Jyoti Basu: The Unkindest Cut

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The more I look back I get angry. But that's not the problem. The problem is that my anger quotient increases manifold as I visualise what's happening and what lies in the future. Because then I see the eulogies pouring in, dollops of adjectives thrown in generously. I know many of you will castigate me for tearing apart a man who has just passed away. But unfortunately, Jyoti Basu, the Communist patriarch, will remain for me a man who killed two generations of Bengal's talent. And paved the way for the demise of a land which held much promise for the country. A man who presided over Bengal's industrial decline (my editor calls it an industrial wasteland), a man who enforced an education system where millions of students learnt "A, B, C, D" after six years of schooling, a man who ensured Bengal's brain-drain and led to the....