Kolkata:
Veteran Marxist thinker and former state finance minister in the Jyoti Basu government (1977-86) Ashok Mitra died at a private nursing home on Tuesday morning. He was 90.
A man of letters, Mitra represented the rare breed of Marxists who left his cushy job as the chief economic adviser (CEA) to the government of India in 1972 and cut his teeth on Left politics as the finance minister of the first Left Front government in 1977. He was the pioneer of the alternative development model in Bengal. The senior economist leaves behind a rich legacy of debates and discourse over Centre-state relations that have come in handy for states now to expand federalism in terms of economic and political powers. Mitra, unlike his successor Asim Dasgupta, was not very keen on adopting uniform tax rates across the country. He believed it was an infringement of the state’s domain.
Uncompromising as he was with the dirt and filth of running the administration, quite evident from his famous “I-am-not-a-bhadralok-I-am-a-communist” remark over removing senior bureaucrat and Basu-loyalist S M Murshed from the post of power commissioner, the economist was slowly getting bitter with his own government till he put in his papers as the minister in January 1986, following differences with Basu. He also resigned from the CPM at the same time — just a month after he was inducted into the party state committee.
However, the separation couldn’t make a dent on Mitra’s unflinching commitment to Left ideology. All his life, the scholar kept writing against the “anti-poor policies” of the successive Congress governments at the Centre and was one of the fierce critics of globalization. A few years later, in 1993, CPM nominated Mitra to the Rajya Sabha where he made significant contribution, particularly on economic issues. He was the first to take note of the rightward shift in India’s economy following the appointment of Manmohan Singh in the Narasimha Rao government in 2007.
A brilliant author and regular contributor to magazines and newspapers, Mitra had a great command over both in Bengali and English. Apart from books like “Calcutta Diary” or “From the Ramparts”, Mitra wrote quite a few books in Bengali, including “Kabita Theke Michhile”, “Nastikatar Baire”, “Akatha Kukatha” and the much-acclaimed memoir “Apila Chapila” that deals with issue ranging from politics to literature. His collection of essays, “Taal Betaal”, won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1996.
The veteran Marxist was getting upset with the Left Front government over its tryst with private capital in Singur and couldn’t come to terms with the ways of CPM, particularly in Bengal, even after the government was voted out of power in 2011.
Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee offered glowing tributes to Mitra. “He was not only a brilliant economist, but a person who upheld the cause of the downtrodden till his last. I admired his erudition, his writing skills and his superb literary sense. I recall the days when I was a member of the State Administrative Reforms Committee formed by the Jyoti Basu government of which Ashok Mitra was the chairman. The committee had several meetings where members gave their opinions. Mitra didn’t depend on anyone in compiling the views and wrote the entire report on his own within a short time,” Chatterjee said.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee condoled the passing away of the veteran Marxist.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kolkata News / TNN / May 03rd, 2018