I am an educated individual. I belong to the 63 % who can write their name on a piece of paper before another educated person who can read what I have written during a national literacy survey. I fear imparting knowledge the most. I fear letting the 63 % becoming 73% as that is equivalent to10% more competition. With all these quotas and more quotas 10 % is a good amount to keep at bay. The only means that I have devised to bring my plan into action is to deny economic prosperity. I will support any political party that stands morally strong against development. The people who I deny growth have growth. Their farmlands have extensive crops…although it is a different issue that often their income is included in the “below poverty” line statistics. But that is exactly what I want. If the parents cannot feed their children how are they going to educate them. Let them reproduce at 10 % rate to facilitate more hands for farm work…(chuckle) their farm isn’t getting any bigger, but my 10% illiteracy buffer is here to stay.

If you cannot hear the oppressed crying, then they aren’t crying. If you cannot see them being raped, then they aren’t being raped. What happens when the camera is not looking on is a different issue yet again. The nation does not need to know what it already knows but chooses to overlook. This is how the machinery has been running for 30 years. This is how the machinery will be run by a different driver. I am happy to stand by the driver’s seat as his stagecoach of the economically and educationally hoodwinked guns gloriously towards the Ganges, which is now a drain in my part of town.

Today is a glorious day for my kind. The farmers have got their lands back. The majority opposition has got its glory back along with them. Now both of them can walk down the aisle hand in hand and sing our standard anthem, “Amar shonar bangla…” I am happy that my people still desire “gold” in the form of grain, although it wouldn’t matter because they are mostly clueless about the clever numbers I pull on my mathematically wise calculator. It is simple to shortchange them. I am glad their land is back, so I may continue shortchanging them. Think of the horror of industrialization. It would have brought in schools and hospitals, and other tertiary industries with a demand for education in our locality? We have been spared of that horror. I do and will remain a faithful member of the 63 % educated class of Bengali people. May Orwell live for a thousand years- it is much too sweet to belong to the “more than” equal class of equals.

A trivia for those who are my fellow brethren:

Question.

How often do you call a woman motherly, when all she does is strangle your growth?

Answer.

All the time, thanks to our very own evergreen Mamata.