Calcutta Diary


Calcutta Diary AM THEY come and go, anniversaries of this and that. As with the birthdays of women in bourgeois society, these anniversaries are to an extent embarrassing, for they set in motion in the mind certain processes of the arithmetic. The inescapable anniversary each year of the nationalisation of the 14 commercial banks may make some individuals acutely uncomfortable. In retrospect, the event may now seem, to some of them, to have been an irrelevant episode in the annals of monetary development in the country. Certainly they arc mistaken. The nationalisation of the banks served the purpose for which it was intended. A slogan was given a body. A pretence was provided with a cover. A crowd, which is the populace of India, was provided with a anise for emotion. The fact that, in today's grey light, ft may be revealed as a fakery to some does not diminish the original allure of the cause. Alongside with Bangladesh and the break-up of Pakistan in 1971, bank nationalisation carved out the primrose path to power and glory for the government installed in New Delhi. Just as, in consequence, it would be impossible now to cut back on defence expenditure, as it would be out of the question to reverse the act of taking over the 14 leading commercial banks four seasons ago. Myths, like gods, attain a certain indestructibility