End of August note

I am delighted to see that the fund to save Shyamali Das from cancer has attracted more than Rs. 200,000 so far. Once more, I am deeply grateful to all ex students and friends who responded generously to my plea.

This is the last day of August, so I have been able to conduct offline classes for two months straight. Barring Kerala, Covid infection rates – and much more significantly, mortality rates – have gone down sharply and stayed down everywhere for more than two months now, so I am hoping that all restrictions will be gradually removed countrywide, and even if the third wave comes and goes, it will be mild and of very short duration.

For some reason, August has dragged ever since my daughter went back. I hope September will go faster. One more month, and I shall be able to look forward to a long and pleasant winter once more.

Here is an article in my newspaper today written by a professor of economic law detailing how the present Union government of India has quietly shelved its electoral promises to reduce inequality, corruption and nepotism in the business world, and has in fact made a very sharp and unrepentant about-turn in policy. I hope the ordinary voter will begin to take note and understand what is going on. It is true that over the last forty years economic policy worldwide has chiefly helped the rich to get ever richer, and the best that can be said for India is that it has chosen to be no different. Allowing the ultra rich to get ever richer is the surest and quickest road to all-round development – that is the belief that has come back with a vengeance after nearly a century. A middle class which fattens on the crumbs thrown off the dinner tables of the plutocracy (personified by the engineer or journalist who earns in a month a fraction of what the owner/CEO’s daughter spends in one night’s party) will continue to cheer as long as it is not squeezed too hard, and the poor can go to blazes. Until another revolution comes, I guess. Viscerally against violence and committed to the middle path as I am, I sometimes cannot help feeling that cutting off a few thousand heads might not be too big a price to pay in order to return to some semblance of civilization, as long as they are only the heads of the dirty rich…

Here is another article from the same newspaper which pretends to be amazed to find out that major IT and computer tech companies are recruiting talent from liberal arts backgrounds. I can only go ‘hee hee hee’, and remind you of a post I wrote almost a decade ago, Engineer or bust.