy making therefore was more a convenience of prevailing environment rather than part of a long-term strategy. Maybe two illustrations would make it easier to explain this personal observation. The Bank could not have made any serious effort to improve customer service: while most of individual employees were sincere and could operate on higher productivity, the left-wing politician influenced trade unions (one for class III and another for class IV employees) would not allow higher productivity any where and assured the empployees of negotiating progressively higher wages for progressively lower work effort and greater leisure time at office. Personnel management was weak and compromising in the face of Marxists (do not produce surplus value for the owners and customers to appropriate large surplus value). The Bank would further abandon nursing an idea of dealing with the employee trade unions after nationalisation because the ruling political party would not like bank employees to go on various forms of strikes.

Yet, when the ruling political party desired, after the declaration of Emergency by the then Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the Bank would immediately initiate steps to improve customer service. One such step was to assign each officer in the headquarters to visit two branch offices and report on their standards of customer service to the top management at the headquarters. I had chosen two branches: one close to my residence and the other close to my office. I had convinced the bosses that instead of wasting time on week days, I would visit each branch on one Saturdays every month. The bosses readily agreed because that would ensure my availabilty at the office forw regular work
on all working days except the two saturdays - half-a-day working hours on Saturdays for banks. I had worked out my own inspection visit plans: check attendance register just after the branch opened in the morning, record time taken to serve customers withdrawing deposits or depositing cash/ cheques in their account, just by observing a sample of customers movement from thei entry to the branch and noting also the time one has to wait in the queue, would have a brief inspection of certain books of accounts and share a cup of tea with the branch manager discussing with him about his plans and progress in regard to customer service, and then write out my report there itself - all within a space of 150 minutes. Then I would quietly, slip out of the branch, meet my wife who would come over from our home, share some food in a restaurant and enter the theatre nearby for a matinee show. There were no bosses around to interfere in the name of exigencies of sudden urgent workflow: I got my compensation for those few days the bosses made me fail my appointments with my fiance. On one occasion, we went to see the Zeenat Aman starrer Satyam, Sivam, Sundraram but could not get the tickets and went to see another Satrughna Sinha Hindi film in the theatre close by. The power supply failed in the theatre after thec film had progressed past the mid-way: so, we collected the money refunded by the theatre hall, proceede quickly back to the theatre showing Satyam, Sivam, Sundaram to find the next show about to start had no seats available when someone came to us offered to re-sell two tickets as their friend had not turned up to see the movie. That day we enjoyed one and a half fim shows at the cost of one film viweing fees.

The customer service visits went on for about four months and customer service fell back to the levels that the employee unions were happy with: what happened to our reports, we could not get any feedback.

Being an instrument of the State policy, the politicians would not allow banks to be involved in anything that would come under criticism for hurting the common citizens. Potato prices rose sharply one particular year and there was a view commonly held by political parties that this has happend because of cornering potatos housed in cold starages by profiteering traders. Naturally, the board members, especially the representatives of the Government desired an anaysis of the policy of the Bank in respect of financing cold storages. I was instructed to make a survey based study on the extent and impact of the Bank's financing of cold storages. A very friendly credit officer in the tradional large advaces department took me around several bank-financed cold storages in the major potato grwoing belts in Hoogly and nearby districts or rural Bengal for three days. We had nice night-stay arrangements awaiting for us to make us comfortable. We moved in a robust Ambassador car from cold storage to cold storage. The cold storage managers/ owners explained the methods of operation with special reference to their customers who stored potatos in their storages and the period of inflow into the cold storage, the period of complete air-conditioning without any inflow or outflow of potatoes and then the period of withdrwal of potatos in phases from the cold storages. I also had discussion with the nearby branch managers who explained the method of financing of potato growers from the stage of seeding through selling of a part of the crop yield, storing in their cottages a part of the yield for sale over the next two - three months and putting the remaining part of the produce in the cold storage for selling at higher prices after four-five months.

The basic economics was simple but politicians, common people and the educated elite seldom apply their logical mind if prices go up sharply for an essential food item. Bank financing of cold storages had nothing to with the rise in prices of potatos during September- October period: rather, in the absence of the cold storages prices would have been far higher than they would otherwise be during September to early January when the new crop is harvested. Pointing all these out in my Note to the Board, I showed how financing the cold storages the Bank had helped moderate the sharp rise in the potato prices after three months' of harvesting the crop output, reduced the incidence of rotten potatos in farmers' household storages, increased the production of potatos and increased the income of the potato growers. I also pointed out that the occasional sharp rises in the price of potatos during September-November was partly due to sharp rise in demand due to succession of festivities and partly due to manipulation by certain potato wholesale traders in Kolkata with part-ownership of some coldstorages who would buy from the farmers holding stocks in the cold storages to gain control over stocks. My recommendation was to increase bank financing for new cold storages and for financing farmers growing potatos so as to both increase the overall availabilty and make the wholesale trade in potato more competitive and contestable. The Bank's directors felt comfortable that the Bank would be able to convince the politicians that bank financing of cold storages was not the reason for rise in potato price. It is another mater, that during the last three and a half decade period since then, the same problem of sharp rise in potato prices would recur in certain years at times of high seasonal demand surge: a few big wholesale traders would continue to be successful in ensuring effective barriers to entry of new wholesalers in potato as in the case of fish and the political parties would find existence of such oligopolies helpful to them. If public sector banks were really to be used as instruments of State policy, the structure of wholsale trade could have been made substantially more competitive and contestable. United Bank of India on its part could not envision how it could grow it business in poptato cultivation, storage and trade.

Visionless Plan of Wasteful Democratic Slavery: My Unfolding Voyage 61

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Please the owners' representatives (the Minister, the concerned bureaucrats and the Parliamentarians on Committees that evaluate the Bank's performance. That seemed to be the only justification for the existence of the management of a nationalized Bank. The Bank did not have to have a long-term vision, mission, goal, strategy and plan of its own, although most individuals had their own long-range plan and in most cases these plans assumed that the Bank as the life-long employer will grow from strength to strength. I had my own long-term vision and goals for myself as would most human beings have. As part of that personal long-term plan, I got the job in the Bank, explored potential partner whom I could fall in love with, marry her and raise children. We fell in love sometime after we first met in 1971 and went through lot of romantic encounters during which the senior colleagues deliberately played occasional mischief to make me fail appointments with my love while she kept waiting for me for hours at the pre-specified restaurant or fair: they had overheard of our plan to meet after the office hours and cooked up some urgent work just before the closing hours and there being no mobile phones those days I had no opportunity to communicate my inability to meet her as per agreed schedule ( I would have opportunity to get compensated later).

We got married in 1973 after successfully managing through appropriate strategies and tactics, the initial hurdles arising out of reluctance of parents on both sides to allow an inter-caste marriage. We had full enjoyment of just being together for two years and a half to welcome the arrival of our first child, Sowmdeb in 1975. At the same time, I worked hard enough drafting various chapters of my PhD dissertation, meeting and discussing, on ten successive Saturday afternoons, my thesis adviser- supervisor, Dr. Deb Kumar Bose at his residence while enjoying the tea and snacks arranged by Mrs Bose along with her affection. Mrs. Bose provided good support my decision to marry when I did despite Dr. Bose's concern that marrying before completing the dissertation could be a distracting disturbance: she pointed out that they themselves had got married before Dr. Bose completed his PhD. Over the ten weeks, I spent considerable time revising the draft chapters a number of times based on Dr. Bose's comments and suggestions and also meeting and discussing the drafts with another Professor Dr. Sanjit Bose who provided very interesting inputs for embellishment of the dissertation and finally getting their approval for submission. I was up against time running out fast: I had conceived my PhD dissertation before I had joined the Bank while my wife Pramita (Topu) conceived our elder son much later and was about to deliver. I rushed through the proof reading and finally delivered my PhD dissertation to the Indian Statistical Institute virtually at the same time as my wife delivered her first child..

No one had any idea of the long-term vision that I were implementing. But if one would have tracked my behaviour and actions over time, one would have got some rough idea of my long-range plan and strategies, I had the opportunity to decipher the long run vision, mission, goals, strategies and plans, if any, of United Bank of India in the early 1970s by analysing the Banks actions and behavior. This opportunity came primarily by way of my involvement in the preparation of Annual Director's Report for six successive years. In the first year of my service at the Bank, my involvement was marginal: draft the first five/ six paragraphs of the small sections of economic, monetary policy and banking sector environment for the year under report, and proof reading of entire report including the tables and the accounts statements, This gave an insight into what the Directors' Annual Report & Accounts document sought to cover and convey. The major sections of the Directors report contained the performance of the Bank in aggregate terms of deposits, bank advances, branch expansion and profits and fairly detailed presentation on the Banks achievement in the areas of farm finance, small, cottage and tiny industries credit, credit to artisans and handicapped people and small businesses, advances to major industrial sectors and infrastructure, realisation of targets in credit deployment in the priority sectors, extension of coverage of hitherto unbanked rural and urban areas and of course launching of new and innovative schemes of financing priority sectors and weaker sections. Besides, there would be paragraphs on employment creation within the Bank and through extension of credit, development and promotional efforts undertaken to promote economic development in the areas of operation of the Bank. There would be appropriately placed photographs of important events in the banks premises during the year. There would be a designer consultant to assist us in deciding the layout, the use of different fronts and colours, etc. Pretty interesting publishing work with boring proof reading and correction and working late hours in the office as well as at the printer's office just before the final print order is given.

Detailed drafts of material would come from various departments like the farm finance department, small scale industries department, the publicity and public relations department, the credit department, the branch expansion department, the personnel department, the accounts department, the Management Development Department, the Staff Training College, and etc. Besides, we had all the Statistical MIS information readily available. The job was now to sift through the available material and prepare a running first draft and then edit and re-edit before the bosses make their fine touch editing and provides guidance on what additional items of important developments that got missed out. Being involved in the preparation of the Annual Report provided considerable insights to what was going on in the Bank's mind. The interactions with the officers in various departments provided an window to what was going on in their minds and what they were trying to achieve, besides establishing wonderful friendships (I had quite a few affectionate senior colleagues in Farm Finance Department like Dr. SN Ghoshal, Dr. A Roy who took me around in one of his visits to branch offices in North 24-Parganas for a day-long experience with farm credit officers in branches, and Dr. BV Jha. The interaction with the bosses and the top management on the draft reports revealed how they were looking at the present and the future.
On one occasion, I was sent to discuss the draft approved by the Board with the Government's nominee on the Board of the Bank. He was at that time a Joint Secretary in the Department of Banking in the Ministry of Finance, became Additional Secretary soon and later became the Chairman of the country's largest bank, the State Bank of India. He had a few small suggestions to make on the draft Annual Report, but I felt that he had got discouraged to see a less than 30 year old bank officer being responsible for the Bank's Director's report because when I went to meet him he wanted to confirm that if I were the bank officer dealing with the Directors' Report. More than three decades later I had a chance to meet him: he was still very agile and active with keen interest in Indian economics.

One year during the period of Emergency declared by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi's Government, the Chairman of the Bank carried a few advance print copies of the Annual Report to present them to the Minister of State for Finance (Banking) and joint/ additional secretaries of the Govt.'s banking department. Even as more copies of the Annual Report were being bound by the printer's binders, call came from New Delhi that led to stop the process. It was around noon on a Saturday. Chairman conveyed what the Minister had suggested: (a) have the cover of the Annual Report re-designed and printed so that the inside back cover has a kangaroo-pocket hold, and (b) produce an attractive small booklet showing how the Bank was implementing the 20-point socio-economic development programme announced by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and insert that booklet in the kangaroo-pocket on the inside back cover of the Annual report. Chairman instructed that the Annual Report along with its kangaroo pocket booklet should be available in three days. I was given the task to prepare the booklet. The problem was that on the major parts of Indira Gandhi's 20-point program that were relevant to banking were already covered in the Annual Report. So, we needed both rewording, rephrasing of existing material already used plus additional material and photographs. It was decided that we would work the whole of Sunday to finalise the booklet and send to the printers Sunday evening. I went home, searched out from my table a three page document of the Government that contained the 20 point programme. With the quotations from that document I made a rough layout and draft of our kangaroo-pocket booklet with about 16/ 17 points that could be considered relevant to baking by some stretched imagination. It would roughly be a 24 page booklet. On Sunday, the farm finance and small industry finance departments provided additional material to help me put flesh into my basic structure of the booklet. Bosses edited my drafts and suggested inclusion of some more information that they had considered relevant. The artist- designer was called in and we sent the material to the printers. Monday and Tuesday we worked on proof-reading and further editing. By Wednesday evening, adequate number of printed copies of the Annual Report with the booklet in its kangaroo-pocket were available for sending to Delhi so that the Minister and his officials could get pleased with the great work done by the United Bank, even if that meant some wasteful expenditure on document printing.

It was not just a case of pleasing the King and his men during an Emergency Rule and suspension of democracy: public sector had to be instruments of government publicity as well. Public sector must also be for the benefit of politicians adoring the Parliament as representatives of the common people. They would be on Bharat Darshan tour to review the performance of the public sector undertakings and visit all cities where these companies were headquartered, enjoying there hospitality and the banks and other companies they would review would be highly obliged if these great persons accepted valuable gifts and city tours organized by these public sector units. Some of the Parliament Committee members would need special escorts, besides a car to roam around the city (Kolkata in the case of United Bank of India) for shopping and enquiring. One driver reported later that he had been asked about the location of the red light areas. The costs did not matter, the managements thought: after all, the visitors were the owners' representatives. It is a small expenditure once in a while: much more was being spent on questions asked by the Parliamentarians on banking as information would be sought from banks that they would have to collect from far flung branches through telexes and telegrams, compile them for further compilation at the Banking Department of the Government and based on that appropriate written or oral reply would be given by the Minister in the Parliament. Dealing with material to be sent to government in response to Parliamentary questions would bore me also much later in life: one of the most wasteful activity that the public sector and the Nation would continue to bear for unimaginative design of Parliamentary democratic procedures!

Business Forecasting to Planning & Budgetting: My Unfolding Voyage 60

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Mihir joined the Bank about two years after I did. He was a brilliant student and had just got his Masters from The Dibrugarh University in Assam. He was a very docile and lovable colleague. One of his first assignment was to be with me in the annual exercises of forecasting the Indian bank deposits over the next year and arrive at a reasonable forecast of the Bank's deposits. Providing credible forecast of business activity levels had been a key traditional responsibility of business economists. This job at the Bank was done by our bosses earlier and now they had assigned the task to the new recruits. The methodologies were established by the bosses earlier: run a simple time series regression on total bank deposits and extrapolate by a year; then, apply the bank's share in total bank deposits to arrive at the forecast of deposits for United Bank. In the Board Note just add some paragraphs on macro-economic trends and outlook to justify that the projections were reasonable.

Mihir and I had to embellish the Board Note on the subject this time. We also ran time series regression of total bank deposits but we tried several models of curve filling and arrive at alternate projections. The time series regression was rather easy to handle computationally with Facit machines. But trying multiple regression models relating bank deposits to macro-economic variables like GDP, Savings rate and money supply was rather difficult not only because the bank did not have a mainframe computer (the workmen unions were violently against computerisation of bank work for the false threat of loss of existing and potential employment - a perception cultivated by the communist trade union leaders in West Bengal in particular) and the personal computers were yet to reach India at that time, but also because the macro-economic data were available those days with considerable time delay to enable projection of those variable in the future. Still we did try simple three variable models of linear regression. As for the Bank's deposit forecast we ran both time series regression and model of shares of the Bank in incremental deposits having regard to the expansion of branch network. Form the plethora of projections, judgement was applied to arrive a small interval estimate of the Banking system's and the Banks deposit levels. This was then broken down into fixed, current and savings deposits based on past patterns adjusted for banks special deposit mobilisation efforts and the locations of the new branches in terms of potential for deposits. Once the deposit levels were available, it was easy to arrive at the credit or advances forecast given the statutory liquidity ratio, the cash reserve ratio, the desired credit deposit ratio. Once these were done, along with net interest margins and known fixed costs and variable costs, it was a small computation step to arrive at projections of the Bank's before tax profits.

Mihir did bulk of the computational work, I just wrote out the Note containing our findings and projections (being an M.Sc in statistics Mihir had more experience in handling facit machines for statistical calculations including standard errors of estimates, while despite having descriptive statistics at the undergraduate level and Mathematical Statistics and Econometrics at the graduate level, I was the most reluctant computational hand). The Note duly edited and approved by the Board finally reached the General Manager (the number two in the bank) who called me up to get briefed. He ended the briefing session by exclaiming: 'Your forecast seems OK: but I had arrived at similar figures without doing such a whole lot of statistical work that you people did.' I replied with part diplomacy:' Yes, Sir. You got the forecast based on your intuition based on long tears' of experience: we just provided a scientific rationale'. He appreciated my reply with a smile and let me go. I went back to give the feedback to my boss and Mihir who had just fallen in love with a girl and protested against my advise that hold your brain above your heart of love to tread carefully along the path of love. Eighteen months later, when we reached office in the morning we found Mihir's lifeless body on the roads: he had leapt out of the 10th floor window under the burden of a heavy heart. We are all very saddened with this tragic incident.

Given the forecast deposit and credit levels the Bank's chief accountant would now work out branch wise targets of deposits and credit and the priority sector credit chief would communicate the priority sector wise credit targets. This system however would change soon. Business Planning and Budgeting would be arrived at through a two way communication. The National Institute of Bank Management had just started its campaign for introduction of Performance Budgeting. They were holding workshops on the subject in different banks. About 15 of my colleagues from different departments and offices participated in the workshop arranged exclusively for United Bank. After the workshop, I along with one of my colleagues in my department were given the task of implementing performance budgeting. The entire process of budgeting from the initial headquarter communication on goal setting to formulation of budgets at the branch level and deliberations over them at the district development and regional offices to final two day deliberations and finalisation of the budgets at the central office with regional managers: also, the formats for budgeting and guidelines on environment scanning for identification of business potential and translating them into performance budgets covering all business aspects including manpower, costs and profits were required to be explained to all. We therefore prepared a performance buget manual/ guideline document. The printed copies of this document was sent to all branch. district development and regional offices and all departments. We organised special training programs at various centres to explain the performance budgeting philosophy and techniques with examples. It was a great experience dealing with so many people from so many places and then compiling the aggregate performance budget of the Bank. At last the exercise in business forecasting got related to the exercise of evolving branch wise performance budgets through a two way communication process (top-down and bottoms-up).

But something more on planning was yet to be initiated. Business Plans and Performance Budgets were essentially for one yaer period at a time with quarterly or monthly pasing wherever necessary for effective monitoring of the realisation of the performance budgets and business plans. There was not articulated and documeted and deliberated medium- and long-range business plan as yet. So even as performance budgeting system got introduced we got initiated the process of long-range planning with the consultancy assistance of the National Instiute of Bank Management. In the first round they were interviewing and discussing with the bank's top officials. I had heard that the Chairman of the Bank confronted them with a question:' Since I am going to retire in two years from now, how do you expect me to answer how I expect the Bank to look like five tear hence?' I had left the services of United Bank of India soon thereafter to pursue long-term planning exposure elsewhere.

Getting Trained & Training Collagues: My Unfloding Voyage 59

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United Bank of India had its own staff training college at a two-storied old Bungalow-type building on the Rashbehari Avenue between Triangular Park and Gariahat Crossing in the southern part of Kolkata. I understand that the Training College moved to a new location later. At that time, a retired State Bank senior official was the Principal of the College. The college was primarily for technical training in different operational work areas for the Bank's own employees but also just started providing induction training to new recruit specialised officers like economists, statisticians, farm credit managers, engineers, chartered and cost accountants and officers promoted from the ranks. Since there were not enough new recruits available for induction training, I had to wait for about a year to go to the college for the seven or 10 day programme. In the meanwhile, the Bank's headquarters had moved from its old premises at Clive Ghat Street, a lane parallel to the Fairlie Place lane to the north, connecting the Netaji Subhas Chandra Road and the Strand Road on the banks of the Ganges (Hooghly) river that separated Kolkata from the district of Howrah. We shifted to the Ban's new 16-storied building (the tallest building in Kolkata at that time) at 10, Old Court House Street on the south-east corner of the Dalhousie Square (renamed later as Binay Badal Dinesh or BBD Bagh) and very close to the state Governor's House. The building was state of the art at that time with honey-comb louver roofing in each floor, multiple spacious automatic lifts, wide lobbies and a sprawling terace garden on the third floor where the top four officials of the Bank had their offices along with the Board Room. We were located on the 10th floor.

I had undergone two programs at the College. Both the induction training and the subsequent executive development program at the college were very interesting. Besides good launch and snacks, the program covered all aspects of banking from Banking Regulation and Development Act, Reserve Bank of India Act, Negotiable Instrument Act and Bank Nationalisation Act and other laws relevant to banking to deposit mobilisation, credit appraisal and disbursement, from deposit and borrower account operation to bank accounting, and from foreign exchange operations to staff rules as also elements of bank management like inter-personal relationship, delegation of powers, bank marketing and leadership. Most speakers were from the senior bank officials and training officers, but external specialists also covered some aspects. Bank's Deputy General Manage, PL Sen talked on bank marketing at a pre-dinner session: Indian bankers those days were not exposed to concepts of marketing management as applied to banking. The program induced me to become a regular reader of the content page and select articles in the Harvard Business Review issues available at the Bank's Library. Harvard Business School would be on my voyage two decades later.

Soon the level of activity of the Training College would increase manifold with the large step up in recruitment of staff and officers required for both the headquarters, regional offices and new district development offices and the fast expanding network of branch offices, especially in rural and semi-urban areas. Even junior officers like me had to be deployed as part-time visiting faculty in areas like economic and banking business environment. I had become a regular speaker at the Training College since my bosses did not have time to act as part-time faculty. And, given the huge load of training new recruits, we had not been spared for further training, except once after the first promotion. The Bank was reluctant to send new recruits for training in executive development programs at management institutes of at the RBI staff training college in Mumbai.

Yet, I was fortunate enough to be at the RBI Staff Training College in Prabhadevi, Mumbai within 30 months of joining the Bank. The Reserve Bank had organized an Workshop on the implementation of the New Basic Statistical Returns (BSR) for banks and their branches. My senior colleague, Rajat Gupta, a First Class First M.Sc in Statistics of the University of Calcutta and in-charge of United Bank of India's statistical management information operations and I were deputed to attend the program: i did not know at that time that I was destined not to attend any regular training program at RBI Staff Training College in my life but would be guest speaker at its programs decades later. But the trip to Mumbai for the first time for attending the BSR workshop turned out to be a great personal event. Rajat-da told me that we were eligible to travel only by train to Mumbai (roughly 36-hours journey each way) but reserved tickets were not available because of the short notice that we had got, we need bosses' approval to go by air (two and a half hour flight each way). We got approval from the bosses, applied for three days leave to stay back at Mumbai and bought an extra return ticket at the cost of Rs.800 or so (about 75% of my monthly remuneration at that time) and flew off for honeymoon to Mumbai with my partner whom I married three months back: stayed in a small hotel for two nights before an elder cousin and her husband forced us to shift to their residence at Mazagaon Dock, visited all sight-seeing places in Mumbai from South Bombay to the North Bombay and suburbs with a car at our disposal, courtesy Mr. Adya, Head of the Bank's branch at the Oberoi Towers Complex (now called Trident Hotel), moving through the rows of the coconut trees in the Juhu Beach (it was still at that time as it had been pictured in the Hindi Movies of the 1950s and 1960s, making some purchases here and there including at the Crawford market. Ten years later we would come back to Mumbai and live there for the next two decades.

United Bank of India would soon give me another opportunity soon. The Staff training college would organise a training program in a hotel at Digha, one of the best holidaying centre in West Bengal on the shores of the Bay of Bengal. I was invited to give a guest lecture. My wife and I had enjoyed the two nights trip to Digha for the first time, just a few months after our trip to Mumbai.

Of Meeting Briefs and Speeches: My Unfolding Voyage 58

2011-04-08T04:01:00.000-07:00

Senior bankers were generally very busy with routine work of considering and approving decisions, conducting and attending business meetings, and meeting important clientele and dignitaries in office or elsewhere: as is true of top and senior management outside banking industry, they could afford and little time to read long notes and lot of materials on relevant to their work and decision-making. So, they insisted on short, brief office notes as well as briefing by their juniors on the content of the notes and other meeting information briefs given to them. They generally had little to time to prepare their own speeches / articles to be delivered at meetings, inaugural functions or published in business journals or business books. Economists traditionally provided this help to the top management. But there were two categories among the top managers. The first group consisted very few who would dictate their articles and ask the economists to edit the draft for improvement and comment and based on the feedback would themselves finalise the speech or article, or discuss on the various points relevant on the issue at hand, ask the economist to arrange the points in a small piece of paper and then dictate the article or deliver the speech extempore. Most top managers were however in the second group: they basically depended on the draft prepared by the economist, would seldom change a word or a sentence there and read out their prepared speeches or send the article for publication. It was rather easy to deal with the second group and the economist would have lot of freedom in composition. The better speech writers would put themselves into the shoes of the senior banker and compose the speeches and articles from the perspective of that level of management.

Fortunately, I had opportunity work with both categories in the United Bank of India. Since the first set of exposures in this area were with the first category of independent and articulate top bankers, it was easy to get a hang of their preferences and strong views. United Bank of India Chairman B K Dutta used to dictate his articles / speeches himself. Once I had edited his first draft but he was extremely disappointed and angry about my :removing the words 'ludicurous' and 'ridiculous' as adjective to certain actions/ ideas of certain sections of the society: he was very particular about which words expressed his thoughts adequately. Once after reading the copy of one of the issues of the journal of the National Institute of Bank Management, he sent it to us with an attached slip with his note: 'This is not only a wastage of national resources but a drag on clear thinking'. I had thought then that the nature of topics covered in the journal and the highly mathematical content of the articles in that issue had failed to meet the expectations he had on the Bank Management Institute.

Mr. Dutta was a member of the State Planning Board of West Bengal. One late afternoon he called me and gave my a 300+page-document prepared by the Board. It was the State's plan approach paper setting out the priorities and major development programmes. He asked to give him a short brief next morning as he had to attend the Planning Board's meeting later in the afternoon that day. I went home, worked for three-hours the same evening and prepared a 10-page executive summary of the document in my own handwriting and gave him the manuscript. He glanced at that and told his secretary to get it typed. Next day morning, he called me to give back these documents and appreciated my effort in quickly producing an useful executive summary.

Mr. PK Sen, the deputy General Manager of the Bank, was the third senior most top official of the Bank, after the Chairman and the General Manager (those days deputy general managers and general managers were very few in banks unlike today when you have hundreds of them: deputy general managers in those days were roughly equivalent to deputy managing directors or executive directors of nationalised banks today). He always spoke extempore and seldom signed an article. He was a good speaker. But he would discuss on varying subjects whenever there was any chance: once he discussed with me about inflation and in the course of discussion asked how I had been adjusting my family expenditure in the face of high inflation in the early 1970s after the first oil shock. I told him that I was trying to shift to lower priced substitutes wherever possible like shifting from milk-based butter to soya-based margarine. He sarcastically commented that the soyabean product was not at all tasty to go with the breakfast toast. On another occasion he called me and asked me to give hum on just one side of a single sheet of paper all relevant information on a small European country's economy to help him prepare for a meeting he had on the next day with a trade minister of that country. He emphasised that my brief should on a single quarto-size paper and I need not write long sentences. I asked for a favour: I would write the brief on one side of a quarto-size paper but would not get it typed as this would leave lot of space blank because of margins on both sides and between the lines. He agreed. I picked up a couple of reference books available at the bank's library and prepared my one page brief before long and sent him. Next day after his meeting was over, he called me returned my manuscript with thanks and commented 'you hardly left any blank space on the sheet to put in as much information as you could - that was a trick to make brevity a bit embellished'.

But another Chairman of the Bank had difficulty in dealing with aid-memoirs for his meeting with the Reserve Bank of India. He demand for various data tabulated in all sorts of permutation and combinations and had extensive briefing sessions with his deputies, chief economist and statisticians. Once he remarked after returning from RBI Credit Policy meeting " You people give me so much of information that I could hardly use any of them. But the State Bank of India Chairman did not carry any paper with him and yet reeled of information as if they were in his finger tips'. A remarkable observation on a qualities of the chief of the largest bank in India! Freeing oneself from the jungle of details to key macro-indicators and from numbers to orders of magnitudes is what managers need to learn as they travel towards the top.

Written Communication Rigour: My unfolding Voyage 57

2011-04-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

Indian students wishing to study in US universities have been required to clear TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language} since probably the 1980s. It was not there when I secured my Master degree in Economics in the late 1960s. The period when I studies-d in schools and colleges was the final phase of English as a language and medium of instruction being taught the way the British taught English to the Indians when the ruled India. In our childhood days, we were told to improve our English vocabulary and composition skills by reading the English Daily Newspaper named Statesman with a dictionary in hand and read English Grammar book authored by Wren and Martin as an inferior substitute of the English Grammar book our our earlier generations had used. A person weak in English composition was not considered educated even if had a doctorate degree in Physics or Chemistry or Medicine. I studied English from the infant stage and for four years of my middle school I had to read, write and arithmetic as well as converse in English only. Despite that I always despised grammar of any language - whether English, Bengali, Hindi or Sanskrit (so many rules appeared to take away the free flow of expression of ideas) and also disliked English to English dictionary. So, despite being fluent in English communication, I always suffer red the handicap of limited vocabulary and ungrammatical liberty of composition. By the time I started learning Economics in the undergraduate college, the edge that students with flowery and sophisticated written English composition had in studying Economics has largely vanished: one now had to be fluent in mathematics or mathematical logic as the language of economics. So, there was no incentive for me to improve my English composition at that stage. English had now become a domestic Indian language of its own characteristics: English of the British had become the food for only those who studied English literature in the Colleges and Universities.

But when I had joined the United Bank of India in 1970, the seniors were all from generations that were brought up in British English environment. They appreciated flowery, grammatically correct and British like office communication drafting. The situation would change soon as communication would have to occur among a growing population conversant with Indianised English only and more logically-oriented to avoid distraction/ communication noise created by complex construction and use of uncommon words when more common synonyms were available. At the same time, office communication had to be sharply pointed, brief, free-flowing and logically connected. Learning the relevant skill in English drafting became one of the major focus area for me. I was fortunate to have my boss Dwijen Bhattacharyya, about 10 years' senior alum of the Economics Department of the University of Calcutta and very strong in the British English composition. Yet, he had developed quite a strong skill in logical binding and brevity in written office communication in English. He would in the beginning correct my drafts with affection and show how improvements could be affected. After a while, he would not correct my English any longer but would just tell me that I should redraft to bring in me more brevity and logical connectedness of sentences and paragraphs. In one session that took place in his office chamber, he had asked to me to redraft just one paragrpah of five sentences till he was fully satisfied. While I was redrafting repeatedly, my colleague, Snehangshu Bhattacharyya, in-charge of publicity and public relations and reporting to Dwijenda was simultaneously in work session with the boss. When the boss approved my sixth draft, Snehangshu Babu exclaimed at me: ' Basudeb, you can commit cold-blooded murders'. Both Dwijenda and I looked at him surprised with his out of the context remark. He was a poet of some repute and explained that he was observing me all the while tearing away one draft after another since they did not satisfy the boss and thought that a person who can destroy one's own creation with such cruelty as I did is capable of committing murders. But that was the way I learned and followed the analytical rigour in drafting for the next 28 years of my life till I stopped thinking about creating compositions in English as my job. It was a very thrilling and challenging experience that I enjoyed in drafting office communication in English with Dwijenda. And soon I would be courageous to comment on Dwijenda's revision of drafts prepared by my peers. In one case, I told him that a particular paragraph approved by him contained the word 'however' thrice within the space of just seven sentences, reflecting loose combination of thoughts in the paragraph and he readily and smiling greeted me for the observation.

Improving drafting skills was not that easy for many of my peers somewhat elder to me in age. They were very annoyed with Dwijenda's repeated correction of drafts and considered most such revision as as cosmetics and unnecessary. One of the colleagues, a former professor of both undergraduate and postgraduate courses in economics reported that often he would dream of draft correction sessions involving him and the boss: he was experiencing nightmares.

Another colleague would remain so passive during draft-revision sessions that the boss would give up. Yet, another colleague, a really intelligent guy and fast thinker, who had already taught Economics at the graduate level, had draft revision sessions during which the ideas contained in the original draft were not even getting clearly communicated to the boss' mind. Ultimately, I was given the task of drafting the office note on inter-branch transfer pricing. The author of my note, about 10 years senior to me inage a former professor in post-graduate economics course, was very affectionate to me and explained the contents of his note paragrpaph-wise and answered all the questions I had in understanding his note including the arithmetical computations. I realised what went wrong with the redrafting session my colleague had with the boss. My colleague worked on a problem which was essentially a problem of soving a simultaneous equation model but he used arithmetic logic skipping steps in the logic and our boss naturally had difficulty in compehending the logical flow of his thoughts. So, I formulated my own simultaneous equation model and tried to understand the logical working of the ideas, thoughts and calculations in the original note. It now became easy for me to draft a fresh note on the subject that was analytically more communicative to the layman reader. The Boss then took very little time in finalising the Note, fully understanding what he was approving for consideration of the Board of Directors. This mediation role in communication helped me subsequently to publish two technical articles with mathematical appendices in the Journal of India's National Institute of Bank Management- an interesting episode that I would recount a little later.

Of Bankable Credit Schemes: My Unfolding Voyage 56

2011-04-06T13:26:00.000-07:00

Within two decades of socialist command economy planning in India, the economy was collapsing with agriculture failing to show sustained growth, industry affected by recession and sickness, unemployment remaining a bug bear leading to tensions, inflation rate high and both per capita income and productivity remaining low while shortages of essential goods causing tensions. To avert a bankruptcy of the government, the major banks were first brought under social control and then nationalised in 1969 to make available the private savings with the banking system to the Government for financing government debt and direct bank credit flows at less than market rates of interest / concessional interest rates to what the political leaders thought as priority borrowers (small borrowers of various types), priority sectors (agriculture, small and cottage industries, transport, small businesses, etc) and priority locations (rural areas, un-banked areas and economically backward districts).

But extending bank credit to such borrowers, sectors and areas was not necessarily commercially viable and discretion and judgement to bank branch officials could not be relied upon to usher in the desired quantum jump in the number of new bank borrowers all over the country. The political leaders and the bureaucrats needed to monitor the delivery of performance of priority sector credit and expansion of the branch banking network on a continuous basis: they needed a mechanism that could help fast proliferation of priority sector small loans and the number of beneficiaries. The only mechanism known to bureaucrats was to tell the banks to recruit new types of credit officers and formulate standardised credit schemes that makes it possible for eligible priority sector potential borrowers to get loans on a quick, virtually automatic process of credit appraisal and disbursal from thousands of bank branch offices.

The nationalised banks hand already started recruiting chartered accountants on a selective basis for deployment in the accounts departments and credit departments used to dealing with large industrial and business loans, mostly for working capital purposes and with both primary and collateral security. These people were not to be relied upon for priority sector credit because of their traditional, largely judgemental and security-oriented methods of credit appraisal, disbursement and supervision. The priority sector credit surge needed fresh blood without inhibition of standard fiance and financing disciplines. So, the nationalised banks started recruiting engineers, agronomists, persons with background and prior experience in government efforts in industrial promotion and extension and economists to deal with priority sector credit policy, procedure, appraisal, disbursal and follow-up.

Not that these could not be done by the chartered accountants who were working under the senior credit officers who have risen from the ranks in the banks. But it was not so easy to get so many chartered accountants as the Chartered Accountant Institute was careful to ensure that the supply of chartered accountants did not increase fast enough to reduce the price for chartered accountant services. But the bank chartered accountants, despite the air of importance they were enjoying, being in the major income earning activity of the banks, were not so amused with the large influx of new officers at the same levels of pay in the newly set up priority sector credit departments with so many economists. Over the lunch table, a young charted accountant and a young economists got into a debate over the superior knowledge and expertise of economists and chartered accountants. As usual such debates cannot continue or end on a logical fashion. One of my younger economist colleague retorted back to my chartered accountant colleague thus: 'Economists are getting worldwide recognition with Nobel Prize (the Nobel Award Selection Authority in Switzerland had just started declaring the name of economists winning the prestigious economics prize funded by the Bank of Switzerland). Has any accountant in the world won a Nobel Prize?'.

The smart chartered accountant opened a different front. He asked me as to when we report to duty and when we were leaving office on a working day. I told him we generally reach office just before 10 am when the office hours begin and leave as soon as the office hours end at 5 pm. He told us that they generally are in their desks by 8-30 am and leave office after 7-30 pm. I told him, 'Yes, we economists seem to have greater productivity per hour at office than you chartered accountants!' After these initial encounters we were all very close colleagues at work.

But presently, we were engaged in formulation of credit schemes. Many of these credit schemes were occupation/ activity specific and in specific locations. The first task was to conducted a survey of the intended beneficiary borrowers covering such aspects as economic conditions of the borrowers, their scale of operations, technology, productivity, equipment and capital needs, interest costs, input procurement and sales arrangements, scope for improvement in technology, scale of operations, etc. The whole purpose of such surveys is to have information enough to design standard models of operation that ensures higher level of future cash flows that enhances the borrowers income after meeting the debt obligations to the banks. Once such standardised models are evolved, it becomes easy to design specific schemes of ban credit that makes easy for bank branch credit officers to multiply small loans at a high speed. So, we were busy those days during the first half of the 1970s in survey for designing credit schemes for cycle rickshaw operators to own rickshaws, for self-driven / self-operated cab and mini-bus transport business, shoe shine boys and cobblers, clay-modellers of Kumartuli and other places who were supplying thousands of deity-idols for Hindu homes and community clubs for worshiping God, for small and marginal farmers (crop loans and farm equipment loans and also tube-well irrigation loans), for small shop-owners selling a variety of items along the roadside, small floriculturists, beetle-leaf plant growers, small utensil makers, potato growers for warehousing potatos in cold storage's, for cold storage operators, clay toy and idol manufacturers of Krishnanagar and other centres, fishermen, plastic basket and bucket manufacturers, and for various other artisans, craftsmen and traders. Some among our survey team encouraged with their experience toyed with the idea of formulating a survey-based credit assistance scheme for the women engaged in the oldest profession in a red-light area of Kolkata!

Apart from schemes, there were projects too: industrial estate projects financed by bank credit were to rent out workshop sheds with all infrastructural facilities for renting out to new bank-financed small-scale industrial units, group irrigation projects for farmers, agro-service centre projects catering to the needs of repair and maintenance of farmers' equipments, renting out tractors to farmers for ploughing operations and etc.

Schemes proliferated and small bank loans to borrowers engaged in various small-scale activities surged. Politicians and social activists were appointed on the board of directors of nationalised banks. They presented with new ideas and pointed to locations with potential to channelise bank credit for the development of rural areas. I accompanied a well-known freedom-fighter who as a worker in a factory burnt a British in the furnace of a factory, to work-out an integrated river water utilising dam-cum-canal development plan in a certain part of Murshidabad district in West Bengal: that was the first-time did I stayed in a Government Circuit House. It was a great feeling of being part of the economic development process involving flow of benefits to economically weaker fellow countrymen. But, schemes are as best as they are used: soon politicians would force pliable nationalised bank top management to organise loan fairs where politicians would distribute the loans to rural folk before election times and later give the borrowers an impression that the loans need not be repaid or serviced, resulting in large non-recoverable loans in the priority sector (the concept of provisioning against non-performing loans were yet to enter banking glossary of terms in India). Schemes were also easily used by wealthier and crooked borrowers to access bank loans and siphon off funds, leaving banks with overdue loans that would have to be written off. By that time I had left United Bank.

Economic Newsletter: My Unfolding Voyage 55

2010-10-24T07:37:00.001-07:00

Senior bankers had frequently been in need of assistance from economists. For long during the 19th century and first half of the 20th century banking industry attracted very little educated talent because of relatively low pay and long hours of work. Top management would generally be members or trusted relatives of industrial entrepreneurial families Highly centralised decision-making called for banking technician operators to run the banks and their branch offices. Many of the middle and senior level managers would be the ones who joined as the junior most clerks, worked diligently, mastered the procedures and proved extremely trustworthy by the top management and owners. They had very little exposure to the outside world of business and economics except through the working capital facility relationship interaction they would have with their borrower clientele. High intellect and professionally qualified bankers were conspicuous by their absence in senior bank management even after two decades of India's independence. Except for the State Bank of India which regularly recruited fresh talent at the junior officers level and put them through rigorous managerial training and exposure, the induction of talents at the junior or middle management levels from other sectors was extremely limited. But bank top executives had to interact with the senior staff of the Reserve Bank of India and the government officials. So, the senior bankers felt limited in their capacity to track economic monetary developments in the economy in the second half of twentieth century. So, they recruited economists as part of the secretariat office of the bank chief executives. One or two economist with a good flair for writing on English and some exposure to deal with statistical figures were appointed. They would prepare the briefs for the Chief Executives for various meetings, especially meetings with the Reserve Bank of India Governor and other senior officials of the Reserve Bank, the ministers and secretaries of the Union and State governments as also for the Indian Banks' Association meetings, They would prepare the draft speeches to be delivered by the banks chief executives at various fora including meetings and seminars organised by chambers of industry and commerce and accounting/ management associations.

These economists were also expected to release brief educative and informative economic newsletters on a weekly/ fortnightly/ monthly basis to help the senior and middle level bank management executives to better appreciate the macro level business environment in which banking business operate and the competitive forces operating within the banking industry. Often, these economists would assist the top management in designing competitive business strategy and undertake publicity and advertisement campaigns.

Nationalisation of banks in 1969 gave a further impetus to the senior bankers to become economists by getting more economists to work with them. United Bank of India Chairman / Custodian, B K Dutta, wanted that each of his senior official has an economist secretary. Therefore, an economist in the bank had to get involved at some stage in the publication of the banks' economic newsletter and compile the directors' annual report. Writing for the economic newsletter helped one to master the economic and business trends, besides improving skills in drafting in English. I had studied economics for seven years in the school, college and university till I obtained my Master degree. As part of the study of economics, I had to cover a wide range of topics in what was called Indian economics. But it was at the United Bank of India, I had the real initiation in monitoring the Indian economy and banking on a regular basis - a boring job that helped build insights and an exposure that helps transform a business economists into amateur applied macro-economist. I would continue doing this job for the next three decades wherever I would get employed and which ever level of management I would operate at.

District Credit Plans: My Unfolding Voyage 54

2010-10-24T07:35:00.001-07:00

Once the Lead Bank first round surveys were over, the nationalised banks were required to prepare five year district-wise credit plans for all their lead districts. This was a fairly easy but time consuming task. Easy because the exercise was essentially a wishful guesswork to start with as a Five Year Plan for Bank credit in a district would depend on the expansion of the bank branch network in the district, besides the potential for credit extension. Easy because no one expected that the credit Plans on their first cut would be realistic and implementable, but would provide estimate of a broad order of magnitude of the ban credit requirements of a district.

It was time consuming. Because another round of impressionistic survey would be required along with discussions with government officials and bank branch officials in each district would be required.

The data available on the sectoral outstanding bank credit for each district for past years were available but with a time-lag (compilation by RBI was not online as it may be today with Internet and high-speed computers with RBI data processing centres: those days bank branch offices did no have computers or Internet and statistical returns were compiled at the branch level manually from manually recorded ledgers). However, past data for the district was available. More recent data on the credit disbursements by the lead bank was available with the lead bank: one could get this data simply by visiting the few branches in the district (at most 10 -12 branches). The hinterland that each of these branches could cover was known. The information on the farmers, artisans, traders in these hinterland areas were broadly available from the Lead Bank survey. The districts in general had very little industry and seldom had any big industrial unit and setting up of new large or medium scale industrial unit was not a regular feature. Thus, what was needed is to estimate the credit needs of sectors like agriculture, animal husbandry and poultry, small business and trade, artisans and self-employed transport operators ans small and cottage industries. Rough and ready scales of finance per unit of land / unit were available for various economic activities sought to be covered by bank finance. Total potential number of borrowers were known and was far greater than what the banks in the district could cover in 10 years even with a reasonably large expansion of the branch network. So, a reasonable target of new and existing borrowers were arrived at for each priority sector/ sub-sector economic activity for the five year period. Multiplying with the average norms / scales of finance, the physical target of the number of borrowers would yield broad estimates of bank credit plan for each sector. Summed up, one gets to X crore of rupees as the bank credit requirement of the district for the next five years. Less any one would complain about bankers being too pessimistic, the credit plans were made on rather optimistic basis and related to various assumptions on the district administration's achieving certain milestones on rural road and electricity development, etc. No one would criticise later that the actual credit disbursements would be far lower that the credit levels planned for a district.

Economic development could not be achieved merely by planning ban credit. This would be understood soon and district-level coordination committees of bankers and state government officials at the district level would be formed. District Credit planning would therefore transform into a rolling five year plan prepared every year. But much would depend on the priority sector targets that each bank would be imposed every year by the Banking Ministry: as the targets increased, the banks opened more branches and sought avenues for credit growth in rural districts. To enhance the speed of financing, the banks would formulate standardised schemes of finance for various activities. Scheme formulation would become a major activity in nationalised banks.

Surveying As The Leader: My Unfolding Voyage 53

2010-10-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

When India won Independence from the British, the distinction between the Queen's Whites and Black Natives got replaced by the distinction between Jubilant Native Rulers (J-NRUs) and Backward Mass (BM). The J-NRUs class distinguished itself from the Queen's whites class by just one feature: while J-NRUs were jubilant in taking up the responsibility to develop the lot of BM, the whites were only interested in exploiting and oppressing the BM. By 1969, the JNRUs had to nationalize the bulk of the Indian banking system to use it as yet another instrument of public policy to uplift the conditions of the BM.

The country's districts were allocated to the State Bank of India Group and the 14 banks nationalized in 1969. Thus each of these banks had become Lead Banks in respect of certain districts. United Bank of India, my employer was allocated about 14 districts as its lead districts. The Reserve Bank of India and the Finance Ministry formulated the Lead Bank Scheme. The Lead Banks were made responsible for ushering in economic development in their lead districts by taking the Lead and coordinating role in broadening and deepening the banking network. This would mean tapping unused/ idle financial resources to convert them into bank deposits and extend credit assistance to all kinds of economic activities in the rural areas. The Lead Bank Scheme became the focal point for formulating and implementing area development plans in the districts. But the first task was to know more about the disticts' economic status and condition and then formulate appropriate District Credit plans.

One of the task of United Bank's Research Division was to publish Lead District Economic Survey Reports. Being one of the officers of Research Division, I had been allocated a few districts for completing the Survey Reports. For each of the lead districts certain information was already collected by commissioning the help of local college/ university professors. This had been done even before I had joined the Bank. Based on such information, the Lead Bank Survey Report on Tripura - a full-fledged State of the Indian Union, but a Lead District under the Lead Bank Scheme because the size of Tripura was relatively small then - was published by the Bank. That was given to me as a model to start with along with some 20 to 30 statistical tables compiled by the outside agencies on behalf of the Bank and the district gazetteer published by the State ( in most cases, these were not updated after Independence by the District Administration). So, the task was relatively simple. Most statistical data were either based on Census or surveys by State agricultural departments or the Annual Survey of Industries and very little of information was generated through primary survey. The task was ultimately to identify the growth potential of each districts. It was essentially a task of reducing big tabulations into analytical convenient smaller tables and writing a few pages of report in English and associated proof reading. I had to deal with two districts of Assam and two / three districts of West Bengal. These being in the nature of impressionistic Surveys, and there was very little time available before the Lead Banks were to complete the task, I was not required to even visit the districts on which I was writing out the survey reports, except in the case of Dibrugarh and Jorhat Districts of Assam as there additional information was needed to be collected. What the District Commissioners/ District Magistrate's offices should have done got shifted to the banks after nationalisation. That was part of the process that continued for long to ensure that the Government officials had hardly any work except conducting progress review meetings to monitor the work passed on to the banks and other public sector agencies. Great Design.

For two successive days, I had to come back from the Calcutta Airport because the flight to Jorhat did not take off due to bad weather or availability of aircraft: those were the days when Indian Airlines was only carrier for domestic air travel. The passenger fare for the flights from and to the North Eastern States were concessional and the alternative of Railway travel would have cost more than 48 hours against just 2 hours by flight. That is the reason I was sent by my employer by air: normally a junior officer were not entitled to travel by air in those days of commanding heights of the public sector.

A Fokker friendship aircraft flight took of on the third day noon. My third journey by air in life. The flight to Jorhat was less than an hour. Tea and snacks were served soon after take-off. But before most passengers could sip their tea, the aircraft started jerking. The aircraft lost and gained heights suddenly and frequently with the tea cups and food plates jumping in the air and then falling back on the try-tables. This lasted for about ten minutes before the journey returned to normalcy. We sagely landed in Jorhat airstrip, an air force base at that time hidden on three side by trees on high table lands and rocks. The troubles of the survey journey had not been over yet.

The elderly District Development Officer (DDO) of my bank came to receive me at the Airport. But to our utter dismay, I did not find my checked in luggage at the terminal. On enquiry it was revealed that the luggage was not offloaded in Jorhat and has gone to Gauhati where the flight was supposed to terminate and that I can hope to get my luggage only two days later when the next flight to Jorhal would come from Kolkata.
The District Development Officer's office had an an adjacent room to host guests. I was put up there and I had to prepare mind to the bright prospect of remaining in the same clothes that I was wearing for the next 48 hours. Soon after I had got myself settled in my room, I went to the District Development Officer's room to have a cup of tea and schedule my information gathering tour of the district over the planned seven days of my stay in Jorhat. The DDO would retire in a few years' time and he was very affectionate to me but he had a surprise visitor from Kolkata at that time. This elderly visitor, a Commercial general manager of Indian Airlines, had announced that he had come to meet me as well. Three of us spent about half an hour together before the visitor from Indian Airlines left. But he assured us that my luggage would be delivered to the District Development Office by afternoon the next day when the flight that comes from Gauhati (Capital City of Assam, now named as Guwhati) to Jorhat. We thanked him and the luggage did reach me as promised by him. It is only when I returned back to Kolkata after15 days that I learnt from my parents that the same person had visited them in connection with his search for a suitable bride for her daughter. We have not met at time later.

My bosses at Calcutta telephoned to Jorhat to advise me to cut short my stay in Jorhat and proceed to Dibrugarh where I would be spending another two weeks. On the fourth day of my stay at Jorhat, I took the flight to Dibrigarh - less than 30 minutes journey. The Banks DDO in Dibrigard was a middle-aged person but appeared very enthusiastic about his work and appeared smart.. He had arranged for me a small room in a (no-star hotel) near his office. Before I stated my visits to various government offices, farming centres and commercial offices including those of the oil companies, I had a daily meeting with him. The first and foremost question that he wanted answers to himself was the kind of respect and cooperation that he would deem fit for his so young a colleague from the headquarters. He wanted to place me by my level. He found out from me that I was in the same grade position as the one got promoted to a year back. He was thereafter generally very nice to me. But telephone from Calcutta rang again advising me to return to Calcutta at the earliest. I returned from Dibrugarh to Calcutta after spending 10 days on impressionistic survey of gatherring information and having a feel of the district of Dibrurgarh. Within a few days of my return, the historic War of Independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan began.

Inflation-induced Prosperity:My Unfolding Voyage 52

2010-10-23T05:21:00.000-07:00

What if one gets Rs. 815 for one's service contracted for Rs 754? This is exactly what happened when I received the first full month salary credit to my bank account on the last day of January 1971 at the United Bank of India, the one that was nationalized along with 13 others in July 1969. The reason for the increase was inflation: dearness allowance, a componet of the salary, was inflation -indexed and with a few points rise in the consumer price index, my compensation had increased. Since then I always wished inflation to continue and make me richer more frequently in a year. That was the first lesson that my voyage through working life unfolded. In just 72 months that I worked, thanks to high inflation (remember the first oilshock induced price rise in the early nineteen seventies) together with two promotions made be 100% richer - though in per capita terms ( a souse and two kids - counted as one), I was 33.4% poorer in those five years. Something else would come to protect me.

I had begaun the first few days in office wearing a newly stiched light blue stiped suit: the winter days passed off well before I could understand that a suit was not really necessary in the warm Kolkata weather despite the air-conditioning of the office in an organization manned dominantly by Bengali middle-class Bhadrolok ( gentlemen) many of whom still smarted white dhoti and punjabi. I adopted white shirts and black/ blue/ off-white trousers as the regular official dress. The headquarters of the United Bank of India was then located in a huge three-storied colonial type office building on the Clive Ghat Street a dew minutes walk from the Dalhousie Square, now called BBD Bagh (named after Binoy, Bdal and Dinesh - three freedom fighters of Bengal's armed revolutionary group who fought the British Rulers through sudden terrorist attacks on highly placed British civil servants), where the British fought the first war to set up its rule in India with Calcutta (or Kolkata) as the Capital of the British Empire, a status that Calcutta enjoyed untill 1911 when the British felt it prudent to shift the capital to Delhi as Bengal became too infested with armed struggle by freedom fighters. From my residence near Calcutta Airport, it used to take about 40-45 minutes by bus to reach Dalhousie Squate those days but soon the distance measured by travel time would progressively increase by 50% - 70%. That was the beginning of the seconf unfolging lesson: the distance between office and residence in metro-cities increases in terms of both travel time and/or travelling cost notwithstanding all the efforts of the city planners. A significant part of the unfolding working life would be taken up by the time spent on travel between home and office: a sheer wastage of productive man-hours of the nation and deterirating quality of life (leisure time and pleasure forgone).

I was recruited as an economist, though not designates as such, and deployed in the Department of Economic Studies, headed by Economist of the Bank, Mr. T. R. Shah, a B.Sc (Economics) from London, UK - the only Gujarati in a Bengali Executive Management. I was the sixth officer under the command of Mr.Shah in the Department dealing with what was soon to be called Management Information Services, besides Publicity, publication of an Economic Newsletter as also managing the Bank's Library. All the other officers were senior to me in age by 8-15 years: two were senior even in grade and only one junior in grade who was looking after mostly administrative jobs. All the colleagues were very affectionate to this young new entrant fresh from the University. Two of them held Masters degrees in Economics and had earlier worked as professors, one was a brilliant academic career ending with a Masters in Statistics and another a professional librarian. Soon however, Mr. Shah got a promotion and became an Assistannt General Manager (those days, the Chairmen of most commercial bank was assisted by a single General Manager, about 3 or 4 Deputy General Managers. Then there were a number of Assistant General Managers folloed by Staff officers in Grade I and Grade II and officers in Grades 1, 2 and 3. Most bank branch offices were headed by oficers in grade 2 and 3 (those days head of the branch offices were called Agents and his deputy as the Accountant who would report also directly to the Bank's Chief Accountant in the rank of Deputy General Manager. while only a few of the big branches were headed by officers in grade 1 or staff officer grade 2. But being in the Headquarter of the Bank, even an officer in Grade 2 was at that time a priviledged occupation. Mr. Shah became in charge of a new Department called the Planning and Development Department with four divions withing the Department: Research & Planning Division (RPD), Agricultural Finance Division, Small Scale Industries Finance Division and Branch Expansion Devision. RPD was nothing but the former Department of Economics with various sections like Statistics, Research & Planning, Library and Publicity and Public Relations. The functions of all these divisions and the sections within the divisions were evolving fast over time and there was close interaction among the sections and divisions under the Department headed by Mr.Shah. His department was the key change agent to transform the culture and operational focus of the Bank in accordance with the objectives of ban nationalization in India: promotion of hitherto unbanked economic activities of agriculture, small scale industries, tiny and cottage industries, small transport operators, artisans, etc.

There was an air of economic development orientation to the nationalized banks in almost every aspect of bank functiong from raising deposits, lending, investing, branch opening, human resource development. It was new challange with great thrill and entusiasm for being relevant to the society among the bank officers during that time: the number of new recruits - both officers and assistants jumped many fold every year. My Division, headed by an Assistant Economist (staff officer grade 2) saw the number of officers increase from 6 to 18 in less than two years with brilliant post graduates in Economics and Statistics- all in officer Gade 2 except one who joined in officer Grade1. Our work expanded dramatically. But all these enthusiam was for the new recruit officeers and stypists, stenographers and assistants. Bulk of the unionised assistants of both clerical and lower category were more concerned with their benefits and overtime pay rather than office productivity. One sector in India which the unionised employees enjoyed working with low productivity per manhour, no transfers and high and increasing compensation per employee was the banking sector, thanks to the leftist trade unionism. Bank customers suffered for long, since 1951 till about 2001. When I had joined the Bank, I was enthuasistic and felt that my intelligence and smartness was better than the attending assistants. Soon after I had joined the Bank in 1970, I was given the task to organise 15 0r 20 copies of a 6 page Note to be arranged in an hour's time or less. The Final version of the note was typed on cyclostyled paper and tewnty copies were taken (those days, we did not have PCs or computer printers). We had 15 minutes left to complete making sets and staple them and deliver. I started arranging them myself and complete the task because I though the step by step scientific approach to the same work by a Daftary and a Peon would take a longer time. The Daftary and the peopn watched me complete the task in my own short cut process. After the task was over, the elderly Daftary told me with lot of affection, " Mr. Sen, please do not do things this way again. Arranging sets and stapling are not the work of officers but ours." I replied to him that since this was a small scale task which I could complete more quickly than two of them following their normal peocess of using a wide long table, spreading out first the copies of different pages into different sets and then stapling them while I just divided the task between three of us as the Peon and myself making one set each and giving over to the Daftary for stapling. He said that was all fine. But the officers, as per the work allocation contract between the management and the employees union, could not involve themselves in any way in the task od arranging paper, making sets of notes and stappling them. I had violated the provisions of this understanding. And, if I and other officers did this again and again on the plea of urgency, there would be gfewer vacancies arising for employment of Daftaries and peons, besides cutting down the overtime pay for them. The incident helped me prepare for the unfolding voyage in dealing with office assistants, stenographers, peons and daftaries in the future years.

Exploring Phd Problem and Employment: My Unfolding Voyage 51

2010-03-11T02:13:00.000-08:00

I was in a hurry to complete identifying a topic for my dissertation and identifying a suitble job. But along with some exploration in films and a bit of romance. The Naxalite problem was growing, the two fronth governments with CPM's Jyoti Basu was creating further mess with their inexperence with administration. Imposition of President Rule in early 1970 and the attempt of Congress to come back to power could only further complicate the chaos in the State and saw the beginning of the fast deteriration of academic envirnment and academic life. At least for a potential new job seeker, academics had lost its charm if one could get an alternative employment. I wanted to complete the process of idntification of the Phd problem for dissertation at the earliest and get commercial job and continue my research outside the campus.

But I had also to satisfy my inquisitiveness about Cinema. I had gone to see films in theaters three or four times in my entire school life: one film was on ramayana in Hindi, Lalu Bhulu in Bengali and For Whom the Bell Tolls in English. During my college and University days, I had gone to see films for another four or five times. I wanted to know what is there in the films, what attract different people to see films and how can I learn anything from films. I had very little time to do that for I knew once I join a commercial firm or become a teacher, I would have little time for cinema. Like the way I read novels, detective books and short stories in the past through rapid reading techniques of my own (often I would read 6 to 7 short stories n a day or two big novels in a day: I would never read any story or novel spread over more than 36 hours), I planned for my seeing films. With about 15 days of general holidays and 104 Saturdays and Sundays, I had with me roughly 120 potential days of seeing films. Besides, I could arrange for another 10 days in a year from the week days. With an average 1.2 shows per day for 130 days, I could target seeing atleast 150 films in 1970 (on a number ofdays I saw two fils a day on two closeby theaters: an early morning or a matinee show followed by an evening or night show). I achieved my target. The cost of tickets, snacks and travelling would have amounted roughly to less than Rs 400 during the full year for 150 films.
I had ruled out seeing English films for I wanted know more about my country and countrymen and the behavior. I also wanted to see as many films as possible in Bengali starred by at least one of the following: actress Suchitra Sen or actor Uttam Kumar including those that were produced before I was born/ before 1970. I wanted to see as many films in Hindi as possible. I wanted to know especially if I could find any taste for the great fashion among intellectuals ot pseudo intellectuals in West Bengal of not going to Hindi films. Unfortunately, I did not find any reason to suspect that these Hindi films could anyway adversely the quality of whatever little intellect I possesed. I also wanted to know if there was somethinng great in the so-called intellectual / off-beat/ alternative / real-life films produced some of the renouned directors. Unfortunately, I found most of these films based on poor intellectual quality of the script writers, renouned directors and editors: these films were based more on imagination rather than reality as compared to the other entertainment films. I also wanted to practice seeing films in a manner that I can enjoy any film as I saw it in my own way rather than the way Director might have had planned: this was rather easy as it was possible give relief to my eyes in the dark hall for scenes that did not wish to enjoy at anytime and let others enjoy. I also wanted to ensure that films to do not keep me thinking about them once I am back home from the Cinema.

Going to all these films however did not always give enough enjoyment. Except for the old Suchitra-Uttam starrers or some 8/9 classics of Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and others: total 50 or so in number), I needed to get some company for seeing films. Of the rest, about 80% were Hindi films, both old and new releases and 20%Bengali films, I had company. I had roughly four catsgories of film-going company: one particular schoolmate who did not find another friend who would give him company, a group of 6-8 friends in the locality and members of our Kishore Sangha Club formed during our adoloscent period, my research student/ scholar friends and dadas, and finally a girl who seemed to be falling in love with me. Nobody knew about the affair with this girl till we agreed to end the five/ six month period affair when she disclosed that to a few common friends. Romance ended before it could blossom: she must have found my mind's addiction to freedom much stronger than my heart's ability to lose itself in the mysticism of love. The romanticism in me had to wait for it expressions in apprpriate environment later: but my mind had become still stonger than my weak heart.

Searching for job and Phd problem continued in the midst of Cinema and experiements in romance. The methodology of searching jobs was rather simple since I was interested in a job that is based in Kolkata. There weren't many such opportunities that were attractive enough. I did get offers in teaching in some colleges but ultimately declined them because of the distaste of the academic environment at that time. By simply writing to their chiefs, I lured an multinational chemical company and a foreign bank to give me a chance to get me interviewed though they were not looking for any person of my type at that time. They did not find me of any use. However I had interesting interviews as useful experience. In one of the interviews, I was asked a very innovative question " If there were two commodities milk and cigeratte, and smoking two cigarettes caused the same amount of negative satisfaction as would a cup of milk would give positive satisfaction, how would the map of indifference curves look like?" I still think about why micro-economics text books confine drawing indifference curves maps only in the positive quadrant on the graph paper. I also sat for an examinatuion in a small town in the adjacent state of Bihar and faced a drab selection interview in Delhi to get an otherwise attractive job in a public sector fertilizer company. But decided not to join because I had to go out of Kolkata if I had to serve that company. But I could suspect by that time that it was possible to get some interviewers get interested in you through the selection interviews without bluffing and with keen observation of what they are looking for as individuals or as a group. Interviewers are seldom a cohesive, integrated group and Chairman of the interviewer groups have different personalities. I would test my hypothesis in future again and again.

The search for Phd problem however demanded a different methodology. The objectives of and constraints to the choice as also as a broad criterion of choice should be clear to one's mind: the preferences and comfort of the guide who would approve, the time and energy you can spend in reading books and identifying a set of problems to choose from, one's owm capability to deal with the problem in terms using data collection, data processing, mathematical modelling, the ease with which the compulsory chapter on literature review can be completed, the interest that one has in believing that there was in fact this problem that gives you great satisfaction on solving it and the alternative ways of looking at the problem, and the time and effort you would like to spend in future to increase your capabilities in solving the problem that you happen to choose. For me it was clear that I could not afford to spend much time on searching problems and that I could not spend time on acquiring fresh mathematical and statistical tools beyond what I had come to acquire by then. I first read some Phd thesis of those who had completed their doctorate degrees in the past. I also read the phd dissertation based books like Choice of Techniques by Amartya Sen and the one by Sukhomoy Chakraboty. All these made me clear as to what kind and quality of Phd dissertation that I could draft with my own capabilities. I read paper in economic jounals - mostly the concluding sections to get clues to finding problems. I read many issues of Engineering economist to find if I could find something there. But there were so many topics and so many problems: it was difficult to assess the relative worth of all those problems for me to make a decision. I thought to myself what interest me: my mind told me any problem that has an application in real life to test. Two areas appeared to me as most interesting and possibly within my capabilities: one, Cost Benefit Analysis and second unemployment and economic growth in India. The problem was the first related to micro-economics and the second to macro-economics. I thought to myself: probably these could be combined in to a problem. But I had to test the preferences of my guide. He encouraged me to write small notes/ papers on what ever I would read and thought that I could handle. He suggested that I could try to get interested in the possibility of a cost benefit analysis of a likely petro-chemicals complex in Haldia in West Bengal. I did study sme material on this and wrote a note but did not consider it as satisfactorily meeting my criteria/ objectivers/ constraints of choosing a problem. I wrote notes on unemployment, on pollution and the like. My guide went through these notes and encouraged me to read more and write more. At some point, I decided that the time has come to discard many of the areas. I finally decided that I will work on Social Cost Benefit Analysis and how creation of employment could be a part of such analysis. I was not sure that I could develop this into a full dissertation over the years: nor was my guide appeared that optimistic. But he was reasonable and agreed to end the search further and told me to write out a the dissertation proposal that had to submitted to the Institute for registration as asertation candidate. This was in the last quarter of 1970.

Earlier in April/ May 1970, I had happen to be attracted by a small insertion in the job vacancies page of the English daily: the single column 6/7 line classified advertisement sought applications from postgraduate economists giving a post box number. Fie months later when I had nearly forgotten about having responded to that advertisement, I received a letter from a Calcutt-based nationalized bank advising me to appear for interview. There were five/ six gentlement sitting around a table opposite me to interview me. This session went for about half an hour. It seemed to me that the interviwers were impressed with the interactions with me and seemed not to have met such a candidate as I was for a long time. Towards the end, one of the persons (whom I later came to know was a Professor of Psychology) who asked me someting about econometrics and then something on small sample testing of hypothesis. All other interviewers seemed to be impressed by my answers but did not appear to understand what really the questions were or the appropriateness of the answers. One of my answers were evidently wrong on the choice of probability distribution. The Professor in response to my answer asked another question and then I corrected my answer to the previous question with a smile, as if nothing bad had happened.
Within 7 days I received the appointment letter. This was in late October/ early November, 1970: It was just around this time that my inquiry into wi films and my romantic experiement came to an end. I went and discussed the job offer with my Guide. In three days, we finalized the Phd dissertation proposal abstract and submitted my application for registration of Phd to the Institute. In another 15 days, I got the approval of my Guide and exercised the clause in terms of which I could work elsewhere while continuing my Phd dissertation work at the Institute. By December 1970, I was off the Institute's campus. All four problems: cinema, romance, searching for Phd problem and searching for employment ended nearly simulstaneously,
All four tasks were well done as they ended well along with the end of the year 1970.

Exploratory Research: My Unfolding Voyage 50

2010-03-09T02:18:00.000-08:00

The year 1970 proved to be the most diversified exploratory research activity in my life. I had to explore potential job opportunities and their attractiveness, the potential research topics for my Phd dissertation that would require approval of my Guide, explore potential romance opportunity in an academic environment, explore the fun that films, in particular Hindi films provided to the Indian masses, the potential of brilliant minds around to help one build some intellectual capabilities, and so on.
At the end, the year tuned out to be both eventful and successful.

We were four students in the Phd program: two were my former University classmates with quantative specialization ( both obtaied the Phds, joined as lecturers and became full professors in two universities in the State) and an electrical engineer from Jadavpur University with a few months industrial experience. It was great to have an electrical engineer as a co-reseacher in economics: are opportunity in those days. He was a Sen and I found out that his family origin could be traced back to a village in what is now known as Bangladesh, a village where my mother's family could be traced back. So, I started calling him Mama (maternal uncle), though he was of my age. My affection towards him spread over the campus: soon he would become popular as Mama among all students, officials and even researchers and Professors. We shared the same professor as our Phd guide, the then head of the Economic Research Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute. Mama was however required to take regular course in Economics along with first year M.Stat students. Mama was a very smart, intelligent, mathematics-strong and generous guy. He enjoyed gossip and intellectul debates. He did not continue with research for long. He was innovative: designed and built an electrical muri(puffed rice)-making machine and set up his own business within a few years. He probably did not like to be employed: he became an entrepreneur. After 1973-74, I met him once. In 2003, I searched his muri-factory out with a rough idea of its probable location with a radius of 2 kilometers and then taking clues about his residence met him, his wife and son (the latter two for the first time).

Four of us had to take courses in statistics (though three of us had already done such courses lready during our undergrdute and postgrduate economics programs, the Institute insisted we learn statistics again there: we hardly learnt anything new and passed the qualifiers). We also had lessons on Non-linear programming and advanced international economics. There was no problem in our fulfilling the course requirements in the first three semesters.

We were paid Rs. 250 a month as stipend. Research scholars used to get Rs 400 per month but apart from doing reserch, they had to take classes/ titorials for B.Stst students. Though we were not scholars as yet, we were enjoying the same library and office facilities as the research scholars. Some people at the Institute did not find the idea of the new breed of research students with no obligations. First, someone had objected to the monthly stipend of Rs 250 per month being high for people without any obligations to teach or work on projects. The professors who were instrumental in introducng the course however did not review their decision in this regard. Second, the Library Assistants raised objections. One day they stopped us from getting into the protected area of book-selves (only research scholars and teacher had access to these areas but students did not). The assistants pointed out that we were students while we said we were research students. On the same ground they reduced our entitlement to borrow books and periodicals both for overnight reference and longer period study. I wrote a letter to the Dean of Studies: all four of us signed. Our library facilities were restored, After these events, the people who did not like us, stopped doing mischief. And, we found a special treatment from the administrative and library staff.

Three of us were alloted a single oblong-shaped south-open room with three desks with drawers and six chairs for use. Mama shared a room elsewhere with research scholars. In our Economic Research Unit (ERU), Diponkar-da, Pradip-da (who stood first in the MA Economics examinations the year before I obtained my degree from the same University of Calcutta) and Nirmal-da (an M.Stat of two year vintage from the Institute) were the research scholars. They were kind of our guide to the Insitute environment as also close, affectionate elder brothers. They would spend lot of time with us. They would accompany us to wayside tea stalls/ restaurants for a drink or snacks. Often, we would all go for lunch to the Insitute's canteen (some kind of Cafetaria) which sold food at subsidised prices. Sometimes, we would roam about along the pathways inside the sprawling campus with lot of trees and plants, especially around the Director, Prof Mahalonobis's residence-cum-office. Occasionally, we would cross over to Institute's guest house and Hostel campus where Mama used to stay (students/ research scholars) could get virtually free accomodation: many of us with residence within the City or nearby suburbs, prefered to commute to the Institute. We were on the top floor of the main building (a new building came up a few years later where most of the departments shifted): we would sometimes go to the huge terrance to enjoy an overview of the surrounding area and the cool breeze. Besides, Mama and I used to waste lot of their time over cups of tea debating developments in the country and economic topics of common interest. The three research scholar 'dadas' had lot of hard work to do: take classes/ tutorials, work on research projects and work on their own Phd dissertations. Yet, they never showed any displeasure with our disturbancs and wasting their time.

They completed their Phd in due course. Pradip-da and Diponkar-da stayed back in the Institute as teachers and became full professors later: they retired recently. They had always been very affectionate to me. Padip-da would always show initial reluctance to open up into discussion but then slowly help me understand what he knew about a subject. Dipankor-da was our gateway to application of econometrics and to getting data punched for processing by the Institute's Honeywel computer where he had access to. Nirmal-da had leftist leanings: purchased and read Arrow's Social Choce and Individal Values before giftong the book to me with great affection. He would soon join the A. N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies in Patna, got interested in societal issues, moved to South and later to Pune toas Professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research by which time he became a specilist ecology / environment economist. I met him once in 2004-5 after we lost touch in the early 1970s. My contact with Pradip-da and Diponkar would remain strong until the early 1980 after which we would meet after intervals of several years.

At least once a month, Ramprasad-da, who stood second in the MA Examination with Pradip-da as the First and was then a Research Scholar at the Presidency College Research Centre, would visit us. He was a very well-read person already at that time. IU would look forward to his visits to listen to him and participate in the discussions he would have with all of us. He would tell us about his readings and assessment of the interesting controversies and debates among great economists (Schumpeter, Hicks, Joan Robinson, Keynes, Hayek, Kalechi, Kaldor, Hicks, Friedman, Samuelson, Solow, Sraffa, and the like), among school of economists ( Classical, Neo-classical, Kenesian, Post Keynesian, Austrian, New Classical, Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Chicago). He had picked up from close association of our Calcutta University and Prsidency College Professors many entertaining anecdotes about foreign economists as well as Indian economists like Amartya Sen, Sukhamoy Chakrabarty, Jagadish Bhagavatii and Mrinal Dutta Chowdhury, besides our own teachers like Satyendra Nath Sen, Bhabotosh Dutta, Amlan Dutta, Alok Ghosh, Rakhal Dutta, Tapas Majumder, Dipak Majumdar, Mihir Rakshit and others.
Not that I understood all that Rmprasad-da discussed: but I was amazed with his capability to acquire so much knowledge about various issues in economics and the profile of so many economists. His interest in subjects other than economics was also quite remarkable. These four 'dada' research scholars proved to be a great resource to me for my intellectul expanse and my own preparatory thoughts regarding my probable dissertation. I was indeed fortunate to have the association of these four young brilliant minds at this critical phase of diversified exploration along my unfolding voyage.

Fun-filled Research & Teaching: My Unfolding Voyage 49

2010-02-20T02:43:00.001-08:00

I went to meet and pay respect to my higher secondary school teacher in economics. He congratulated me for securing a Masters degree in Economics ad then sked if I would like to take a part-time evening lecturership immediately. Since I was still thinking about a research scholarship or a full-time commercial employment, I wasn't sure. Yet, I told him I am interested because his eyes told me to agree. He asked me to meet him at the school an hour before the school begins next morning.  I met him again and he took me a gentleman's residence nearby. The elderly gentleman talked to me for a few minutes, said he probably knew my father as one of first set of residenents in South Dum Dum. Then, he told me to collect my appointment letter from the evening college nearby next day. He was the secretary of the college and had earlier offered the job to my teacher who thought he would be proud to let me take up the assignment. I began teaching micro-economics and macro-economics to undergraduate commerce students thrice a week for a compensation of Rupees one hundred and fifty (roughly about Rs15 per hour). That was great money. A packet of 10 plain Wills Navy Cut Cigarettes cost 80 paise and a multi-purpose antisepeptic moisturizer cream called Boroline cost about 65 paise. A chicken curry dinner cost about Rs Two. Overnight I felt rich. I would soon become much richer.

Teaching was fun. Commerce students in an evening college were mostly those who worked as assistents in various firms during the day (and generally elder to me in age) or did not find a seat in the day college. The quality in general were poor, though a few were serious students. One of them still has contact with me. Teaching a gathering of 100 such students was both strenuous and fun. A half of the students di not ant the classes to be held after the roll-call attendance. A quarter of the students would be natural noise or disturbance creating elements while the class was in progress. Very few could recall what they had learnt about graphs they were taught in the high school. Understnding of logic was of the sports-fan variety or leftist political consciousness variety. most did not understand lecture delivered in English. Some were just simply naughty and aimed at upsetting the teachers. I had to learn teaching economics in Bengali along with drawing simple graphs. I had to learn binding them to logic to stop them from bringing to the class-room their storm-over-a-tea-cup ideological emotions. For the college's magazine I contributed an article on reasoing and logic for testing Truth including illustration of such axioms as ' thusand examoles do not prove a proposition, but a single counter-example can disprove a proposition' - a sentence I had picked up from my teacher at the university who later would become the Finance Minister of Wet Bengal.

Dealing with a class of 100 students, most of whom were not particularly interested in lectures or not equipped to study economics was rather tough task. I had to learn to walk up and down the aisles of the seating gallery to keep a close watch on various rows to prevent potential disturbing elements from attempting to create noise and at the same time write on the black board and explain. I had to learn throwing questions to carefully selected student at different corners to keep them attentive and busy before they could think of creating mischef. And, I had to cultivate some students - both elderly and young to be my fans(one of them, Ranjit, came again in contact with me in the next millenium). I set some ground rules: the entrance doors would be closed during the class, anyone not finding interest in my class could leave the classroom as soon as the attendance roll call was over and without noise, everyone attending the class will be vurnerable to face my questions on what I would say or write on the black board during the class and answer correctly to avoid my comments that would embarrassment for poor response. Things worked out perfectly after a few initiall class sessions. It was a great learning experience on controlling crowds, keeping audience captive and attentive, exchanging entertaining interactions and developing a friendly teacher-student relationship while ensuring that most students understand even partially what they were exposed to in a particular topic during the class (either one understood or chose not be in the class). A very fun-filled experience that I used to look forward to every evening that I went to that college.

But another fun-filled experience was awaiting me. I had applied for admission to the newly introduced research course leading to Phd of the Indian Statistical Institute. What attracted me is the program's requirement for three-semester course work in statistics, mathematics (mainly Real Analysis) and Advanced Economics topics wth qualifier exams. ad most importantly selection of the dissertation topic in the during the 19th to 24th month after which one could complete the dissertation without being in the campus and working elsewhere.  But to get into the program I had t cross the barrier of an objective type of selection test and a selection interview. I reckoned my chance to get selected as very high: the Institute would find it difficult to prefer some one else over me given my past record in course work and clearing examinations and given that not many who would apply would be as strong in mathematics and statistics. But i did not want to take the exam. without knowing what it was all about. I talked to Punuda, my cousin in the neighborhood who after his Masters in Physics had dome a Statistician's diploma course from the Institute (before getting his Phd and joining the Meterological Department of the Government of India). He explained to me that these were called aptitude and reasoning tests and generally very easy: he gave me some examples and told me not to worry.

But I thought I should another person whom I had developed acquaintance with about a year and half-go. He was a neighbour of one of the magic medical doctors I have had attention from. This doctor was my maternal uncle's sister in-law's son who remained bachelor throughout and was senior to me in age by at least 10 years. He used to visit us when my maternal uncle and aunt stayed with us at our residence for about four/ five months.  Around 75 at that time, my uncle had taken considerable interest in my health and food habits. Given my thin body and probably reluctance to do physical work, he suspected that I might have some terrble disease which was yet to surface. He requested this doctor, Jhanti-da, to have a thourough examination of my body and treat me. Jhantui-da told me to come to his residence near Girish Park on the Central or Chittarnjan Avenue one morning and he took me to the Medical Research Centre and Hospital in Chetla where he worked. It took several hours to go throup various examinations at the hospital. After a few days, he called me again to his residence. He gave me the reports and said there was no problem suggested by them. I cam back home and showed all reports and papers to my uncle. He was disappointed and sad that the examinations could not identify the terrible disease he suspected me to have been sufferring from. Jhinti-da on his next visit convinced my uncle that there was indeed no cause of worry and he prescribed me a tablet (called Penta-something) to be taken daily for three weeks and a squeezed lemon jouice drink in the morning daily again for three weeks. It worked miracle: I had no further attack of cough, cold and acute voice-eroding sore throat pain that I used to suffer from once every 45 days and had to take a penicillin shot from my family doctor to recover from each such attack. I became a fan of Jhanti-da. It was he who introduced me to Dipankar-da, his neighbour and another fan. Dipankar at that time had already obtained his Masters degree in Economics from the my University and after doing some special course in Statistics was a Research Scholar at the Indian Statistical Institute. We had met at Jhinti-da's place a couple of times.

So, I telephoned Dipankar-da, an inetersting person who demonstrated to me many things including the use of "C' inplace of "K" and use of "OO" instead of "U" in the surname. He told me to meet me at the Institute when I would come there to submit my application form for admission to the Research Course. When I met him he gave me a bok on Apptitude Tests that he borrowed from the Institute Library and advisde me to practice. I did not find the book very interesting and thought that these test were boring except for school students. Nevertheless, I practised for a few days and went for the exam. I did not think that I did good at the exam. ticking away boxes. But I got the letter from the Institute for the selection interview. I suspected the Institute was preparing to select me: they may not have got better research candiates. I went for the interview even more casually. It went for 15 to 20 minutes. I think the interviewrs were seeking justifications for their selecting me and I was the most reluctant. But they might have found to of my responses somehat interesting. A professor (whom I found a great, insightful teacher later on when I attended his classes) asked me as to why Arithmatic Mean was used so much in Statistics despite its limitations to which my reply was that this was because the concept was easy to understand fom childhood, easy to compute from collected data and highly amenable to mathematical operations in the statistics text book chapters following the chapter on central tendency from correlation and regression to probability and inference. He probably did not get the answer he ha expected but seemed to enjoy getting my answer. Another interviwere, one of my former teachers at the undergradte economics college, was interested in my interest in data collection from proper sources. When I said I did not know the current trends in India's industrial production growth rate, he asked me to guess. I guessed a range too broad 5%-8%. He smiled and asked me if I had gone to the Library, how quickly I could find out more precise estimate of the industrial production growth rate? I said look for the Chapter on Industry or latest five year plan in the latest edition of the textbook on Indian economics authored by another of my professors at the University. He did not get the answer he wished and desereved, but probably enjoyed my reluctnce to think hard. I got selected: they must have found me a bet worth taking.

The research course was rather light. Examinations went off fine except that I had very little interest in using the Facit machines (those days PCs were not there and electronic calculators had not yet become cheap enough) for hours to work out the practical statistical computation sums Professor Adikary wanted us to do. More time was spent on intellectual debates with reseacher friends at the Institute, reading books and journl in the Library on a random basis and based on them writing out small notes that could help identify potential research topics for my dissertation, ad consuting my Professor guide on the subject.

Bulk of the time however went for idle gossiping and brain storming tat were pure fu.

Beyond Masters:My Unfloding Voyage 48

2010-02-19T23:23:00.000-08:00

Towards the end of the Masters degree program, the youngest professor made it compulsory for some of us to present in a class seminar to be presided by him on an economics related issue of our own choice. One day, it was my turn and I had about seven days' notice to write out the paper and present. There was a requirement that one has to complete his presentation of paper in 30 minutes so that there could be a question and answer session. Those days we did not have in the Department the facility of slide presentation using projector, PC/ laptop or Microsoft Power Point: we had to learn these in the management development programs at employers' staff training colleges or Institutes of Management. Presentation was basically reading out from the manuscript of the paper one has prepared. I do not exactly remember the issue that I had dealt with in my paper. But I had carefully chosen a topic on which the probabilty of classmates asking a relevant question was very low (no one would take the risk of getting embarrased in the class by asking irrelevant or inadequately framed question on a subject on which one had not read adequately). The topic was related to Indian planning and efficiency of resource allocation, and was in a sense arguing for proper use of market mechanism. These topics were not taught in the class: planning models and techniques were taught, general equilibrium models were taught, growth and development economics were taught, failure of market mechanism was taught and social choice problems was taught. But failures of national economic planning was not taught in the classroom. India had by that time experienced nearly two decades of State-dictated economic planning: national economic had become an addiction for Indian economists. But there were literature available on indicative planning in France, failures of economic planning in India and other countries, and gross non-performance of public sector companies. There were some champions of free enterprise still left in India. They gave sppeches and wrote articles on the serious adverse effect of economic planning on allocation of resources, on inefficiency of public enterprises, on wastage of national resources by the State, on deletorious effect of high taxes on economic growth, social justice and entreprenerial innovation. The failure of agriculture and industry to grow adequately despite planning was so evident. We were in the midst of an industrial recession: growing unemployment and high inflation were two bu-bears of Indian economic performance. So, I had chosen these issues as the subject, write and rewriting the article in a manner that I could read out the article in 30 minutes, skipping certain portions of the article that I had marked to adhere to the time limit. I had been a natural fast reader and speaker. This would create problems for me later and I had to change. But at that time I had to use this natural property to my advantage: most of the class would have difficulty in following the meaning of English sentences spoken loudly at a fast pace that would make them appreciative of my ability but prevent questions from arising in their minds. I had also planned the questions that I would like a logical listner to ask. After I had presented my paper, no student asked any question as I had anticipated. So, the Professor asked two questions that I had planned for. I had ready answers and read out from the unread portions of my paper. I had deliberately skipped these small paragraphs in my article that were in the form of defence of propositions/ statements mentioned in the last sentence of the immediately precceding paragraphs. By skipping reading these paras (of two sentences or three), I had deliberately caused a few logical gaps that would invite the attention of a careful listner. As anticipated, my professor got trapped into those gaps and asked the logically relevant questions that I could easily plant in his mind through my presentation. The seminar came to an end with an appreciation from the professor. But in the process I had learned to use some tricks for future application.
But soon thereafter I had trouble in filling logical gaps. In the MA examination, while attempting one question in one of the mathematically oriented papers, I got stuck just about six steps to the end of the proof of a theorem. I was unable to recall the particular mathematical transformation that I needed to use to proceed the next step. A classmate sitting behind had observed my discomfort and inquired if I had a proble. I whispered to her that I was stuck with question number x. She whispered back requesting me turn back to have a look at her answer to the question in her answerscript that she had kept open. I thanked her but could not make use of her offer: I could not see from that distance, nor was I inclined to copy. I therefore tried alternative of my own. I wrote down the last step by leaving some space and then worked backwards to the previous step and then the previous one. But the sixth step from the bottom still failed my memory. I had to leave it at that hoping that the evalator of the answercript might miss the logical gap of a step in my answer.
The MA examinations got over rather smoothly. Though after the examination of the first paper I had run high fever and apprehended that I might have to dropout. Fortunately the next day there was no examination and I had recovered enough in 24 hours to be ready to go through the rest of the examination. Some of my clasmates however dropped out of the examinations for reasons of illness or insufficent preparation or apprehension of not being able to achieve targetted marks.

With the examinations over, there was lot of time for fun. Our local friends' club, Kishore Sangha (Adoloscence's Group) formed when we were in the sixth grade or so, now had young men as members. We had by then playing cricket, football or hockey and shifted to cards. We had stopped organising Saraswati worship and shifted to worshipping Goddess Kali. We started organizing Annual Cultural Functions with music, mostly vocal, performed by artistes - some would much later become famous singers in Kolkata, dance performance from young girls in the locality and drama performance by members of the club.
This year members wanted a upgrade their drama: they selected a suspense thriller. The problem with that selection was that we needed an actress as well. Those days it was difficult to get hold of a girl to act along with the boys. However, we managed to convince one girl who had shown a signs of seeking love with one of our members. This member was not an actor but like me would normally be present during the evening rehearsals. So, there was some scope for testing romance. We could convince one elderly person to give us two rroms lying vacant in the first floor of his two storied building for our use for rehearsals. The main actor was our director. He directed very little but also responsible for organising everything else for the performance on the stage. I acted as the prompter and found that I could exert influence on the way some of the actors and the actress would deliver their script.
But soon a problem would arise. The girl cam to me one afternoon and said in tearful eyes that she had been commanded to withdraw from the drama by his elder sister's husband. This person was the General Secretary of the bigger club of the local residents. We were also members of that general club and thought our exclusive club as an affiliate. I shared the sudden priblem with my friends and they agreed that as the General Secretary of our exclusibe club, it was my responsibility to find a solution. They were all agitated and felt that the general club was unfairly and unethically intruding in to our group activity. I had several rounds of discussions with the President of the general club , a medical doctor and the General Secretary. What I succeeded in getting from them is this: there was a general objection to boys and girls of the locality doing rehearsals without the supervision of seniors, the genral club felt organising annual cultural function by age-specfic exclusive clubs as a threat to the general club and they could not tolerate this. I explanied to them that while we could take care of the sentiments of the elderly citizens' objection to girls and boys participating in rehearsals, the general club cannot threaten freedom of the members to have exclusin\ve club's own activities. We requested the elder sister of the girl to be present during the rehearsals and went ahead with the program with adequate publicity among the residents of the locality to support and participate in our Annual function. We quietly met the local police station officers and requested their presence during our program. Everything went off well. My friend appreciated my role as their leader in overconing the crisis and I complimented for showing solidarity and extending support.The girl did show signs of getting interested in me. After sharing a few romantic glances and innocous conversations for a few days, I went away to from Kolkata for three weeks.
It was time to ponder over on what to do after getting the Master degree. I planned to keep open all available options: jobs- academic and non-academic, getting into research and doing Ph.d. I was sure that I would not be getting into teaching at the University striagt away even I had topped the examination results and I was also sure that there was no way the University could get me into a third position. I sent applications for jobs to a multinational company, a public sector bank, a public sector fertilizer company a foreign banl and some colleges for lecturership as also for admission to the Indian Statistical Institiute's program for Research Course leading to Ph.d. My elder brother also asked me if I would be interested in joing as an accounts officer in his company, though he advised that it would be better if I had pusued a Ph d program. I was not still sure what would be better.

Admissions to Different Environments: My Unfolding Voyage 47

2010-02-17T05:33:00.000-08:00

We get admitted to new environments. Some touch our environment. A few enter our environment and forge new environment.
My brother, Suku, passed the higher secondary examination when I got my Bachelor's degree. He did exceedingly well with distinction in all his science subjects including mathematics. He wanted to study engineering. I had filled in his application form for admission. He was selected for Architectural Engineering when the University announced the results. Strange things used to happen those days also: suspected case of cheating. I took my brother and visted the University office and said there is something wrong. My brother was definitely selected for Electronics and not Architecture. The official asked me how could I say that. I said that I had filled in his form and juust ticked only two streams that he would consider to study: first preference was electronics and second preference was Chemocal engineering. I did not tick any other preference. And Suku's score was among the best to be considered for electronics. There is some mistake somewhere. Those days the University officials were yet to become arrogant and had difficulty in ignoring logic. He called for the papers and was satisfied that what I had said was indeed true. But he appealed that we did not create further problem and offered Suku Electrical engineering as he had difficulty in putting his name in Electronics. I understood the problem: electronics had been recently introduced and there were limited seats while there was considerable demand from students to get into electronics by means fair or foul. Replacing Suku's name from electronics by some one else could be easily termed as a clerical mistake. We knew the possibility of such fraud. Honesty is not really the monopoly of educational institutions. We could have insisted on Electronics but thought that it might lead to delays and complications. So we agreed. Suku completed his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the same university.

Around the time Suku started going to engineering classes, one of my uncles visited us. He brought his maternal cousin to show what is Kolkata. She appeared a nice girl to talk and discuss economics She was from the Burdwan district and was studying undergraduate Economics Honors. bdgs Three of us made a single day trip in buses to various places and also saw a movie at a theatre. Since she was not used to riding buses, especially double-decked ones and smell that burning diesel creates, she started vomiting while on the bus and we had get out of the bus soon and walk a long stretch for her to become comfortable. Despite all this, the day did have a touch of romance. But she was also interested in getting my undergraduate class notes in economics. I gave them to her and she said she would return them by post in two months. During the next two months she would write mails to me and request more time for returning my class notes. Not that I needed these notes urgently, but I was not happy with the breach of conditions. I wrote a letter back to her expressing my unhappiness. She returned the notes soon. We had not met or exchanges letters since then. I wish I could have ended the borrower-lender relationship with a little more patience. In my unfolding voyage I had to soon become comfortable with treating my loans to others as a highly probable unintended gift: a few such loans indeed materialized into forced gifts. Much later I realized that possessions that I valued much did not remain so valuable when I lost them through loan that were not repaid or lost otherwise.

A year into the post-graduate studies, one of my uncles (father's cousin) and my elder brother, Mejda, would get married. As per the custom in the family, the bridegrooms need to use their sacred threads (nine threads of equal radius tied together with appropriate knots sworn as a garland - not around both sides of the neck and falling on the breast but worn around the left shoulder, touching the breast and then circling back under the right shoulder) when they perform the marriage ceremony rituals. These two gentlemen had missed their thread-wearing ceremony normally conducted before the age of fourteen and this ceremony involved shaving of the hair on the head. Now they were close to thirty and could not have gone to get married with shaven heads.So, the priests had a solution: everything would be done except shaving of the head in lieu of which a few haies would be cut by scissors and an additional monetary compensation was to be paid at the Alter of God and to be collected by the priest. I took advantage of this solution and joined my uncle and elder brother to secure the sacred thread for me. With the sacred thread ceremony, a man was said to have taken the second birth born. So, I became as senior as my elder brother and uncle who were 12 to 13 years older than me.
Both the marriages went of well with frequent interactions and feasts among families, relatives and friends amidst fun and festive mood with opportunities for coke-fizz like romantic moments for the young. The new brides had to find their own ways of getting into the strange environment after marriage. Both found a helpful friend in me, especially the new aunt who had to deal with a mother in-law with apparently harsh voice: my grand aunt was in reality so loving and affectionate to us.
My nephew, Joy, had in the meantime become a primary school student. We were spending lot of time enjoying his company. I would occasionally give him a cycle ride to school. Usually, he would go to school in a rickshaw. One day on his return from school he claimed that he had seen a 'twelve hand's' idol of Goddess Kali being worshiped in a pandal on the way. I told him that the maximum number of hands the Hindu Goddesses had so far been allowed is only 10 and he could not have seen a twelve-hand's idol of Goddess. But he insisted that he had seen that idol. He was right. In Bengali, height of an idol or length of a cloth was often measured by the length of a standard fore arm. So, an idol's height was measured sometimes by this measure: thus a twelve-hand's (Baro hath or Baro Hathi) idol meant an idol whose height is approximately equal to twelve times the length of a standard human fore arm. Joy in his childhood was a great pleasure to observe. Once when were in a restaurant he started shouting to the waiter: 'lickly, lickly'. We could realize later that he had just been in the process of picking up the English word 'quickly' at his school.
He was very fond of wearing the dress of military personel and would act as if he was in the battlefield engaging the enemy forces. He was very comfortable with people of varying ages and even strangers. He would soon have a beautiful sister, Munni, six years younger to him. Unlike Joy, Munni in her childhood was reserved and scarcely spared a smile for a stranger. She was very fond of her uncles and would seek the company of the uncles even when she was crying in pain or distress.
New admissions changed the environment without our knowledge.

Class of 66-68: My Unfolding Voyage 46

2010-02-05T04:02:00.000-08:00

It is over four decades that our Class at the Economics Department of the University of Calcutta completed, in three years, the two-years of Masters Degree studies. Thanks to the incompetent State government of non-Congress coalition of communists and new breakaway local Congress parties, the weak and incompetent University administration as well as the juvenile Bengali revolutionary disciples of Marx, strong in both muscle-power and translations of Lenin-Mao verbiage,to fight both the communists in state power, the feudalist-petty bourgeoisie elements, we had to allow for sporadic and violent campus disruptions and examination delays that took away 12 months. After forty years, revolution is nowhere in sight: many revolutionaries have managed to live under capitalism with whatever comforts that they could extract from the system. A few has shot into prominence now giving their expert opinion on the television based on their experience in revolutionary communist activity and in teaching as university professors. A few of them we meet during university reunions or elsewhere and they seem to be happy with their life-long achievements.
Those days the boys had different groups, so did the girls. Only a few students would be part of more than one group. There were hostel groups (those who lived in the students’ hostel at that time), college groups (those who studied in the same college at the undergraduate level), common room groups (those who spent lot of time together playing table tennis, carom or simply gossiping over cups of tea and snacks), political party groups (generally communist), train groups (students generally traveling back home in the same train/ bus), same-row group (students regularly occupying the same seats along particular rows in the class-room, study-together groups (generally studying together and mutually helping each other outside the class), and teacher-Fan groups (special relations with particular teachers). Except for political groups, most groups were unisex groups. There was no inter-group rivalry or animosity. While these groups provided some kind of identity, there were many students who did not form part of any group and yet very comfortable with members of many groups. I had many close friends across several groups like Presidency College group, Moulana Azad College group, Seating Row group, etc.
While a special friendship with a member from the opposite sex would have been a good experience, the girls in the class either did not find interest in me or I did not find them of my type. I had very little interaction with the girls and limited to a few who were smart enough to talk to. One girl however did create avoidable problem. She was trying to draw my attention and one day she asked me to write down some quote in her notebook meant for collections. Since I was poor at quoting from the scriptures or works of great authors, novelists, poets, philosophers or speeches of great politicians and the like, I considered it worthwhile to try quoting from my own thoughts. I penned down with care some thing like this: ‘Mind needs to take control of the petulant heart’. To my surprise I received a long letter at home within a few days from a girl who claimed to be student of the Masters program in Bengali literature. She referred to my quote in her friend’s notebook and said that it was self-contradictory and I must listen to the heart of her friend. I did not reply. I received a few more letters and remained silent. While some friends tried to find out if I would comment on what they have heard about the quotation incident involving me and the classmate, they would surmise from my behavior that nothing really had happened. The quote-collector classmate would try for a while to talk to me in this regard but I succeeded not providing her any chance. It was an interesting but unfortunate incident: the girl was bold enough to take the risk of seeking quotes from a stranger and not probably a good sport to accept unwelcome quotes.
Those days many boys and girls did not develop the capability of transacting as responsible adults with members of the opposite sex. But some were capable and smart in friendly, rational conversations. There was one such classmate with whom I had occasional, intelligent conversation outside the class. I last met her in the examination hall. But that is all that I had interacted with my classmates of the opposite sex. I had no interest in discussing about girls in the class with my groups. Except once did I remark about one, a married girl, that the University was getting short-changed as this girl was paying fees for one student but allowing another within her to take lessons in economics free of cost. More than forty-five years later during one of our class reunion meets, this classmate, a retired college professor, told my wife and me that she had been amused with my remark when she heard about it at that time from another fellow classmate in my group. Then there was another girl who one day looked back on her way from the campus to the bus stop to see me walking 30 feet behind her. She slowed down her pace, allowed me to go head of her and probably felt relieved that I was not following her. I get my bus first on my journey back home. We had both skipped classes early that day.
Classmates were generally enjoyable companions. We had lots of fun and debates. Discussions about teachers' class performance, leg-pulling , unresolved issues in the classroom and gossiping were common. With some lot of affection grew over the months. There were classmates from different groups who would request me for help either for my class notes or even visit me at home to understand certain theories or problems.

Sometimes we had to accept special requests from each other. One my classmates, a very close friend, suggested that I should teach an undergraduate student of Economics honors whom he happened to know. I was reluctant. I got about twelve rupees (about 1.4 US dollars at the official exchange rate at that time and equal to a month’s tuition fee I had to pay to the University for my masters program) per hour that I spent with my pupil. But I had to spend another 90 minutes to go to his residence and come back. I gave him about eight hours a month. He seemed to enjoy my teaching of microeconomics and statistics. His mother used to offer me wholesome milk-based sweets and drinks, probably to make me energetic enough to teach her son. After three-months I gave up this assignment. I never liked to be a teacher, though I enjoyed the communication while teaching.

In the second winter that we had spent together in the University, some classmates arranged a cricket match between select elevens of two successive batches. Our captain, a stylish batsman, happened to know about my cricket credentials because he was from the same suburban municipal area. He requested me to play. That was the last time I played cricket. I do not remember the result, the scores and individual performance. But I came in touch with one of the junior fellow student, a smart, handsome guy. A few years later we would be working for the same employer.

One of my classmates was from a family in the newspaper business. He would drive in his car to the campus and sometimes gave me a lift one-fourth of my journey back home - the small common stretch on his drive back home. Once I had suggested to him that his family group launched an economics-finance daily (there was only one such daily at that time in India) so that they could offer jobs of economics correspondent when we complete our degrees. He did not finally complete the requirements of the masters degree, but his group did launch a business daily five or six years later. But I did not have an opportunity to work for his paper. Much later the daily did publish some of my articles, interviews and letters to the editor.
A part of the hostel group did cause the class some embarrassment. The Economics Department's student's hostel was located in a residential area close to the Department campus, about three minutes walk. Some hostel residents were bold enough to create lot of noise at the hostel even past mid-night hours, besides causing eve-teasing and got into some kind of animosity with the youth in the locality. There were lot of complaints on the behavior of these rather adventurous students suddenly enjoying the freedom from their parents and their strict discipline requirements at homes in towns or villages far away from the city of Calcutta. However, the problems would ease soon: facing threat of disciplinary actions from the University and such news reaching their parents, these few students changed their behavior and concentrated back on studies as the examinations approached. Weaknesses in the witness and evidence that surfaced at the last minutes save the students from the likely punishment of being expelled. Now when some us recount those days fore decades later at our reunion meets, it appears that none has any regrets for what had happened.

Re-unions however these days do not attract many of the alumni. In the reunion organized by the Economics Department of the University of Calcutta (AACUED) around 100 alumni turn up. From our Class of about 100 hardly five to eight attend. With age and various official and family commitments, only a few really can derive pleasure from attending Annual reunions. It is a wonder how some less than a dozen of active office bearers and members of AACUED still find interest in organizing the re-unions every year. The same is true of the reunion of our Class of 66-68. About 10 years back the attendance was about 35 out of the original class strength of about 100 students (the enrolment to the class was 123 but at best 100 attended). In the past few years, the attendance has been shrinking: it has fallen from about 20 or so to about 10. In 2010, surprisingly about 25 of us met at the residence of one of the classmates. He is a deeply religious man and runs his own business. He arranged a wonderful, sumptuous lunch for us. At these reunions, we seem to be much closer friends now, than we were when we studied together for about 500 days of classes spread over three years at the University.

Some of the classmates are no more: we come to know that only now. Many are unable to attend the reunions. Some lived in foreign countries, some others settled outside Kolkata (some have settled down in other states). Some are afflicted with diseases requiring long treatment. Even among those who join had by-pass heart surgeries or similar medical attention. Most of us are now grand parents and suffer from various aging problems. Most of us have retired from active employment. About one third of the classmates served nationalized banks (the banks were nationalized in 1969 just as we obtained our degrees and they would get into a raid expansion mode soon creating job opportunities for us. Another one-third went into various government services from income-tax department to sales tax department to judicial, police and administrative services. About a fourth of our classmates went to high schools teach. Some went to undergraduate colleges and various universities to lecture. Some picked up Ph d degrees along the way. Some students dropped out and did not pursue to get the masters degree - some went straight to get into some jobs, some girls were happy getting married.We have a nice profile of attendees at the reunions - from retired vice chancellors of university and university/ college professors and principals, to retired senior bankers, school teachers and former secretaries to the state government, and retired inspector general of police, business person, renowned film director and homemakers who did not get trapped into employment. I wonder if any of us had any idea as to how life would unfold after we left the University? And, we discover what as a group we have been doing since we parted on completion of our degrees?

Learning Against Emerging Revolution: My Unfolding Voyage 45

2009-12-30T13:00:00.000-08:00

They thought revolution is just round the corner and they will lead them. The Communist Party of India (Marxists), first referred to as CPI(M) to distinguish it from the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI) and later coverted into CPM (with India gone), was formed in 1961, giving a special avenue of adventure for young college students in West Bengal. The dream of turning the Indian State into a Communist Command State to end the sufferings of all the poor and the weak was further blostered by the hands-down defeat of India in the short -duration Chinese aggression in 1962. Some of the brilliant students of Presidency College felt it more attractive to cultivate their aim of being in the forefront of the CPM-sponsored revolution to capture State power in (hopefully a separate, independent) West Bengal, if not India, rather than compete to beat others in the examinations for the University degree. They barely scrapped through and could not secure qualifying marks to get admission to the Presidency College for the Masters degree programme of the Calcutta University. They could have joined the University's own Departments, but they insisted that they continue with the Presidency College. So, they went into agitation of a nature that led to virtual stoppage of both academic and non-academic work in both the Presidency College and the University. They failed to realize their stated objectives and our Masters program classes started after a delay of two months. Unfortunately for the young aspiring revolutionary communist leaders, they could not realize their main objective of getting place of prominence in the youth or student wings of the CPM. We were forced to sacrifice our studies for two months .The youth leaders who with their poor academic credentials had served the party for over a decade were not going to let these upstart brilliant boys to snatch the leadership away. The upstart revolutionaries needed a new refuge. The became Naxalites or Naxals or part of Communist Patry (Marxist Leninist) or Communist Party Maoist. In these new parties they became the leaders as there were no existing leaders. We were destined for suffering more costs to be inflicted on us by the varying communists fighting among themselves to lead West Bengal's communist revolution that never took place.

Our classes started in November instead of July- August while the breeze of the impending revolution continuing to blow
To go from BA honors classes to MA classes is a great downward slide. You have about 100 classmates, most of whom were of average merit and just wanted to get a degree with above qualifying marks. The intellectual environment quality of the class was much poor as compared with the BA honors class.
There were of course brillant teachers who were brilliant students earlier. But they were catering to a different avearge standard of students and very few knew how to control and communicate in such a large class of 100 students. The exceptions were the teachers in the Specialisation classes. My specialisation of Econometrics & Mathematical Economics had a class of about a dozen of students: so the brilliant teachers could remain brilliant in the class as well.

In the Masters program we had eight papers each subdivided into two. The general papers were five. Classes for these had all the 100 or so students. Teachers for these classes were of broadly two types: (a) academically useless, uninteresting, unimpressive and pure time passing, and (b) impressive, useful and effective communicators and some even with a fair degree of control over the class. The first group of teachers were elderly, non-quantitative and had lost touch with what was happening in economics. Some of them made it plain that the students in the MA classes are expected to learn on their own. The teachers were only to give lectures on selected topics and was not responsible to cover all that is in the syllabus. They were responsible only for gining some references of books and articles in journakls which the students have to reade and gather knowledge on their own. One such teacher simply dictated notes from his own notebook for 40 minutes at a stretch: no question and no answer. Another discussed everything other than economics and ocassionally referred to some official reports like that of the Radcliffe Commission in the United Kingdom. A third teacher of this group looked at the roof and scribbled something in the black board while lecturing and did not appear to be aware of what he was teaching. A fourth spoke for all the 40-45 minutes giving an impression that he was explaining some deep scientific thought to himself rather than imparting any lessons to the students in the class.These four teachers covered nearly 5 half papers (like advanced micro-economics, money and banking, Indian economic problems and history of economic thought) of the 10 general half papers. Among the second group of teachers, one was a brillant mind and speaker. Though elderly, he taught something in every class with effective communication. He covered roughly two half papers: History of Economic Thought and Theories of Economic Development.
Then there were three relatively young teachers - all brilliant scholars who compleed their Masters about two to four years ahead of us. They were highly quantitative and appeared to be deepening their knowledge through teaching and preparaing for their forthcoming Ph.d poragms abroad. They were the most useful lot in terms effectiveness in helping students to acquire new knowledge. These three young teachers covered roughly 4 half papers (International Economics, Public Finance, Economic Growth Models and Planning Techniques) among themselves.
The youngest teacher, we were his first set of students at theMasters level, was the most enthusiastic, caring and hardworking teacher dedicated to ensuring that the students learn whatever he teaches. He took series of additional classes on Mathematics from Linear Algebra to Calculus, Calculus of Variations and Fixed Point theorems to prepare all the students who had no background in mathematics to follow his main classes on growth models, optimal savings, turnpike theorems, input-output systems, planning models and techniques, etc. He tried to change the way the students are taught in the Masters program and spent time to organise seminars every week where one of the students had to present a paper on some economics topic. I have not seen such an enthusiastic and competent teacher in my life, though I have been fortunate to get exposed to brilliant and competent teaching of many other competent teachers. However, he was mostly trying to spoon-feed the students and thereby discouraging brilliant students to excel in knowledge beyond what every student could acquire.

The six half-papers of specialisation were covered by eight or nine teachers, mostly from other campuses/ institutions like the Department of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, and the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (which at that time was located in the premises adjacent to the Kantakal premises of our Department of Economics of the University of Calcutta. Two teachers dealt with Mathematical Statistics from correlation, regression to probabilty distributions, analysis of variance to probality, testing of hypothesis and Inference). One teacher dealt with the Mathematics of Capital Theory including reswithing and Models of Sraffa. Another taught us Econometrics. Some teachers took a few special classes on econometrics and statistics. Still another covered Planning models, Linerar Programming and Non-linear Programming. Another teacher covered Leontief systems.

The teachers were unaffected by the emerging environment of communist revolution in West Bengal. Some agitations did take place in our campus but our Economics department premises on the northers outskirts of the city of Calcutta and away from the main University building in the heart of the city, remained congenial to learning. But everybody knew that all these bougeoise Economics learning would be of zero value during the Revolution and after the Communists capture the power. We were only concerned about the future use of all these that we were being taught. It was becoming increasingly clear that West Bengal or Calcutta may not provide a cogenial atmosphere for an academic career in the midst of fighting amongst the communist revolutionaries. The killings and murders were soon to start. In any case, if the Communist Revolution succeeds, all this knowledge of economics would be of any use to the country. My communist friends were convinced that economics that we had been learning is all unscientific, rotten garbage worthy of being drained out through the sewerage channels and had no relevance to a communist economy. Revolutionaries seemed to have the best idea of what scientific knowledge could be!

It wasn't Cricket: My Unfolding Voyage 44

2009-12-30T09:30:00.001-08:00

India and Pakistan have been great rivals in the game of cricket. But their cricketing spirit has been mostly limited to cricket only. Outside of cricket, the truncated and age-old Indian Nation and the spun-off, relatively young Pakiststani Nation seemed to be always engaged in non-competitive winning effort: they did not seem to enjoy open and fair competition -wins only counted - not the play. It did not matter if you had to depend on third country alms so long as you won and not lose.
In 1965, young Pakistan had assessed India as weaker, especially after India poor showing in the War of 1962 with China and had planned a grand plan of simultaneous border infiltration, inciting insurgency in Indian Kashmir and miltary aggression with India. Pakistan had been largely ruled by the military dictatorships that Pakistanis and the Americans continued to believe as democracy: the miltary junta had survived in Pakistan through a strategy of keeping the country in continuous trouble and revolving romancing bouts with the US and China. A great strategy for a small and young country In 1965, its military dictator thought of getting Kashmir into Pakistan's fold and teach India a military lesson through a military victory. International pressures abruptly ended the war when India was about the take over Pakistan's second largest city, Lahore and Pakistan had been counting days to surrender. Vanity prevented Pakistan to accept the international assessment that India was the victor in 1965. Yet, Pakistan's military dictatorship would never learn to play cricket as the Pakistani cricketers continued to do: cricket always meant competive performance - enjoying competition and rivalry: not winning by any means. In 1971, Pakistan got truncated by Indian Army, though as students we had lost a few days in anxiety in September 1965.
By January 1966, the final third year classes in the college were getting over. We were still a few days of winter left in Calcutta before Spring would set in. About 70 days were available before the university examinations would start. I had already prepared for the Economics Honors' four papers: only some polishing and final touches with the books and notes were needed. But I had to devote some time now to my mathematics (minor) paper with statics, dynamics and astrology. Dynamics with fine with applications of Calculus. Statics was drab for me except the concept of equilibrium and the ideas of torque, moment, force and etc had intuitive appeal. I was not going to be a mechanical or structural engineer and hence had only obtain some marks to pass the examination. Acceleration and relative motion were interesting for the economics student and hence a part of elementary dynamics was easy to handle. But astrology which would account for two-fifths of the third and final paper of Mathematics minor was an issue. Of the 40 marks, a single question involving dealing with a sphere diagram was the most confusing to me. I picked up a little of that but concentrated on chapters on twilight, Archimedes and the like. With ten days' of effort, I felt comfortable with the preparation. So, I thought of devoting some time for pleasure: practicing and playing in tournaments that would create some thrill and excitement. In any case, playing cricket is going to end soon as I get into Master program and then begin by career. So, preparing for the final BA examinations (Part II) combined nicely with enjoying cricket.

Unfortunately, the my cricket extended to late spring. And, I contracted chickenpox and had to be quarantined for three weeks. (Chickenpox or varicella, is a highly contagious and self-limited infection that most commonly affects children but also affects teenagers and even the aged, peak incident is generally during March to May in India. Lifelong immunity for chickenpox generally follows the disease -- over 90% of non immune individuals will develop chickenpox following exposure. It is communicable by both direct skin-to-skin contact and via respiratory droplets (coughing, sneezing) from the infected individual. While the average incubation period from viral exposure to onset of symptoms is 12-14 days and generally treated at home without medicine but full rest and controlled diet). Lost three weeks and was sad. But my preparation earlier had been sufficient enough to face the examinations within two weeks of the end of the quarantined period.

So, the Economics honors papers examinations went off without any problem or difficulty. The questions were rather easy and I had thought everyone would do well. I thought that I had done as good as I had done on an average in the Part I Economics Honors four papers. The fourth paper in Part II required us to write an essay on any of the four or five topics in the question paper. I chose Trade Cycle and wrote for nearly three hours a kind of a literature survey monograph on the subject: in the standard essay style, I had covered all aspects of trade cycle from the nature and incidence of such cycles and the earliest theories explaining the cycles including such crude ideas as Sun-spot theory, the periodicity, causes and socio-economic effects of cycles, the mathematical models like those of the Multiplier-accelerator model of Samuelson including the the range of values of parameters that could generate convergent and divergent cycles using difference equations and differential equations, the macro-economic policy to deal with trade cycles in a Keynesian economic framework, the counter-cyclical, stabilizing fiscal policies explained through a mathematical model, the counter-cyclical monetary policies and its limitations, and of course a short para of concluding remarks. I had thought it was a great display of whatever I had learned about trade cycles with mixture of both mathematical treatment and the standard economic logic. I had it was remarkable to cover all these aspects in less than three hours over so many pages. I had thanked the great speed of my handwriting keeping pace with my flowing mind.

There was a short relief for 10 days before the minor mathematics paper test was due. It also went off well. I tried to answer as many questions as possible, even if had not been able to work through each answer fully. The same old technique I had applied in Part I mathematics paper. This time also the technique paid rich dividend: I secured 67 out of 100 maximum marks despite the small allocation of time to study and practice sums in astrology, statics and dynamics.
With the examinations over, there was time to enjoy two more months of fun and frolic.

I had to walk around the busy roads for about two long hours before I could absorb the most unbelievable event in my unfolding voyage. I had gone to the college to look at the results. I stood second in the aggregate in Economics honors: the difference between us was about 20 marks, implying that he stayed where he was after Part I and I had to slip by nearly 40 marks. That was absolutely absurd. For a while, I though it was because of playing cricket that caused me to go out of commission for three weeks before the examinations. But, all sorts of analysis established clearly to me that it wasn't cricket. It wasn't cricket for many other classmates as well. Many of these bright students were disappointed and shifted to other universities to pursue their Masters. Some of my Economics honors classmates failed to clear their Mathematics minor - a few sought review and scraped through later.

I decided to stay on with the University of Calcutta. For me, playing cricket was more important than winning games. Yes, academics had lost its clean image in my vision. But I did not mind enjoying the game of learning economics from lectures of outstanding scholars while increasing the distance with them in terms intellectual interaction. I had known by then that I were in an unassailable position: it would be virtually impossible to get me out at low score and not to appreciate my accuracy in length amidst variation of my pace, flight and turns. I was firmly established on my path to acquire my Masters degree.

Sounds of Communication: My Unfolding Voyage 43

2009-12-29T09:57:00.000-08:00

Most Bengalis would write the spelling of the Bengali word for number One (1) as "a-k" pronounced as 'ache' but will actually say "ack" as one says 'pack' with silent 'p' or 'act' with silent 't'. Human beings seem to enjoy inconsistency and confusing variety while communicating. In the childhood days, when we were learning English at the primary school, some elder would jokingly ask if 'b-u-t' is 'baat' and 'c-u-t' is 'kaat', then what is 'p-u-t'? They expected us to reply close to 'paat' and not 'poot'. The Americans seem to pronounce the letter 'Z' close to 'Jee' or 'Gee' rather than close to 'jed' or 'razed' with 'ra' silent as they do in England or Pakistan or India or Poland. My Bengali daughter-in-law studied in London for sometime: she teaches my grand daughter 'Z' for 'Zeebra' and not something close to 'Jjebra'. My Mangalorean daughter-in-law pronounces the Bengali / Hindi word 'Bhooth" meaning ghost as 'Booth' as she is not aware that the Kannadi (her mother tongue) Alphabet does have the letter "Bha" (close to cursive 'w' with a waving hand on the right top and a dot below 'w' whereas 'ba' is written as plain cursive 'w'. My wife laughs at my Hindi pronunciation. I seldom pronounce Newark the way my son pronounces : I say something close to ' New Arc" while he sounds more close to 'Nooark'. Most people enjoy Buffet dinner along with little Miss Muffet sitting on a Tuffet but I do not enjoy whether the 't' in Buffet remains silent or not: some enjoy 'Booffe', some 'Baaffe' and others 'Baa-fet'. We soon learn to adjust to and enjoy sounding differences among us. It had taken me almost an year before I could understand what the Irish Father Principal in long, white robes used to express: what I used to hear the St. Mary's Principal say was a low decibel humming / buzzing sound that turned into English sentences with the passage of time.

It is occasionally that we land into problems or embarrassment, especially when you have little time to tune in the reception device to the transmitting device. It was early Autumn in 1965. I alighted from the bus as it slowed down at the crossing the Harrison Road (Mahatma Gandhi Road, after Rabindranath Tagore penned down his dream in which the Harrison Road moved like a snake, and after Tagore's death) and the College Street (the new name, I do not recollect). I crossed over to the western footpath of the College Street, entered the College and walked westwards along the pathway beside the big playground. I found a foreign gentleman slowly walking along the way. I was walking fast to reach the classroom in time. The gentleman asked about the location of the Department. I told him that I was a student of the same department and was going there and I would escort him to the particular professor of the department he had said he had to meet. As we were walking together we were having a conversation. I had difficulty in tuning to his accent, probably American. I had to repeatedly say 'beg your pardon' (something like 'come again, sorry' used nowadays) so that I could hear what he was saying at least twice. But I could not make out one particular question he had asked even after he repeated the same thrice. I did not know what to do but just said 'yes' on the assumption that the answer to his question could be either 'yes' or 'no'. He did not say anything thereafter except thanking me after I escorted him to his destination. Later that afternoon he would give a lecture to the faculty and students of the Economics Department of the Presidency College. I do not remember what he spoke about both because I might not have been sufficiently educated on the subject and my difficulty in tuning into his accent.

God is said to exist in everything despite differences in forms and shapes. God therefore must exist in sound despite the differences in the meaning of the sounds emanating from the transmitter and the capability of the receiver. The great diversity probably makes it virtally impoosible to get to God. My new colleague at my new employers' office in 1982 had once remarked and tried to convince me that I had lot of knowledge about 'cool'. It took me quite a while before I could understand that he had been referring to my previous employment with Coal India Ltd for five years. After the Tamils hit upon the idea of dropping the British name of the capital city of their state from Madras to Chennai and the Maharashtrian'ss changed over from the British Bombay to Indian Mumbai, the communist government repeated the revolution by dropping the British name Calcutta to rename West Bengal's capital city as 'Kolkata'. The Bengalis have a proud educated elite who dabble in languages and literature. Unlike Mumbai and Chennai - two names that were virtually unknown, Calcutta was popularly known as Kolkata since long among the Bengalis. The Bengalis would write Kolkata in Bengali, everyone would write Calcutta in English and the Hindi-speaking would refer to the same city as 'Call-kattaa'. So soon after Calcutta's English name was dropped and substituted by the Bengali name written in English letters as Kolkata, the airlines' flight-crew started calling the city as 'Call-Cata'. Once I had to suggest to one of the air-hostesses that in Bengali, Kolkata was pronounced as 'Coal -kaataa'. But they had their own non-Bengali accent habits not permitting them to pronounce Kolkata in the same manner as the Bengalis did. So the City has several names now: pronounced 'Callikaataa', 'CoalKaataa', Kolkata, Calcutta and 'Call-kattaa'. What's in a name: the City of remains where it was as Tagore after awaking from the dream had found: "Calikaataa Aaachhe Callikatataa -tei'. Nouns with differing pronunciations may not create much of a noise problem in the sound waves of communication.

But when verbs, adverbs and adjectives are also pronounced differently, the noise increases. The receiver may have problems in tuning in. Add to that the problem that the distance from the transmitter to the receptor may creates in the communication. In the undergraduate course, the number of students in minor subjects used to be about 100 against the strength of 10 -20 students in the class for honors (subject in which one would major). Mathematics was one my minor subjects: I needed to attend the classes to get the adequate percentage of attendance to be eligible to appear in the university examination and also to pick up knowledge in the classroom itself as I would not have time at home to allocate for studying minor subjects. For the second objective to be effectively served the sounds of communication had to be without disturbance or noise. But there were several reasons why this was not possible in the classes on Astronomy. There were about 100 students in a sprawling class room of the older variety; huge height and large windows that were kept open to allow air in along with all the sounds outside the classroom. Distance from the teacher was long. Second, the terms of astronomy are not very common except words like planets, stars, twlight, eclipse etc. The analytical tools are different from other branches of mathematics, so are the units of measurements. The major problem was one of dealing with location and movement and motion of planets in the n- dimensional space to be captured in the two dimensional sheet of paper in the books and note pads. Third, we had a brilliant young teacher to help us: he was very serious in teaching us. But the sound of communication was ineffective. I could not keep my receptive ears tuned to what he was trying to transmit verbally while drawing circular diagrams on the black board. What I would hear was a kind of low decibel humming sound with occasional emphasis on certain words pronounced to produce sound waves that my ears failed to attune to. The classroom's large open windows let more of external sounds in than allowing light to come: his skin color and the white chalk strokes were gobbled up by the black hole of the board.

Yet I had to attend his class to get my attendance percentage to the desired level. But one day, all of a sudden the entire classroom became silent midway through the class. I looked up to him and found that he along with all other students were looking at me. I stood up as he asked as to what I had been doing. He thought I was asleep in the class with my heads down. I told him the Truth: "Scribbling on my notebook, Sir". I did not know what he understood, nor did I understand what he said in response to my reply. He soon resumed his discourse. I had to learn astrology from the textbook on my own just because of the problematic sounds of communication.
Earlier, I had faced a somewhat similar situation. All of a sudden there was a pin-drop silence in the class and I had to stop gossiping in the low voice with my friend. Both of us looked up to the teacher. The teacher and the entire class of 100 odd students were looking at me. The teacher pointed at me and asked."What are you doing". I replied that I was sorry. He then briefly expressed his anger: he said that the classroom was not for gossiping and that if I had not found attending his class interesting enough, I should have left the class room. It was really very embarrassing. I immediately walked out of the classroom and did not cared to know what happened afterwards. That was the last time I had met my friend and other 100 studentas in the class.. The professor was teaching political science. My friend was my classmate in the school and was studying undergrad course in Manindra Chandra College, where my eldest sister had studied two decades before my friend took admission to that college. I had gone to meet my friend at his college. He said he had a class to attend and I agreed to accompany him in the class. The teacher started his lecture and the students in the back benches where we were sitting engaged themselves into activities other than listening to what the teacher was saying. My school friend and I had entered into a low-volume but intensive chatting session that had to end abruptly because the teacher had sharp eyes to spot us doing so. Thanks to the conducive environment that this Professor of Political Science had created through his lecture.

During my unfolding voyage in the future, I had to learn communication sound waves the hard way.

Taking Others by Surprise: My Unfolding Voyage 42.

2009-12-18T13:01:00.000-08:00

Matahari predicted correctly (or, Khokan was influence by rumours). I got the highest marks in Economics Honours Part I in the University - about 5% points ahead of my closest competitor. - a kind of unassialable position. We had undermined the strength of non-market competition: one could be pull down, if another could not be sufficiently pulled up. But that was later. I was a bit surprised with my results: I had secured more than 50% of the marks in the Languages and the strategy of not wasting time on English and Bengali paid off handsomely. But a greater surprise was the Mathematics score. The question paper was quite tough - this happens once in a while in the University Examinations. I had prepared only to the extent of getting 80 marks out of 200. I even did not know which paper of Mathematics had Calculus and wich had Algebra until the examination began. There was considerable murmur during the three hour period for each of two mathematics papers we were writing on the same day. I could turn my head around and see the examinnees looking deeply depressed. Many of them were frustrated in not being able to answer most of the questions and deposited their answer scripts in a hurry accepting their fate that they would fail in Mathematics.. But working on the clue that I had picked up during the final year at the Higher Secondary School, I adopted the strategy of answerin each and every question in the question paper although the requirenent was to answer only a sub-set appropriately chosen out of the possible alternative questions. I had to collect addition answer script paper to complete my endeavour. Only a few questions I could do correctly. I calculated fast and found that would bring me about 25 marks in each paper, while I needed at least 34 for in each to pass. My unswer script was full of solutions to each question in the question paper: mostly done a few steps and then given up stage: some may have been half done. When I had come out of the examination hall, all my friends inquired as to how I could do such a remarkable job of answering the mathmatics questions using sheets after sheets. They had been surprised that I had picked up Mathematics to such an extent that I could answer as many questions correctly. Little did they know as to what I was doing: I had been just making an attempt to do as many sums as possible even if could barely come to the final, correct solution to most of the questions. I told them theat they need not worry: I would definitely get 60 marks out of 200 and hoped that some how another 8 marks would come. After the examination, I tried a number of times to check how much maximum I could get based on whatever questions I had done correctly and fully.: the best estimate was 67.5 against my requirement of 68. I kept my fingers crossed. While many of my classmates had failed, I got 96 out of 200.: I presume that the evaluators fund it hard not to give some marks for the many half-done sums because at the University level often the mathematics teachers did not go merely by whether the last line in the answer tallied with the correct answer but on the correctness of each steps. Some steps to earn some scores!. The third paper in Mathematics due in Part II would bring me even greater surprise.

Surprised as they were with my Economics Honors unassailable marks, one of my teachers at the college mentioned that I was being invited to join the more prestigous Presidency College those days. I was reluctant at the beginning. But I was told to meet the Head of the Economics Department of Presidency College. I met him and suggested that I join his college and admitted that it had been a mistake that I had not joined the college two years back. Meanwhile, Dhiresh Babu and Prabudha Babu had gone on sabatical. I talked to Tihunagshu Babu and he had told me that I must make my own choice. My classmates informed me that with two outstanding teachers now not available, it might be worthwhile shifting to the Presidency College which had at that time assembled some of the brilliant scholars and teachers. I was in a dilemma and went to meet the Principal thinking that he would suggest me not to shift college. The Pricipal surprised me: he said that I must shift to Presidency College without delay. When my existing college did not show the warmth I though I would get, I thought myself: "Fine, Basu, let's experiement with another set of smart and brilliant people."

The Presidency College had in that year a number of brilliant economics mindd: Tapas Mazumder, Amiya Bagchi, Dipak Benerjee, Mihir Rakshit, Nabendu Sen, Ajit Sengupta and Sanjit Basu. The students were on an average appeared smarter. Why not enjoy the company of the brilliant people for a while? After all, based on my answer script and results, the teachers here had considered me to be recognised as potentially brilliant and sincerely wanted them to benefit from their teaching. They were wrong in their assessment again. They had gone by micro-economics and statistics papers' answer scripts that reflected more of Prof Prabudhha Nath Roy's masterly teaching that I could absorb and my presentation skills in knitting different pieces of learning of mathematics and economic logic together rather than my brillance or scholastic quest for economic ideas in their various intelectual ramifications. I was not brilliant and studious enogh to enjoy the lectures of most brillian scholars at the Prsidency College: I chose to pick up interesting insightful points that they would make on the Indian economy or macro-economic systems and controveries like those of over Say's Law. Don Patinkin's foumulation of Liquidity Preferece and the like. teachings. Dr. Tapas Mazumder taught very little during lecture of 40 minutes, but what he taught was so clear, concise and logically presented. I liked his lectures very much, especially those on Hecksher-Ohlin theorem. Prof Dipak Banerjee with his pleasant style attracted attention and brilliantly played on the Keynesian multiplier models. Prof Sengupta's coverage of Kindelberger's International economics, especially the mathematics of the effect of depreciation of currency on international trade was studentl-friendly. Other teachers appeared to be deeply engossed and immersed in the topis they dealt with in their and not that particular about their communication being received by the students in the manner they or the students would have wished. One of the girl students was inquisitive about the notes I had been taking during the lectures. She mustered courage enough to get herself and her friend introduced and borrowed my classnote book for a day. She returned the next day without comments seemingly happy that I was no better than her in taking notes in the classes of most of the teachers.

I knew what Ihad to do.: treat the class lectures as supplementary knowledge and concentrate on teaching myself with a kind of DNA scanning of the books. For the paper on macro-economic my primary teachers were Ackley, McDougal and Dernberg, Patinkin (selected Chapters), RGD Allen (Mathematical Economics) and some other referred books. In the second paper on Public Finance and Internationa Economic, the primary and very helpful teachers were Musgrave and Kindleberger. These authors had kind of mesmirsed me into learning. The third paper was on Indian Economic Problems: there were the usual text books authored by Alok Ghosh, Dutt & Sunderam, Bhabotosh Datta, besides referred articles and class notes of Prof. Bagchi and Prof Nabendu Sen. I prepared for any kind of questions that could come up in the examinations. The fourth paper was writing an essay on just a single topic in economics. Writing out an essay over a three yaer period would be simple if the idea was to test the depth and width of my knowledge in economics studied upto to undergraduate level. Only risk was that the evaluator of the essay may not like Mathematical economics and may look for a summary opinion in good English language rather that extent of knowledge and application of analytical tools.. But that risk I had no way of mitigating as I had no urge to limit expressing what I had picked up in the classrooms and the text books. But how would it matter: I am already getting slowly disenchanted with acdemics as a career.

Spiritual Pastime: My Unfolding Voyage 41

2009-12-16T12:48:00.000-08:00

The idea of spirits- both good and evil, made an early introduction.to me in the childhood days. Besides, there was the stories of Aladin and his lamp, the ghosht in the bottle and the like. In the secondary school, for four years, the classes started with a prayer to God and his son and the holy ghosh / sprit. But as we grew up, these faded away. It had become clear spritualism was for certain aged people trying to establish contact with God to ensure that thier spirit get properly taken care off after their physical death.
But enjoying the freedom of spirit was becoming a new pastime for us during the college days.

Since most weekdays we came back home from college too late to play soccer or hockey during summer and volleball or cricket during winter (we did not have flood lights in playgrounds those days, except for badminton games at certain places), an hours or so around sunset would go roaming and gossiping and sometimes sitting in the grass in the sprwaling soccer grond ad singing Rabindra Sageet. Two or three of us in the group could sing and others were happy listening. The songs were mostly love or God worship related. We probably understood very little of the real meaning of the lyrics of the devitioal or prayer songs. But the tune was attractive enough. We would sing loud enough and our spirits woulf fly in freedom danching in the soundwaves that we created. Bubul was one of the singers (he is no more). He used to sing a few songs like (Kante Aamaar Soor Ke deelo, deelo bhoolaaye', 'Hey, Nabeenaa '). Our favorite songs were 'Aalo Aammar Aalo Ogo', 'A e Aakashe Aamaar Mooktee'. Sometimes we used to sing in chorus. Occasionally, some one who could sing a Hindi film songs of Md.Raffi or Hemant Kumar would join us. The music would enthrall our spirits.

Such spiritual boost also occurred when we arranged picnics at farmhouses on the highway or group wholeday trips to temples. Our picnics were dry of course: nice late breakfast with eggs, samosas and loaves of bread followed by good tasty lunch with fish, vegetable curry and mutton curry with sweets and otrher dishes. Of couse there was an evening snacks before we were on our way back home, but no liquid spirits yet.
Once we went to Dakshineswar in a group, submitted our offerings and prayers to Goddess Kali at Dwakhineswar temple, roamed around the trees under which Sri Ramakrishna would have spend days on meditation, hired a small boat to ferry us across the Ganges (Hooghly) River to Belur Math and Temple of the Sri Ramakrishna Mission set up by Swami Vivekananda. Spirit-enchanting trips soon would lead us to organize annual Kali Puja under the banner of our school-day club Kishore Sangha. As usual I would be the Genral Secretary doing nothing except conducting meetings, typin out the official letters and notices and signing them and the control the bank account. The Treasuer, the Puja Secretary and the Cultural Secretary would do all the legowrk along with their respective member. On the Kali Puja night we would all be awake through out as the priest would conduct the worship ritual proceedings and some of the mebers would offer their blood at the alter of the Goddess.

Spiritualism had to be backed by readings as well. I read through two volumes of Bharater Sadhaks (Great Saints of India) narrating the life of about two - three dozen of saintly sadhaks (who follow a particular Sadhana, or a way of life designed to realize the goal of one's ultimate ideal, whether it is merging with God or Brahman or realization of one's personal deity: as long as one has yet to reach the goal, they are a Sadhaka, while one who has reached the goal is called a Siddha Sadhaka). These saints were from various traditions or schools from Hindu Vashnavites (worshippers of Vishnu or his associated avatars, principally Rama and Krishna, as the original and supreme God, addressed Narayana, Krishna, Basudeba or more often "Vishnu": the worship of Vishnu echoes monotheism in its devotion, but, as still under the pantheistic umbrella of Hinduism, makes reference to other Hindu deities, such as that Shiva, as the greatest devotee of their god Vishnu. to Faqurs ( A Hindu or Muslim Sufi mendicant who does not preach any religion but is in love with God, especially one who performs feats of magic or endurance) and to Hindu Tantriks (followers of Tantra beliefs and practices based on the principle that the universe experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of Shakti, the divine energy of the Godhead that creates and maintains that universe and therefore seek to ritually appropriate and channel that energy, within the human microcosm, in creative and emancipatory ways so as to achieve liberation from ignorance and rebirth: this also influence Buddhist and Jains). All these saints appeared men of great powers acquired through devotion and yogic meditation. Their lives appeared mystical and novel but did not enthuse me to follow the methods they had practised to become such great men.

It was around this time we got exposed to more mystical experiments to deal with sprits. Khokan (Pinaki), then a first year Science undergraduate student and son of our tenant of a flat in our Gurudham residence ground floor, suggested that we try with Planchettee to interact with spirits. We came to know that it is not so easy to get spirits to come to visit us for a chat and sometimes some evil spirits could come unsolicited and create problems. There were lot of reasons to fear doing an exercisennnn with Planchettee (A small triangular board supported by two casters and a vertical pencil that, when lightly touched by the fingertips, is said to spell out subconscious or supernatural messages). We did not have such a board and so we had to use a variant. But after lot of discussions among us, Khokan, my younger brother Suku and I settled down on a summer afternoon in our second-floor prayer room, stting down on the three sides of our carrom board, with a carrom coin the middle and the Entire English Alphabet A to Z and numbers 0 to 9 written in ink on small square pieces of thick paper arranged nicely along the four bands of pairs of straight lines where the striker was usually placed for the fingers to thrust the striker to hit at the coins. An incense stick burnt to provide an aroma for the pleasure of the spirit. Three of us touched the edge of the coin at the center of the carrom board ai if our arms allowing the fingers to rest on the coin. silently kept on inviting the spirit that we had come to know would easily respond, the spirit of Matahari (or, Margaretha Geertruida "Grietje" Zelle, a Frisian (Dutch) exotic dancer and courtesan: during World War I, the Netherlands remained neutral. and as a Dutch subject, Matahari was able to travelled between France and the Netherlands via Spain and Britain. Once when interviewed by British intelligence officers, she admitted to working as an agent for French military intelligence, although the latter would not confirm her story. On 13 February, 1917 she was arrested in her room at the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Paris, accused of spying for Germany and consequently causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers, was found guilty on trial and executed by firing squad on 15 October, 1917, at the age of 41).

Within minutes she would arrive and after exchanging pleasantaries she would start answering questions. We would ask questions only about our future and she would give us her predictions by making the coin move towards different alphabets with our fingers still on the coin. We tried various combinations to test whether the the resultant force of three fingers moved the coin or the coin moved on its own. We could not establish that the movement of the coins was the result of one or more of our minds' desire to move the coin in front of specific alphabets in the sequence to form words of our choice. We even asked us to answer questions that we did not ask but was being asked by one of us who had left the room and went downstairs to write down his question while two others were engaged with the conversation of Matahari. Each time she had corrdtly told us the question that our third member away from the session wrote down in the first floor without our knowledge. And, she gave the answers. Whether the answers she gave proved correct or not would be known later. And I do not rember all the questions we had asked. All that I rembers is that the predictions of a very short-term nature (with a couple of days or so) turned out to be correct. Among the predictions she made for which we would have to wait for one to 18 months, two I could recall later: Khokan had asked both the questions. First was how would my Economics honors result be in Part I (results were due in less than fiur weeks' time) and the second was what would be my Economics honors result be in Part II. She gave her prediction for the first question promptly but when the second question was asked by Khokan she wavered and did not give us a firm answer. We had a few sessions with her, before our spirtual pastime of this nature ended.

Preparing from Motherland Security: My Unfloding Voyage 40

2009-12-15T13:11:00.000-08:00

Studying in the college took away an additional hour in the prime sports time on most days of the week. The regular soccer in the late afternoon had to be abandoned: games had progressively turned into a week-end and holiday affair.
Additional seven hours a week were being taken away preparing for Motherland security. The Chinese aggression in 1962 had humilated India, thanks to Nehru's leadership to promote Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai and peace diplomacy with Chairman Mao. In 1963, all first-year students were compulsorily required to join the National Cadet Corp (NCC) for para military/ self-defence training twice a week. For my classmates, the training ground was near the Fort William in the Maidans, about 30 minutes by bus in the early hours of the morning. I had to get up at 5 AM, get ready in full uniform with heavy-weight boots to reach the training ground by 6 AM. The training was for about 90 to 120 minutes. No food till I had come back home around 8-30 or 8-45 AM. Then have bath, quick lunch and go out aggain to reach college by 10-30AM. This two day training a week taught most of us very little, made us lose energy and time for nothing and did not enthuse us with patriotism. India had by that time completed more than a decade of national economic planning: but, the adminsistrative machinery was yet hopelessly inefficient and ineffective.

Some of us tried to avoid the training by taking advantage of exemptions granted but failed. I tried the excuse of being employed par-time in the morning. Nearly got a certificate to the effect from a factory employer, losing face to the elderly Gandian gentleman who had not expected youngmen to shirk the responsibility to get trained for emergency fighting to protect the motherland. But given the time consuming procedure gave up the effort and carry on the training. Some of us tried to help others. We went to a medical physicisn who would certify and recommed that my friend X's friend Y who had lived far away from us, had a very weak heath and chronic disease to permit him to withstand the NCC training. We visited a doctor in his clinic. He did not know us. We told him what was required. This doctor was interested in getting his fees (some Rs10 in 1963). Since Y was not with us, one of us had to impersonate as Y. The doctor asked for the full name of Y, the name of the college, Father's name and home address. Unfortunately the briefing was incomplete and by the time the doctor completed writing out the certificate, we knew thatr this certificate would be of no use as we had provided hypthetical name of the father and the hypothetical home address. We told the doctor we would come back in 30 minutes to collect the certificate as we have to arrange for the money for his fees. We did not ever come back to him.We could not go to reputed doctors who knew us for a false certificate either.

It was a funny experience but it was sad that we were trying to skip the NCC training: it is not that we disliked NCC training as such, but the scheme of training was administered in a manner that there was hardly any training and wastage of time. Except those whose NCC training ground were near their residence, others found it a useless burden. This compulsory NCC training Scheme was abandoned after a few years. But NCC training gave us an opportunity to see a rifle from close and hold rifles for a while. The usual parade and marching we knew from our primary school days. The mockery of training for us was over after about 60 / 70 days of training spread over 10 months with long holiday breaks in between.

In the Midst of the Brilliant: My Unfolding Voyage 39

2009-12-11T13:51:00.000-08:00

I had been lucky sometimes to run into groups of academically brilliant people: sometimes amazed by their depth of knowledge that I was unable to gouge, sometimes awed by their intensity of efforts to gather knowledge, sometimes wonder-struck by their ability to explain, sometimes surprised by their strong memory and their wide readings. True, I could not get the best out of my such association with brilliant minds. But among them the best I experienced were the brilliant teachers: some of them were equally brilliant scholars as well.In the economics honors class, we had three students who had done better than me in the higher secondary examination: two of them were among the top 10 in the humanities stream. Another had secured the first position in the equivalent Pre-University Examination. A couple of my classmates had come over from science stream to study economics. One had passed the equivalent Indian Schools Certificate Examination with high scores. There were others who were just about average like me. I was a bit surprised that most of the toppers at the higher secondary examination did not come to study economics as the major. About 60% of my classmates did not sudy matyhematics beyong class X at the higher secondar school.

The brilliant students did not appear to be that brilliant after all as we went in to study economics at the undergraduate level. Some of them were handicapped by their inadequacy in mathematics, some in English and some who had come from districts far away from Kolkata just got carried away by the freedom they enjoyed after they started living in hostels. But I was amazed by one of the toppers at the higher secondary examinations while discussing with him something about price theory. He referred to without looking at any book to a specific page number of the textbook and described how the diagram on the top of the page looked like. It seemed to me that he could while looking at me could still see the image of the particular page of the book. What a tremenodously strong camera-like memory!

The faculty in economics was probably the best in economics in terms of quality of teaching among all the colleges at that time in West Bengal. All theteachers had top class academic record in economics and the graduate and post-graduate levels. Of the 6 teachers ( Dhiresh Bhattacharyya, Tuhinagshu Bhattacharyya, Amalendu Babu, Prabudh Nath Roy, Nabendu Sen and Ajit Sengupta), two were Phds and one was completing his Phd. All of them were oustanding teachers and took special care to check if the students were able to absorb and learning. Within a month after the classes started, they took a number of smallclass tests to evaluate the impact of their teaching and also the relative absorption capacity of their pupils. On that basis they formed ghrups of two each with one strong and one not so strong student for collaborative study. Not that such collaboration helped much for all the students, but we knew where we stood in the evaluation of the teachers and our future potential. It restored self-confidence that I had lost by my relatively diasspointing success at the higher secondary examination.

How nicely the faculty had organised the instructions for different papers. Tuhinangshu Babu meticuously took us through the entire micro-economics, except welfare economics, in the traditional way through diagrams and charts. Prof Roy took us through the same micro economics including welfare economics using only mathematics parallely. It was getting the lerssons done twice for most of micro-economics. It was a treat to watch the professor explaning the use of calculus and theory of equations to classmates who did not have the required mathematical background. Prof Roy also taught us the entire paper on Statistics using two different books for theory and one book for solving problems. Prof Diresh Bhattacharyya, the Head of the Department of Economics covered Indian econmy and its problems. Prof Nabendu Sen also covered the Indian economic problems from a separete, independent perspective. The history of economic development of four countries were covered by three teachers. Amalendu Babu who dealth with the economic history of United Kingdom spent 50% of his classes on the Industrial Revolution itself: I culd visualize the pastures and the coal miners and the miners deplorable working conditions ( 12 years later I would be working as a the Corporate Planner in a huge coal company).

The three years of groundwork in elementary economics at the higher secondary school was now on a long-distance discovery flight operated by the expert scientific crew of brilliant teachers who assembled at the college for those two years, as if only for my benefit.

Two literatures Equal one Science: My Unfolding Voyage 38

2009-12-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

The Bengali educationists responsible for our undergraduate instruction had thought that if one were to study Bachelor of Science, one must learn at least three science subjects: the usual combinations were physics, chemistry and mathematics or Biology or something. Of the three subjects chosen, one could be a major one with eight papers while the other two would be minors of three papers each. They were not required to learn literature or language any longer now: either they had no use of literature or they are presumed to be adequately strong in literature. However, if one were to study Bachelor of Arts, one must get more exposure to English and Bengal literature. So, he may study one honors /major subject like Economics of 8 papers, a minor subject, say Mathematics, of 3 papers as well as English and Bengali literature. Probably, the educationist had reckoned that such students were weak in literature or needed literature exposure to understand their major or minor subjects like economics, mathematics, geography, history, political science, etc. Even if one is majoring in English or Bengali, you had still to take the common literature courses. But since one was studying English and Bengali literature, one would not need to study a third minor subject as the science students had to do. It was an equivalence of two literature with one science subject.

But if one was majoring in Economics as I had done, it was clear to me that I needed only to attend 70% of the literature classes and need not study these subjects exceot for two-three days before the examinations in these subjects began at the end of the two year. Actually if you are majoring in a subject, you had very little time to study any other thing, least literature. Moreover, it was easy to find out that. your knowledge of English and Bengali at the higher secondary level was adequate enough to score a pass in these literature examinations if you could study the books, preferably, made-easy kind of note books, for about 15 to 20 hours over a period of two days before you sit for the examinations. That is exactly the strategy I and many of classmates had followed. There were to be questions that would call for writing essays and dealing with history of Bengali literature which we had covered at the higher secondary level. And, we were successful with our strategy. I had secured more than 50% of the marks in the literature final examinations at the end of the second year

Mathematics as a minor however needed some attention. There were three papers of 100 marks each: one for Differential and Integral Calculus, the second for Algebgra ( vectors, matrices, theory of equations etc) and geometry. These two papers were to be cleared at the end of second year. The third paper covered statics, dynamics and astrology to be studied during and cleared at the end of the third year of the Bachelor of Arts program. Except for geometry that I did not enjoy much, the rest of the first two papers I had to learrn to some extent any way for my Economics major and future pursuit of Masters' program in Economics. But dealing with the 4 Economics major papers in the first two years was a real tough job, unless you had no other interest in life. So, time and effort on mathematics minor papers had to remain limited. This strategy however proved risky for some of my classmates who failed in this subject while scoring high in the Economics major and had to reappear for Mathematics examinations.

The four papers in Economics major to be completed during the first two years (called Part I BA) were both interesting and and wide ranging. One paper covered Markets, Price & Distribution Theory (,or microeconomics including welfare economis). another paper aws entirely statistics covering descriptive statistics starting from survey, compilation. tabulation, measures of central tendency, disperpersion and skewness, correlation, regression analysis of variance, index numbers, statistical distribution and , Chi-square and t-tests of hypothesis and probabilty. The third paper was on Indian economic development and Indian economy in all its aspects. The fourth paper was on history of economic development of four countries: USA, UK, USSR and Japan. History still did not quite leave me: but this was a different kind of history - a form of empirical economics and the dates and names of the kings/ wariers and statesment were not important..

Riding Naps: My Unfolding Voyage 37

2009-12-10T13:20:00.000-08:00

He will go out, start the engine and then come back to arrange things to be carried along: laptop, the lunch box, a bottle of health drink and the like. He will go back and forth a number of times to ensure that all that he wanted to carry are inside the vehicle. Then, he will finally go out, place these things on the seat adjacent, place himself on his seat, plug-in the belt and close the door. Now you have to wait for a while before you can see any movemennt. He will now check the controls, meditate for few seconds, use the reverse gear and step on the accelerator. He is readying to take-off.. His Mercedes rolls out of the house and on to the street, turns , straigtens and then slowly moves ahead to gather speed. He is on his way to the office . He will now drive for an hour at least and he will not fall asleep. When I sit beside him when he is driving us, I would tend to fall asleep if the car in on the highway for more than 15 minutes. He will stop me from taking that enjoyable nap by getting me into a convesrsation.. Nowadays, I sit in the back and my wife sits beside him so that he has difficulty in noticing and interfering with my nap. As a child, this person, my younger son used to fall asleep while in a bus or cab or car: now he cannot because he is always on the driver's seat.

Nap while on moving automobiles is one of the wondeful things I have enjoyed throughout my life, because, except for a brief period of about four years, and that too at sporadic intervals and for durations of maximum 20 minutes, there was someone else who would be driving the automobile. I have been moving in personal cars only during the last 20 years or so. Earleir, I had to travel by charterd busus or public buses, trains or trams or cabs for commuting to work place or travelling to anyway where else within the city of residence or nearby suburbs. I had always tried to take the opportunity of a refreshing nap. The seeds of this napping behavior started early when I started going to college. Those days it used to take about 35 minutes from my residence to the college gate during morning peak hours: five minutes on foot and waiting for the vehicle, 10 minutes on bus and 20 minutes on tram (now, it may take between 50 to 60 minutes because traffic has grown, passangers and pedesterians have exploded, road crossings have remained the same in number and the roads have failed to expand). I would get a comfortable seat at the tram terminus at Belgatchia for a 15 minute nap as the tram would go first to Shyambazar, then take the Cornawallis Street and College Street on its way to the Esplanade, on the north-east corner of the sprawling greenary of the Maidan Region. For three years I had to travel on this route for the colleges I had attented, but the rides were not as smmoth as it were in the beginning because of the explose growth of passangers and pedesterians. Still later for about seven long years, I had to experience the increasing agony of traveling to my first emplyer's office in the 1970s.

But going to college from home and coming back provided enjoyable napping rides in 1963. But studying in the college involved a bit of travelling within. The first year Bachelor of Arts class had about 80- 90 students. But only time they would sit together is when the classes were for English and Bengali, generally for about 10 /11 hours a week. But they were majoring in different subjects. For example I was major in Economics with another 10 / 11 students. We would have classes together for about 3 hours a day or about 18 hours a week. But all of us would not be having the same mionr. My minor was Mathematics : we were about 35 students in Mathematics attending together about 6 hours a week. So, unlike in the school we would be shifting from one class room to another, the class rooms spread of three floors. The classrooms, and the class hours had to be so assinged that no student had to be simultaneously present in two classrooms dealing with two different subjects of his choice. This assignment problem solution would necessarily result in some students having no classes during a particular hour of the day and some rooms remaining vacant. These off- the class periods were for gathering in student common room for plaing chess or table tennis or doing some roaming around. This also provided an incentive to skip classes: for example, if one had an off-period or two, followed by a minor or language/ literature class and then nothing else, one would think of leaving college as soon the off-perio starts. In any case for the students, the scores in the major (honours) subject was what counted for their future studies and employment: in the minor and language papers they had just to pass. But you could not afford to stay away from all classes for minor and language subjects as there was a minimum (possibly 70%) attendence requirement for each subject.
After 4 to 5 hours at the college, I would earn a justified nap returning home. An additional justification would specially arise for skipping language/ literature classes at least one day a week. My elder brother disliked my taking a nap while in the moving car. Do did my wife till reluctantly she had to tolerate this: and, she found a good way to voiding my soring: listening to Hindi flim songs and RabindraSangeet of her choice. But I always felt that if Napolean could take short naps of 10 minutes or so while riding on a horse, why not I give my mind unrestricted freedom while I am asleep on a moving car.

Grooming Up for Exapanding Boudaries: My Unfolding Voyage 36

2009-12-07T13:53:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite Tagore songs during the high secondary and college education days was: "Amar Mukti Alo-ye Alo-ye A-e Akhashe, Amar Mukti Dhula-ye Dhula-ye Ghas-e Ghas-e. Deho-moner Sudur Pare Hariye Pheli Apanare, Ganer Surey Amar Mukti Urdhe Bhase. Amar Mukti Sarbo Janer Moner Majhe, Dukhho Bipod Tuchha Kara Kathin Kaaje. Biswa Dhatar Jagna Shala Atmahomer Bahni Jawala, Jibon Jeno Dae Ahyuti Mukti Aashe." Translated into English: In the light filled sky above I find my liberation, I sense my liberation in the grass and dust filled on the surface below. I free myself floating high with the rythmic waves of my songs high beyond the reach of my body and mind where I get lost and bounded. I seeh liberation in the monds of the people at large and in difficult activities defying all disappointment and dangers. In the Creator's Dynamics of creative process, I sacrifice my ego in search of liberation.

I did not care to know from some one the meaning of the song and realise that I had perhaps been doing the opposite of what I was singing. But the lyrics, tune and the music created a great appeal of my heart. I was not looking for Salvation (Mukti), Nor were I aware of my body and mind constraining in any way my urge for freedom to express and explore. But the song (Ganer Surey) would tend to beckon freedom (Mukti) that the light ( Alo) spread all over the sky (Akash). Singing this song would indeed give a feeling of spreading the boundaries of freedom (Mukti) across the sky as well as the surface of the land filled with lush green grass (Ghas) and particles of dust. I was indeed looking forward to mixing with a larger section of the population of my age, but would not have thought of sacrificing my ego for salvation. I did not know that I was getting increasingly lost to the clutchesof my body and mind.

Going to college was to expand the limits of my horizon in some sense: it would limit however the application of my mind to a fewers subjects of study. The immediate priority was to get dressed up for the movement withing an expanding domain of operation. I needed to get over from shorts to full-length tousers on a regular basis. Shirts remained the same. But as a variation and acquiring an intellerctual flavour, I had to copy the Bengali intellectuals those days in general and the leftist intellectuals in particular used as their inform: Dhoti and Punjabi. Managing dhoti was clearly difficult: but I did not use the style my father adopted and adopted the style my elder brother, Mejda followed - it wasa a more robust to faster legwork actions. But dhoti-punjabi was not a regular attire. For the shrit and truser attire, a leather belt was felt to imaprt a degree os smartness but I disliked the use of belts. Innerware remained the same but at home along with the Pyajamas I started as my own style use of discarded sarees of sister-in law and mom worn in the style of lungis (rather a kind of two-layered lungis). One kad to become more careful about cleanliness and ironing of clothes.

Part of the clothes would go be collected by the washerman vendor for 3- 7 days service. Part of the clothes were as usual washed at home - by the maild or the sister-in law or Mom, who would wash them before noon usinng dtergent cakes ( poweders/ flakes were yet to become so popular and were expensive, sometimes a bit of starch (drained water from rice cooked in the portable oven fired by soft-coke, strips of wood and cow-dung cakes), robin blue ( available in packets that showed the picture of Robin bird and used generally for white clothes) and occasionally bleaching powder - especially when the clothes were boiled to gether in water before scrubbing and washing. Men folk had little use of fluffy bathroom towels: we continued to use Gamchaas to dry our body after bath, wash the Gamchhas ourselves daily. The washed clthes were hung up on platic coiled ropes fixed in to hooks on the terrance or the backyard garden for drying throughout the afternonn and then folded and placed on the Alnaas (colthe-shelve stand made out of wood but without covers). Ironing was done using iron heated up on the oven - soon however electric irons replaced the old irons. The Rarely we would give clothes for dry cleaning to laundry shops.
Groomig also needed shaving beards, to start with once in three days and the frequency increased with time. Elder borthers and Dad was skillful in useing the traditional rajors used by barbers - they used their own specific rajors. But I prefered to use the safety blades and saftey rajors made of stainless steel. The plastic rajors and cartdges or disposable rajors were yet to come into Indian market.

You needed something else as well. A good pen and a wrist watch. I had got a Parker pen from Mejda (but it was picked up from my pocket in a crowded bus soon. So, I had to be content with cheaper varities of pen. These were still ink pen, using ink manufactured by Sulekha works in Kolkata (their factory closed down later when the dot or ball-point jotter refil pens arrived and flodded the market). How nice it was sporting a brand new wrist watch presented by my elder brother Dada on my success at the higher secondary examination.and going to college with hankerchief and comb in the pocket with an ocassional puff at ITC's Wills Navy Cut plain (costing less than a Rupee for a packet of ten ( filters were yet to come).

Economics of Success: My Unfolding Voyage 35A

2009-11-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

I just left the main road: and began strolling along the lane within the neighbourhood.towards home. A neighbour was in his first floor balcony looking at the virtually empty lane that afternoon. He asked me, " Hi, Basu, have the school got the results of the last Higher Secondary Examination today?" I replied to him in the affirmative. He inquired, " So you have passed". I nodded again to indicate that I had passed. He further inquired, " You passed in the third division?" I knew that he had known me as a smart footballer and cricketer and would have expected that I could only be weak student as good players generally were. I did not want to disappoint him but I had to say, "No". He promptly commented, " So, you got Second Division!". I had to say again. "No.". He exclaimed, " That great. You passed in the First Divion". I nodded in the affirmative. He congratulated me on my success achieving a First Dision (Class) result.

I knew that he did not see in my face the glory of a good success and was wondering. I was returning from the school after getting to know the results and getting congratulatory remarks from many classmates and teachers. But deep inside I felt cheated for shortchange. I was unhappy with the marks that I had got. I thought my productivity had got a jolt. The time and effort that I had put in was disproportionately much higher than the results that I have got in retrun. It was certainly bad economics of the project of giving higher secondary examination: this was the first project with low expost return and,later I would experience similar bad economics projects again and again. I had no assessment of what I could have aspired for but what I had got could have been secured with much less effort. I had gone through the marksheet by then and found that the scores were no better than what I used to get in the school with much less effort and time. I knew that I am an instictive participant in any thing and now how to display my qualities through my actions, moves and expressions. So, I could not fathom how I had failed to entice and lure the unknown evalators of my answer scripts into giving me extra-ordinary marks. I would certainly get an understanding of this later. But this issue bothered me even as I had carried the message of my first class success at the Higher Secondary Examinations to my parents, siblings, everyone at home, the relatives and close neighbors and friends. There was thrill, excitement and happiness in the air.

But now I had to get busy in applying to various colleges for admission to the three-year University Bachelor of Arts examinations. I selected for colleges to try: the Presidency College (the most presitigious one), Moulana Azad College (which at that time had the best Economics Faculty), the Scotish Church College and the Belur Ramkrishna Mission College (fully residential). The last one was of course not my choice but my father felt that this college would be able to train me up properly as a human being. I picked up the forms from the Moulana Azad College and the Prsidency College and the Scotish Curch College and filed the forms in the first two colleges. The Presidency College however would not go by the marks we had scored in the Higher Secondary Examinations because it would admit some students who had passed the Indian Schools Certificate Examinations. So the College would take a test in English for screening: not clear as to why they did not think of taking a maths test as well since the College would not admit to Economics honors course any student without having passed in Mathematics at the schoo; leaving examination. I appeared for the examination that apeared to me as a simple affair. Dad took me to the Belur Ramkrishna Mission College. The Pricipal looked at the marksheet and said this was fine. Took an examination in English essay writing on the spot and after evalating gave me the form for admission. We went back home sayin that we should returnl soon with the monies required to get admitted along with all that I needed to stay in the college hostel. Meanwhile the Presidency College published the first list of students to be admitted which did not inclufe my name. But the first list issued by the Moulana Azad College included my name. Without dalay I took admission there and settled for the same as final.

The college would start in a few days. So, I decided to meet my school teachers. They were happy with my results but some of them felt that I could have done better. The Economics teacher met me separately. He said that he was happy also but felt that I have not been assessed properly. He also said that this was a matter of luck and depends on how the students in my school scored on an average and the evaluators general tendency of being cautious in avoiding too much dispersion in the marks alloted students coming from the same svchool. Besdies, unless one is from a school recognised for having outstanding students, the evalators could be conservative. This is what he called the school effect. Then he wanted to know what books I would like to have in the forthcoming prize distribution ceremony for having topped the list in the school. I told him that I will tell him after I find out from the College what books would be worth acquiring for a long-term student of Economics.

I have to get prepared for newer projects in the years to come and succeed irrespective of the economics of the costs and benefits.

Schoolboy Marathon - The Last Leg: My Unfolding Voyage 35

2009-11-25T12:50:00.000-08:00

The last leg in the Marathon race, participants run or walk the fastest. The time flies as did the ten weeks prior to and during the Higher Secondary Board Examination. It was three sessions of study of three hours each daily with an hour and a half play between the morning and afternoon sessions and afternoon and evening sessions and six and half hours of sleep at night. The study sessions were tightly scheduled with morning and evening ones staffed with alternative subjects and the afternoon sessions of mock examinations with model question sets. The first 30 days were for going through the entire syllabus of the five subjects (English, Bengali, History, Economics and Mathematics). The next 20 days were for 4 days each for each subject and the finally 10 days allocated to the same subjects @ of two days each in the reverse order of the subjects scheduled for examinations. Bengali was the first subject to appear for in the Examinations: so you studied Bengali for two days just before the examinations. Examination was over in 7 days with two days off in between and two papers of the subject tested for 3 hours each in two sessions with an hour's break for lunch.

Two days before the examinations started I took a bus that traveled for 15 minutes before I alighted, crossed over the road and walked for two minutes to reach the examination center. This trip was just a rehearsal so that I had no problem in reaching the examination center in time. During the lunch break father or brother of some students would come. One day, one such passerby stranger showed interest in the examination question paper. He quickly glanced through it and commented " very easy paper".

My cousin who had come to provide mental support to his younger brother and my classmate immediately quipped," Question papers appear easy to those who are not to appear for the examination". The passer-by quickly quit the place. We generally had a very light lunch at a restaurant nearby, had a last minute look at the relevant books and notes before entering the examination hall for the post lunch session.

The marathon of schooling had at last come to and. We became free for a few months with nothing to worry and a new phase of life to look forward to. We have now to spend our time till the examination results would come out and get busy in getting admission to the university undergraduate course in an affiliated college. That is about another 7 weeks or so- plenty at disposal. Football and other games would get the highest allocation of time for about 4 hours a day in three sessions, one in the early morning, late morning and before dusk would set in. Evening roaming and loitering with friends would take another one and half hour. Two to three hours in the afternoon would go in reading story books, listening to radio, and things of that kind. Night sleep, bathing, breakfast, newspaper reading, lunch, evening snacks and dinner would consume another 10 hours. That would still leave 5 to 6 hours of surplus time available to something or the other: indoor chat/ games session, new hobbies, an occasional movie.

Fortunately, an uncle visited us at that time and proposed that I come with him to visit one of our relatives in Durgapore. I bought, for the first time, two full-length pants for me and some travel kits and went with him to Durgapore by train. He stayed there for a day or two and then proceeded to his base in Burnpur (about 3 or 4 hours journey by bus from Durgapore). I stayed with my cousin who lived there with her husband, two daughters (slightly younger to me), her son and my elderly aunt. Though I had been missing Mom being away from home and her, I did enjoy fun, frolik and food and special attention of my aunt who loved me much and my cousin. The neices had their annual cultral show programme at the school during my saty there. The invited me to the show. Bein an uncle of two participating girls, I got direct entry behind the stage in the green room, till a lady teacher questioned my prsesnce along with the girls. I had to quietly slip out into the balcony seats to witness the show from the front. I had very good time there for two weeks' gossiping and playing with the neices before returning back to Kolkata on a Saturday afternoon that witnessed a terrible gale resulting in trains running behind schedule. For quite some time, I thought traveling on a Saturday was not good.

Playing tricks was under exploration during the last days of the long holidays.. My cousin and classmate used to buy butter from a particular shop while shopping for groceries items he was entrusted to purchase by his mother. On these purchases he had been managing to have some few coins a discounts from the shop keeper who had a small horse-shoe shaped magnet that he used to test if the the high value coins (like a quarter or a Rupee) were genuine of spurious becuase the genuine ones would have metals that would be easily pulled in by the magnet, while the spurios ones would not stick to the horse shoe. A number of times, some of us accompanied my cousin on his shopping rounds. The discounts that he would obtain while shopping were his own earninh. He uwould occasionally buy us some cookies to eat with his shopping earnings. That was a common practice among friends to do. But he was also using his earnings to play the gambling wheel game peddeled by the roadside vendor. The gamble-vendor a wheel a person needed to turn with a push with the side of a finger. The light-weight weal would rotate with its marker facing a circular dial pad marked with 1 to 24 along the circumference. When the wheel would stop its roation, the marker would be close to or on the numbers marked on the circumference of the dial. The player would pay an entry fee of a quarter of a rupee and get a chance to push the wheel to riotate with the push of a finger. If the marker happened to face certain pre-specified numbers on the dial when the wheel comes to stand still, the player wins a prize.: if the marker happens not to face any of those pre-specified lucky number, they player gets nothing.The value of these prizes in the form of a pencil or a pen or an untensil or a framed picture, varried from less than a quarter of a rupee to about two rupees. My cousin had been trying his luck rotating the marker-wheel made of steel but in most occasions he had got no prizes or at best win something that was worth less than the quarter of a rupee that he had pay for each try. He shared a plan with us to win the highest prize by making the wheel stop its rotation when the market just faces the specified number for that highest prize. Three of us knew what exactly we had to do. We were to cazole the marker to to come to the specified number as the wheel starts losing its strength for roational movement by shouting and directing with our fingers from a distance without touching the dial, the wheel or the marker. This particular evening, in the dimly lit street pavement, we kneeled down near the game vendor's wheel to [play.We tried but failed to achieve our objective and lost two quarters. This was part of our plan so that the game vendor did not suspect foul play. In the third atempt we succeeded in geting the wheel to stop when the marker stopped exactly facing the specified number for the highest value award. We rejoiced, just snatched the big prize on display and deserted the scene of the act. We would not know what the vendor or other spectators thought. But we knew that we could skillfully use the small u-shaped magneticdevice that we had borrowed for a few minutes from the butter-vendor's shop and kept it hidden with in one of our palms to control the final movement of the wheel and the marker so that it stops slowly but exactly where we intended it to stop. We did not try this again because we had no intention to cheat the vendor again and run the risk of getting caught. A winning end to the schoolboy marathon!

Mathematics of Love & Hate: My Unfolding Voyage 34

2009-11-24T13:49:00.001-08:00

My encounters with Mathematics has all through been a relationship of love and hate. It was similar to my relationship with football. Football was all excitement about dribbling past opponent defenders, accepting passes and forwarding passes to potential scorers in advantageous position, about kicking or placing the ball into the nets of the opposition and about snatching balls away from the feet of the opposition players. But it was equally painful that would make one hate football: the bruises from the falls, the gasping for breadth after repeated runs down the flanks or the middle, the pains from the pulled muscles, the loss of heart from missed scoring chances or waste of sitters. Mathematics was like that. You solve problems to score wins and get the scores in examinations, you enjoy the thrill of newer concepts and their applications, the speed with which one solves the problems: you love them. But there are those silly mistakes and the concepts that are dull and abstract and laborious to deal with. You hate them.
Simple or advanced mathematics had both. Continuous introduction to newer concepts that are exciting and the work that was boring.. Form the use of operators of + , - , x , divisions, the three brackets and of to the dull additions involving counting as if one were a calculating machine in the sales desk and the memorizing of tables, from application of unitary system and fractions and decimals to using non-decimal systems of measurements of values, weights, areas and volumes (the use of Milli, centi, deci, deca, heca, kilo for liters, meters, and 100 paise to a Rupee came only when we are midway in the secondary school but the measurement of time still remained in units of 60, 60, 24, 7, 364 and 365 while the angles are still measured in units of fraction of 360 degrees: I do not know why they never think of introducing decimal metric system of 100 seconds a minute, 100 minutes an hour, 20 hours a day by adjusting the downwards the time counted as second, 20 hours a day, 10, 35 days a month and 10 months a year with adjustments made every fifth year as a leap year. while making the circle made of 100 degrees making 25 degrees of a bigger size than now as right angle). Then there was interesting concepts of decimals but the recurring decimal was a sore, the LCM and GCF ere boring but useful to a certain extent, the concept of number line with zero in the middle was so simple but mind boggling. The application of interest and compound interest was interesting as was the profit-loss sharing on capital invested, but why ask so much of multiplication of compounding interest for 5 years with half-yearly rest involving boring multiplications and additions until you learn logarithms at the higher secondary stage. Geometry involved boring drawings of interesting regular shapes of curves and areas. But unnecessary exercises with equilateral triangles and right angled triangles, Solid geometry further complicated things with repeated use of pi and radius though measuring volumes was interesting but conic sections were best left to those design engineers who would use them.
Trigonometry was fascinating and made you dream that you could calculate the height of mountains you would never be able to climb to their peaks. Algebra became increasingly interesting removing the need for arithmetic, the interesting formula that need to memorized but can be derived from first principle even if one forgets them unlike the complicated trigonometry formula that would take more time to derive from first principles.

Surd's in algebra was fine up to a point, so was factorization. Permutations and combinations opened the gates to imagination as did the solving of simultaneous equations. Coordinate geometry opened up another vistas of imagination, though became complicate as you started learning about hyperbolas, their axes and asymptotes.

I loved something and enjoyed, for some things I had to labor hard and yet cannot master them developing hate. Yet, I needed to score. From class X onwards, I had to learn every part of mathematics myself from the books and the class hours of teachers' instruction at the school. Despite my weaknesses in a number of areas of mathematics, I could maintain high scores at the school. In Class XI, there were two papers in Mathematics : one completely dealing with Algebra while the other covered all sorts of metrics - coordinate geometry, solid geometry and trigonometry. The last examination that I had appeared for in the school on the first paper was an eye opener for me. There were no more classes after the examination. After enjoying few days of leisure and games, I went to the school one afternoon to know the scores of any of the papers that the teachers might have evaluated. A few papers have been evaluated and the teachers told me the scores I secured. The mathematics teacher who was to evaluate the paper on Algebra greeted me well and told me sit down beside him along with some other students because he would start evaluating our papers in front of us. He searched out my paper and started evaluation. I was getting all correct - no mistakes in the sums I had solved page after page. The teacher was as excited as I were. He raced down to the last page and was thrilled that I got all sums right. He was convinced that I got the full marks: 100 out of 100. Then he started adding up the numbers in case if I had missed doing any sum I was supposed to do as a cross check. He added up and we were proceeding towards 100 but at the end it totaled up to 114 or so!. The he started checking with the question paper to find out which sum I have done in excess because the question paper gave options at various places: so you could chose to do one particular sum as an alternative to another one. By cross checking he found that I had indeed done more sums than were required, but I had missed doing a sum - a small one carrying two marks given the choices I had made. So ultimately he gave me 98, the highest in that paper in the school, This incident had told me that keep attempting all the sums in examinations if you were fast enough: you might get the best of the marks out of the alternatives that you would attempt given that you might get a few some wrong somewhere. It was a lesson that I would apply in future. But for the present the teacher was extremely happy with my performance, notwithstanding missing 2 marks. But I was unhappy that yet another time I had missed the opportunity of a perfect score by not being careful about choices of questions and getting carried away by the sums that I could solve easily and not rechecking the answer script before submission if I had any omission.
Classes for higher secondary had got over and now we were to prepare over the next two months at home before we appear for the Final Higher Secondary Board Examinations. The School Principal met my father and advised hum to arrange for special coaching to guide me for the final examinations. My father asked what I would like him to do. I was not inclined to give time for coaching. So, I had to tell him that I would manage myself. He still insisted. Then we settled for mathematics coaching for an hour a day twice a week for the two months so that I can sort out some problems that I might have not been able to manage. I did not want my father to spend further money for my studies at this stage and wanted all that I succeed in scoring in the Final Examination as my own credit or debit.

I knew if I had a Guru it would have helped but I did not know who could have been an ideal guru/ teacher to coach me. I preferred to depend on my own efforts, capabilities and luck. But I knew that I had keeping weaknesses in my mathematics unattended to.

Mid-teen Exciting Gambles: My Unfolding Voyage 33

2009-11-14T04:57:00.001-08:00

Mid-teens’ Struggling Gambles

When my elder son was in class IX, he had asked me, “Dad, what do you like me to be?” I tried to guess the motive behind his question. I did not want to show preference for any particular future for my son: really I did not have any such preference: as a father, my only concern had always been that my sons lived a life that they could enjoy without worries and fear. I had replied to him, “Son, I would like your future to be one that makes you happy.” He had responded immediately, “Oh, no. Dad, I am trying to know whether you want me to be an engineer or medical doctor or an economist or business executive.” I had guessed it right: he had a problem of choice of future career. I had replied to him with utmost sincerity and honesty that I wanted him to develop capabilities and mental strength to remain happy under all circumstance irrespective of what career he would ultimately choose and land in. “Because, that is what my experience tells me. Any career that you may choose or land in future will be an experience of dealing with various positive and negative phases due to external environment not under your control. You must from now on develop the capability to remain happy irrespective of whatever happens. Build yourself for the best of career you may aspire for, give the best try that is possible but also be simultaneously prepared to face a future that you would have wished to avoid. The key to all this is developing an attitude of remaining happy irrespective of whatever circumstances that you may face in future. But, coming to the immediate concern you have, I advise you to keep your options open till you get into class XII. For the present target that you do well in Mathematics, English and General Science so that you can get into Higher Secondary in Class XI with all science subjects like Physics , Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics. If you do not like to study biology, you may forgo your option to study medicine. After you pass XII, you can go into engineering or you can study humanities with mathematics and economics. If you choose not to study engineering, you can major in Physics or Mathematics or Statistics or Chemistry or Economics. After you get you bachelor’s degree, you can decide to go for Administrative services or study Master in engineering or the subject of your major. Even after getting a master in Mathematics, you can study engineering or Economics or Statistics at the Ph d level or even go for a Management study or go for Government Administrative Services. Equip yourself with knowledge as much as possible before you get into a particular career. You have time to make your final choice: keep your options open as long as you can.” He would come back to me again on this issue later. Because, it is in the teens that one’s mind attracts the most questions about one self and the most difficult questions.
I had therefore had to reply to him more responsibly as a friend as he would be sixteen in a few years. My father used to say, “prapte too shoroshe borshe, putrang mitra badacharet” – translated from this Sanskrit to English: ‘Treat your son as a friend when he attains the age of sixteen’. But even if the father would behave with his son like a friend, son may not be willing to be a friend willing to share everything. The son would like to solve his questions himself by accessing more information and acquiring skills to sort out questions. The son might not even like to share some issues with the father just because some issues are entirely private personal issues one may not like to share with the same person.

When I was still in the school, my father had made me known that he wished that I go for Government India administrative service. I had told him that I did not like the idea, though I would keep the options open till I graduated with the Bachelor’s degree. My mind was still working on what career would make me happy and whether the process of getting into a particular career would make me happy. As I entered the middle phase of my teenage period, I could observe it was becoming an exciting game of struggle: a struggle between the sudden burst of exposure to and interest in ever expanding variety of aspects of life on the one hand and the pace of building capability - physically, emotionally and intellectually/ mentally, on the other, to fully explore, deal with, experiment and experience these aspects. It was not merely a question of career. It was rather a question of what interests me, what faculties I feel I have and how far I should be making efforts to cultivate my different faculties and interests. I wanted to be mix of many types of persons but with a difference. What combination of a romantic person, an athlete, a singer, a poet, an actor, a clown, a juggler, a magician, an educated person with knowledge in various disciplines, and etc should I try to be? And, how do I arrive at that decision?

The concerns were so many. Had I been able to get physically stronger and agile enough to deal with bullies? Had my looks become attractive enough to attract attention of others? Whose attention would I try to attract? What kind of hairstyles and clothes would make me distinctive and smart enough? How would I acquire these capabilities? Was something special happening within my body and how do I deal them – the beard, the moustache, the hair on the legs? But these were only questions related with the physical body.

What about the emotional tendencies and capabilities? Was fear getting control over my behavior or I needed to strengthen my boldness and courage? And, how would I do that? Was getting sentimental alright and to what extent? Do I want to share each one of my thoughts with someone or the other? Or, should I have some thoughts only to myself? How would I keep my secrets to myself? Should I be sharing some issues and thoughts with some others, and, what with whom? How would I decide what’s best for me and how would I develop these competencies I had thought I needed? Why was that most girls as they walked to and from school in their uniform skirts-blouses or saris looked secretively attractive to get friendly with but there would be nothing really to share with them as friends or acquaintances. Would it be better to ignore them till I grow somewhat older? How much should I get influenced by others’ views?

There were deep intellectual thoughts. Some were purely academic and hypothetical in nature. Could history have been different? What could have made be a citizen of India that had never been invaded and ruled by foreigners? Or, why had the Indians not invented the steam engine or electricity or the telephone or the air plane? What would have happened to my living conditions had my father not lost his property due to the partition of the country into India and Pakistan. What risk had I taken by not opting for Science stream in the higher secondary?

Then there were questions about pursuit of knowledge. How could I become more knowledgeable in physics or Chemistry or biology or engineering or philosophy or geography – the subjects that I would not have any further formal academic opportunity learn in the school or the college? I had to test various methods of trying to acquire further knowledge in these areas with out much success though. But I had to struggle and decide when to give up and why.

There were issues with regard to testing my skills and aptitudes in areas that I liked. Could I continue to develop my faculties as a composer of poems and stories or as a singer or as a juggler or magician or as an actor?
How far could I try doing this and when would I give up these one by one and for what reasons?

What would be the problem if I had chosen to be associated with the student wing of a political party?

I had to find answers to these questions mostly by myself. Rather, the answers had to spring form within my own self reacting to the external environment. Experiments, logical arguments and trade-off in the light of constraints within me and without solved these questions for me. I had been surprised that these got settled without the influence of others or unconsciously. The result or outcome was just a gamble. It was just a stochastic event that the outcome was what I happened to be with a mixture of different things in varying proportions and zero of some other things I was interested in. I had to give up active pursuit of many things as I went along: for example, athletics, cricket, football, all games that I could play – indoor or outdoor, composing poetry and stories, magic, singing, acting, science subjects, subjects like logic, philosophy, and politics had to stop as one of more of the following came in the way – lack of time, constraint of energy, scope for improvement through training, monetary investment involved, domination of poor quality of known persons in my locality pursuing the same interest, sudden decline in interest and realization that my natural ability in these areas were poor. In some areas of interest, activity had only to be temporarily suspended or kept low in the hope that these activities could be revived later. These included But in each of these I explored and experienced my interests and naturally abilities for quite a while but difficult to accommodate for constraint on time or money or energy or training/ coaching.

Now in retrospect, I am not surprised. These answers had sprung up largely independently with little or no influence of others but virtually due to the interaction of the properties that I had inherited or naturally cultivated without any choice. The struggle that I had experienced was essentially among the properties and tendencies that I had genetically inherited. The solving theme had been one of sustainability of capabilities, of interest, of independence. It seems to be now at this old age that the teen age struggle was to sort out inconsistencies among the properties that I genetically inherited as also between them and the external environment that these properties perceived that they were facing. Nothing that had happened then was my choice or decision: all answers had been the outcomes of the interaction of the properties or natural tendencies inherited genetically or otherwise.

Next: Playing Mathematics

1962 Awakeining: My Unfolding Voyage 32

2009-11-14T04:50:00.000-08:00

The Chinese Connection
Chen and I studied together for four years till I went to a new school in 1960. He had lost one of his parents early in childhood and was a resident in the school's hostel while I was a day-scholar. Chen had converted into Christianity. His manner and behavior was more decent than the most hostel-resident students of this Christian Missionary school. Hostel-inmates generally tended to bully the day-scholars, but Chen was different. He was modest at studies and was good at handicrafts. His handwriting was nice and we were very good friend. We never met after 1959. He was the only Indian Chinese friend I ever had.

I actually knew very little about the Chinese at that time. Except that Indians and the Chinese of the Peoples Republic of China were supposed to be brother after Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India declared so and we had seen Chou en Lai, the then Prime Minister of China visited India. At that time, I had not known about Chinese dishes like chilly chicken or fried rice or noodles. Father used to buy us shoes from Bata Shoe retail outlets but for his own use he used to buy shoes from the Chinebazar where there were many Chinese shoe shops. This was probably because at that time father used to were only the traditional Bengali dress of Dhoti-Punjabi and the particular design of shoes that goes with that dress was not probably manufactured by the Bata Shoe Company.

Later, in the higher secondary school, we learnt more about China from the history books. Initially, I had thought Chinese were Buddhist in general following the Buddhist saints whom Indian emperor Ashok had sent to various parts of Asia to spread the teachings of Gautama Buddha. Might be Buddhism did not spread beyond the land now we refer to as Tibet but China claims that to be part of South China.

I failed to understand however why the Communists in China would have taken such trouble in trying to get the religious Buddhists in Tibet converted into non-religious communists, or, why they would suspect that a Buddhist Tibet could be a strategic threat to China's military might. At least, while studying history during class IX-XI, I had felt that China had inherited great wisdom from Confucius and the some Chinese were wandering scholars. One of them, Huen Tsang or Xuanzang or Hsüan-tsang (600-664) of Guoshi, China had received classical Confucian education before converting to Buddhism. Troubled by discrepancies in the sacred texts, he left for India in 629 to study the religion at its source. He had traveled by foot across Central Asia and reached India in 633. After study at the famous Nalanda monastery, he returned home in 645 to a hero's welcome, bringing back hundreds of Buddhist texts, including some of the most important Mahayana scriptures, and spent the rest of his life translation of theses and established the Weishi (“Ideation Only”) school of Buddhism, which won many followers in Japan. The account of his travel and stay in India provided lot of material to construct Indian history for the relevant period. In the text books, I had learned something about Chinese emperors (and came to also know that Chengis Khan, the great killer of people, was a Mongolian and not a Chinese). How the great Chinese civilization weakened was not in covered in our text book but the Civil War, Communist revolution and Kuomintang along with the heroes like Mao Tse dong, Chiang Kai-sekh and Sun Yet Sen (not related to my family) did find some pages. That was about all that I had picked up before the Sino-Indian broke out in the early winter of 1962 with a few months to go for our final Higher Secondary Board Examinations.
The year 1962 was a bad year. West Bengal lost its Chief Minister (for 14 years since 1948), Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, the renowned MBBS, MRCP, FRCS physician whose patients got cured by just seeing him. West Bengal did not have another such an honest, caring, visionary chief minister who put up considerable struggle in the face of financial difficulties to become a physician, taught at medical schools, worked as a doctor in hospitals, privately practiced medicine life-long only to treat patients from poor families at nominal fee or for free everyday, fought for India’s independence, commanded respect among the senior Congress leaders before and after Independence. Despite his vision, West Bengal, the most industrialized State and economically prosperous State in India till 1960, moved downhill in economic and industrial activity within a few years.

Maybe the Chinese invasion of India soon after his death signified the bad days ahead for West Bengal. At that time, I as a school student, had thought that history was repeating itself: the Aryans invaded and settled in India (though currently there is different opinion about what the Aryans did bring to India), the Greeks invaded but went back, the Huns and Monogolians looted and went back, the Turks and Mughols invaded. Next, the British would come to rule India. India was again and again subjected the foreign rule. I had thought that this time it would be the turn of the Chinese. Chairman of Mao of China would be greatly impressed by the communist revolutionaries in Kolkata to dream that Kolkata would be, along with Havana, the gateways to the liberation of the proletariat across the World from capitalism and imperialism the World.
As the fighting continued along the Himalayas and the Chinese came rushing into Bomdi la, hardly a great military distance from Kolkata, in the compete darkness enforced in Kolkata in the evenings for fear of air strikes raids, I would shudder to think about approaching life of Indians as slaves again – this time not only of the Chinese but also their prodigy team - the mediocre brains of the largely half-educated, vocal chord and vocabulary strong, weak-to-compete, petty-bourgeoisie Indian communists. However, the war did not last long. The Chinese withdrew teaching the Indians a lesson: that Mao and Chou en Lai were much smarter than Nehru. It was morally depressing to any young Indian that Chinese did not merely outnumber us but were stronger than us to humiliate us. It was clear that the Indian National Congress Leaders were not yet competent enough to lead a Nation of India’s size. The Chinese connection to my life would thus be a great burden in future. Relieved with the unilateral withdrawal of the Chinese Dragon I would compose a parody and sing to my nephew : ‘Lal Tupi Chinara, dhoreche je Bayena, Bharater Mati chara R kichu Chi-na’ (The red cap-wearing Chinese have started demanding that nothing but Indian soil would satisfy them) after a hit song from a Bengali film for children (‘Lal Jhunti Kakatua…’) that was released around that time. But, I would see that the communists in West Bengal sensing that their time to liberate the proletariat from the clutches of capitalism had arrived. Soon, the communist struggle would make capital, capitalists, technology, industries and talent flee West Bengal. Our future as an economist to get employed had become bleak now. Generations of communists would arise in West Bengal with their religious belief based on the writings and lives of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Min. Centuries of foreign slavery would make some Indians continue to borrow obsolete foreign ideas and ape foreigners: foreign invasion is no longer required to enslave Indians.

Fun of Elementary Economics: My Unfolding Voyage 31

2009-11-07T08:52:00.000-08:00

Fun of Elementary Economics

Economics was the subject of my choice. This is where I put in my best efforts. My objectives were clear. First, I needed to score good marks in the examinations. Second, I needed to understand each section or chapter in the textbooks to find out what economics was really about and how the knowledge of economics is applied in individual and social life. Third, I needed to have a good grasp of the subject at its most elementary level so that I have less difficulty in my future higher studies in economics at the college and university.

The first objective was difficult to satisfy irrespective of the time I would have put in to study. The first time I had given the economics examination in the school in class IX showed me the bleak future. I thought I had done reasonably well. But when one day the teacher, Mahendra Babu, came to the class with the answer scripts, he almost made me give up my dream of becoming an economist for a while. He called my name and as I stood up, he inquired what I had thought I would have scored in the examination. I replied that I had done not that bad: I could not say that I had done well because the way he had asked the question. He replied that I got only 15 out of 100. Then, he went on going through the answer scripts of other students telling us what each had scored. At the end, he came back to me again and told me that there was a slight mistake: he awarded me the highest mark of 51 out of 100 but had mixed up the digits. He then said with an appreciating smile and beaming eyes that he was happy with my answer script and that I could do much better. From his little drama in declaring the marks in the classroom, I knew that I had permanently own the heart of my first economics teacher with my very first game in economics. My dream of becoming an economist got restored but I knew that during the next two/ three years I would have to be contended with poor marks like 51: this teacher is not going to be generous in awarding marks. My forecast was correct: he awarded higher marks in the subsequent five or six examinations – the marks were in ascending order of Arithmetic Progression like 53, 55, 57, 60, 63 and 66.
Elementary economics was, of course, elementary. But studying this for three years did help in becoming comfortable with the terminology and the special analytical approach of economics, besides getting a good taste of the applied nature of the concepts and principles of economics from the point of view of individual and societal living under scarcity of resources.. It was great experience taking the text books written in English for the undergraduate students taking up economics minor in the college as supplementary reading to the higher secondary school economics textbook written in Bengali. It was an exciting feeling at the high school age to get introduced to such interesting concepts (both in Bengali and English) as the factors of production, organization of production, law of diminishing returns, marginal utility of consumption, law of demand, demand curve, consumer surplus, price elasticity of demand, market equilibrium, perfect competition, imperfect competition, national income, gross national product, money supply, quantity theory of money, inflation, growth of population and Malthusian theory of population, unemployment, scarcity and productivity of resources, rent, profits, wages, interest rates, taxation, Indian economic planning, capitalism, mixed economy, socialism, communism and so on. In those days, many educated adults did not have any idea of these concepts though most educated had some idea about electricity, sound waves, atoms, chemical reaction, oxygen, hydrogen, radio frequency, etc. Unlike today, daily news papers did not have a page or two on economy, banking and finance. There was a single economics daily published from Mumbai (Bombay) and there were no business magazine. Economics had not become a daily topic of discussion among the common people except the concern over inflation and unemployment among educated people in urban areas.
While studying in the higher secondary classes, I had a fairly good idea as what was being taught in Physics, Chemistry or Geography to my fellow class students, all though I was not studying these subjects. This was because elements of these subjects were taught in the schools from the beginning of the secondary stage. But my classmates who did not offer to take economics as a subject had virtually no idea of what was being taught in economics. At the school level very few students studied economics at that time. That there was a subject called economics was known to very few high school students. Even those who had heard about the subject generally thought that economics as some kind of social study on the economic conditions of the people in general, the poor people and rich people. I had thought then that it was indeed good because there would be few economists. But neither did I nor my classmates or people in general had any idea of what the economists do with their degree and what kind of jobs they would get. Naturally no one would study a subject that did not provide knowledge and skills for specialized jobs with high demand. Demand for scientists, engineers, technicians, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, geographers, poets, novelists, teachers in English, Bengali and Sanskrit would be growing in a developing country like India. But what kind of jobs would be there for philosophers and economics? The answer at that time was that an economics degree would fetch no specialist job. So, the impression was that economics must be a subject meant to be studied by those who are unlikely to do specialist jobs or any job at all.
I had lost touch with my former classmates of the English medium Irish missionary school where I had studied for four years from class V to class VII. When I was in class X, I happen to meet one of them while he was cycling away on the high road. He stopped over seeing me cycling across in the opposite direction. We discussed about other friends and what we were all doing at that time. He was surprised to know that I was studying economics. He exclaimed, “Economics is a subject for the girl folks to study. Boys do not study economics. What job would you do after getting an economics degree?” I was a bit amused then but less shocked. True, I had no idea as to where did job opportunities lie for economists. But I wanted to study economics for the sake of economics. Amd with my knowledge in English, Bengali and mathematics, I was confident that some job would be available to me five or six years down the line. As for economics as the choice of subject for girls, I was not sure that my friend was correct. In the neighbourhood or among our relatives, I had till then spotted any school going girl studying economics at that time. Even some 6 or 7 years later, the girl students did not constitute even 20% of the total number of students in my postgraduate economics class.
Some seniors in the neighborhood and among the relatives had the impression that the subject of economics was all about current information about markets for different goods. Or, rather a subject where students are required to pick up quantitative financial and economic information so that they can be a ready source of access to information on the price of commodity X now and a year ago, how much taxes government is collection, how much the government is spending, how many people are unemployed, what is interest rate the banks are offering on 5 year term deposits, what is the planning commission doing and the like. Often, they would try to test my knowledge in economics: they would ask me such things as what was the cost of renting out an apartment in my locality? Or, what was the ruling price of gold? They were extremely disappointed to find that I knew nothing about these even while studying economics. Some others were a bit advanced: they would try to know if I had figured out whether capitalism was bad and communism was good. Still others offered their comments that the study of economics was not very useful as was proved by the disastrous economic planning that Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, had introduced in 1951. Even more advanced were some executives in companies: they felt that Marx’s theory of exploitation of labor by the owners of factories was correct and expected students of economics to find out from the books a solution to this problem other than the solution of communist revolution. For them, the best economist of the country was Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. And, some even thought that Mahatma Gandhi was probably one of the greatest economists the humanity has ever produced.
I was rather amused at the tendency of educated people without any background in economics trying to form their own opinion about what economics was all about and their expert comments on capitalism, communist revolution and economic planning. I could see their ignorance about the subject of economics as also their interest in being recognized as amateur economists of some standing. But I had many questions about applying whatever elementary economics lessons I was picking up in the school. My elder brother, already a post-graduate in commerce had studied economics as a minor at the under-graduate level. I would often ask him as to how I could apply some of these economic principles/ lessons in real-life markets and Indian economy. He would encourage me to ask such questions but always advised me that the application of economics was not an easy task as in the case of physical sciences. He advised me to hold on to my questions till the time I would complete my Masters degree in economics before really trying to apply economic theory. I had realized then that application of economics was not about working out some sums using formulas or expressing opinions on current economic events or future economic scenario using one of the hands and ignoring the other hand. He also game me the impression that the study of commerce and accountancy was part of the application of economics. I started looking at some commerce books: accountancy did not interest me much at that stage because I had no idea how businesses are managed at that time. The books on commercial business organization however appealed to me as being part of applied economics. I had to wait for quite a few years before I could get the opportunity to test application of economics.
But it was not all economics that we were taught in this course. We had to study politics and the Indian constitutions as well. Maybe, this was the tradition of economics being taught as political economy. We must have had to relate the study of economics to the context of the political thoughts and political framework in India where the State and the public sector had assumed the commanding heights in the economy in which the principles of market mechanism and of capitalistic macro-economic management by the Government would have to compete with State planning and control over markets. The background in political theories and the Indian constitution was useful at that time. One could clearly see that most politicians and their active supporters were bereft of any knowledge of these subjects at that time. Those who were learned among the politicians were well read in political history, Gandhi and Marx. With virtually no formal exposure to economics, accountancy and political theory, Indian political elite was trying to march ahead in economic development and seeking to be an important player in international politics. To my mind studying economics was all the more interesting at that time.