Rasgulla revolution

The much hyped Haldia Petrochemicals, a project worth Rs 50 billion, is floundering in bureaucratic delays, but what does it matter when the great industrial leap forward can still be achieved on the shoulders of curd and jalebi? The West Bengal government has revealed that the Rs 10-crore rasgulla factory will be set up in Nadia district and there are further plans to diversify into sandesh and ice-cream.

Important lessons here perhaps for communist parties worldwide. Stop wasting time manning the barricades, comrades. Strive, instead, to transform the delicatessens. Take over the cake shops and the ice cream carts and harness them into the revolutionary struggle to attain a diabetic utopia. The rasgulla economy will provide sweet revenge on those who constantly bicker about the strikes and closures that have become the hallmark of West Bengal’s industry. The loss of jobs, the devastating decline of career opportunities have in any case always just been sweet-nothings as far as the CPI(M) is concerned. Now rasgulla and pantua will bring in those eager investors, anxious to bite off a piece of an empire, where Jalajog and Bheem Nag, monarchs of sandesh and doi, still rule supreme. On the debris of Bengali business, Buddhadeb’s rasgulla factory is a new amusement park of communist confection.

But do the red babus realise that the rasgulla is a metaphor of the globalised economy? It’s origins, after all, have been traced to the French occupation of parts of Bengal in the 17th century. It was at this time, that the French provided Bengal with ‘chchana’, which was to become the essential ingredient of all Bengali sweets. Thus, mishti is just as ‘westernised’ as the ideology. No wonder that Bengali communists have such a sweet tooth.