Trysts at Midnight: Calcutta, Now
[The Bangla film Sthaniya Sambaad (Spring in the Colony, 2009) was recently released. The film, by way of mapping the diurnal workings of a refugee colony in contemporary Calcutta, asks important questions about the changing cityscape, of the new, emerging world of land grabbers and fly-by-night investors and of the bemused young and old who are outside of this world and yet are sucked within its machinations. This is a conversation about education, humanities and the nature of artistry in the age of modularization—between Moinak Biswas, one of the directors of the film (with Arjun Gourisaria) & Reader, Film Studies, Jadavpur University, Calcutta and Prasanta Chakravarty, Associate Professor of English, University of Delhi.] Prasanta: Your film got a commercial release finally, which is wonderful. Among the initial reactions, in reviews, internet discussions and so forth, one notices a lot of interest in the polyvalent nature of your craft. I would like to take one particular strand of the film and probe a little: that is, its quite sharp critique of the phenomenon of vocationalization of education. This is a constant and niggling thread, right? Now, one fundamental argument for modular training, especially in humanities and social sciences, at this point, is a democratic one: that it will provide competence to a large number of the unemployed, ensure jobs and help in national growth. Moinak: This argument has validity up to a point. But the plain chicanery of the private sector entrusted with this ‘national service ‘ is there for all to see. Institution after institution offer courses in mass communication, ‘media science’, etc., without any library, basic equipment and most importantly, without proper staff. The contractual and part-time minimal faculty is paid and treated badly; the students are made to pay through their noses for some absurd training. And typically, these campuses do not observe the basic democratic norms. They hardly allow any unions, some of them make the students wear uniforms, many have campus surveillance. This is expected. The moment you move out of the ambit of the public sector the Indian businessman will tend to abolish the basic democratic norms and will have the support of a large section of parents as a force against ‘politics’. In our film we were looking at a figure of an education entrepreneur who arrives at a moment when the narrative has left the realist mode and entered a delirium of sorts. This figure, Mr. Paul & Paul as he calls himself, is a criminal visionary of sorts. He builds high-rises, but his life is devoted to providing education to youngsters. The job that he finds for the two absurd thieves looking for vocational education in the film is of a shanty demolition. The dialogue and action are largely nonsensical at this point, but we felt there is a support of reality behind all this. It is chit fund, fishery and construction mafia that have become leading vocational institute builders here. Prasanta: This hide and seek between the obvious and the orthogonal, the realist and the delirious, is something that is woven into the film, right, to which I wish to come back soon. But if we think about the question of politics—where the familial (since you interestingly mention parents) and the entrepreneurial come together—it is a classic secretive pickle for ensuring security, mostly economic. Now what is interesting is that institute and nation building through vocational training seems something counter-intuitive even from a parental and business perspective to me. Why would you as a parent want your daughter to get a quick vocational training after Standard XII and get into an entry-level job and lose the benefit of being professional, if that is the aim of a ‘reformed’ India? Are captains of our industry so short-sighted that they will lure cheap labour through vocational training rather than look for more durable qualities in a job-applicant? What I mean is: we may be seeing across the political spectrum a lure for an easy and virulent strain of libertarian aims rather than liberal ones. The liberal entrepreneur will hire from classics departments and teach the communicative part in-house, if need be. But you are right in the sense that perhaps the parents, politicos and tycoons have lost faith, have really turned all together cynical about the public-sphere. We know that corporate social responsibility is often quite mythical and instrumental—at best paternalistic. The ethical paradigm shift of even some of the large business houses in India is astonishingly short-sighted, as some recent media unearthing portrays. And your film deals with the newly formed conglomerates, which we know are sometimes just cobbled up ventures. So, this vocational approach: is it a matter of myopic vision or a more concerted and well worked out argument is something I wonder. What kind of thoughts did you have even as you were structuring the film? Moinak: We were not exactly thinking of the structure of a political process while making the film. The tycoon character was there all along in the script. By the time the film went into production we could see that seeking education the two wandering ‘thieves’ could well arrive at an encounter with someone who is both a land shark and education Mafioso. Such characters had become quite visible in West Bengal (also) by then. One could see their faces smiling from huge roadside hoardings or newspaper pages, watching over the chaos. I cannot immediately comment on the political aspect you have pointed to. As far as I can follow this drama the politics of it has a few visible features. First, the destruction of the possibility of democratic initiation on campus (no union, surveillance, uniform, etc.). Second, a project of producing lower level ‘industry-ready’ professionals. Isn’t that exactly the point – not to produce too many people of rounded skills? A large part of the IT industry, for example, does not need anything more than BPO and sales professionals. Why should they inculcate a more comprehensive set of skills? Then there is