Rahul Banerjee (English)

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 0:06

Where dreams come from, is a podcast featuring successful people from around the world who have pursued their dreams to arrive at a station in life. I'm your host, Sanjeev Chatterjee. I'm a professor of cinema and journalism. And in my creative life, I make documentary films. I started this podcast to explore what it takes for people to follow their dreams, even while being true to who they are, at least, who they believe they're trained as an engineer at the Indian Institutes of Technology, or IIT, my guest, Raul bannerjee, gave up the securities of an Indian middle class life to serve his country. He threw his lot behind the indigenous Beale tribal folk in central India. Along the way, he has completed a PhD, become an Ashoka fellow, and completed numerous research projects for organizations internationally. But the central focus, as bannerjee explains, has been a lifelong process of unlearning, and then organizing to secure constitutional rights for the poorest of the poor in India. This conversation is a snapshot of that journey. Rahul Banerjee, welcome to where dreams come from. You were born in Calcutta? Yeah. And I would love to hear a little bit about your early memories of growing up in that city.

Unknown: 1:36

I was in Calcutta from 65 onwards when I was five years old in the 70s. When I became a little bit more conscious of what's going on. That was the time early 70s when the natural movement was going on.

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 1:51

For the benefit of the audience. Could you briefly explain what the next cell movement or the Naxalite movement was all about?

Unknown: 1:59

Naxalites in India were the the formal name was Communist Party of India Marxist Leninist. And no, they were advocates of the mouse like saying that, you know, India is mostly peasants. So you will have to have a peasant revolution. You know, they form these armed sports and all that in various areas. And then they came into the urban areas also. And they were called Naxalites, because the first uprising of these people took place in a village called naxalbari in North Bengal, but basically their thing was that you had to overthrow the state, the state has to be overthrown. But it has to be done by the peasant masses.

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 2:35

Thank you for that clarification, you went to fairly elite institutions in your high school as well as in your college. Is that a departure for for you in terms of what you did later in life,

Unknown: 2:51

the school that I studied in lamotta, near so that I come from a upper middle class family, so I went to that school, the school itself, whatever taught and all that that is a different thing altogether. But because of this Nextel move, but there's a different influence that is outside the school, I used to think about all these things, you know, first there was the national movement, which because it was an armed struggle, a small kind of thing that was crushed. But after that there was a Jeff Prakash Narayan who brought about that support grant the Andalucia, the mass movement, which is the biggest mass movement that has been there in India, after independence. And the background to that was that the economy was going down tanking, the GDP of India, it was a negative GDP, and there was inflation also. So both negative GDP and inflation that had an effect on the poor and so you had this massive mass movement, and then that was as a counter to that Indira Gandhi brought in emergency, you know, suppression of civil rights. And for two years, there was suppression of civil rights and all that all these things happened at that time, which had an impact on me, that made me question as to what was going on. So that so even though I studied in any school, that that was countered by this. The other thing is that why did I go to an elite institution like IIT, you know, to become an engineer in our own family. For two or three generations, we have had engineers, you know, my grandfather's different than father and uncles and all that. Most of them are engineers,

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 4:20

I've read that you actually met a tribal man driving a bullock cart while you were in IIT, which seems to be a turning point.

Unknown: 4:29

Yeah, actually, it's part of a larger story. The thing is that after joining it, from 30 onwards, I began having doubts about you know, the course itself. The it there are these villages which are populated by tribes, should you try people, indigenous people, so we used to go there, and then try to teach them. And then we found out that it's not just a question of education is their whole livelihoods. Don't have any money for you know, even food, let alone at Patient and health and all that complete. So that made me a question. And the IIT has a very good humanities section, the library that you get all these books, you know, Indian philosophy, Western philosophy, whether it's politics marks or whether it's gone to anything else, all those books were there. So I started reading all that, you know, trying to understand what is happening when you enter the IoT IoT korakuen, the model that says, dedicated to the service of the nation. So the question is which nation, you know, there's this upper middle class people like us, all these people, you and I, and all these, who are the top 1% 2%, who are coming off the cream of the whole country. And there's this other 9095 96% people who are, you know, totally at a margin. Now, at least after the last 2030 years, things have improved a little bit. At that time, as I said, poverty levels were very high in 1980s, and all that. And I could see that the hostel where I used to stay in front of that there was a field in which a tribal drivers with bullock carts full of Hades to come and wait there for the night. And then the next day, they used to go off to the market to sell the hay, the hay belong to somebody else, some rich fellow, he was selling it in the market, but these guys used to transport that hated. So on a, with another friend of mine, we went and talk to these people, you know, what they're doing and all that. So this will say, we will get to rupees a day for you know, carting this stuff here and selling it and things like that. And then I asked them, whether they knew what this all these buildings were. So they said, Well, no, we just spent a night out here. So then I explained to him that this building, this is a Institute where you know, people learn to become engineers is that and all that kind of thing to have the nation and then not have impulse, I asked that fellow that whether he thought his son could study in this. So then he gave us my lens, if I was joking, is that how can my son study in this almost 40 years after independence, and you have these people, they can't even dream? You know, the they're just at the bottom somehow living. So that the that had an impact. So immediately after that, I decided that I will try and work for this. So that was the story. In India, the indigenous population is the worst in economic terms, even if you see the conditions, they are in the worst situation. So that was a choice that I will work with this set of people who are the most disadvantaged, and see if something can be done

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 7:45

is that the point at which you felt that you had defined a dream for yourself,

Unknown: 7:52

or a dream maximum, whether it's Gandhian stuff, or whether it's Marxian stuff, both of them, I found, to me the, you know, not very viable. So the thing was that I was confused. The only thing that I knew was that something has to be done at the grassroots, you know, that whatever the situation is, is very bad. And something has to be done, what has to be done, that I wasn't clear. So the thing was that I even thought of giving up my studies, but because there's a lot of pressure from home and all that I managed, I completed my degree. So even in fourth year, I thought that leap, but I didn't do that I completed my degree. And then after that, I hit the rural area.

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 8:40

What did it did it comprise off and was there a period of training of some kind,

Unknown: 8:47

there was this organization called Social Work Research Center, which was founded by a person called Sanji droid, popularly known as bunker road. I got in touch with him for and he said that, yes, you can come and help with our rural development. So then I went there. And there I met a person called Kim Rhodes, he had gone to early rajpoot in Moscow for this to work among the deals kill tribes. So he had come there for some work, and we got talking and then he said that why don't you come with all this is okay, development and all that, but basic thing is you have to fight for rights and things that we are doing that. So why don't you come and join us? So I said, Fine. So that's how I came to early dodge. And when you talk of training, it's actually training in the field, whatever I had learned, as in the it to become an engineer, that at that point of time was useless. So I had to learn on the ground. You know, the various problems that those people were facing the pill adivasis

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 9:54

I want to know about your acceptance as an outsider.

Unknown: 9:59

Really, by Time I joined this organization in early Rajput, it had already established itself, you know, the credibility part that was faced by people before me. So they had one major strike against a contractor who was building a dam and not paying the minimum wages and all that. So all that took place before had gone there. So it was was mostly in my case, the thing was that as a Bengali my food habits are different. And I suddenly land up in a area where, you know, people eat only job or budget or minutes and things like that. And that also is very low quantities, because they're extremely poor. When when I went there, now, things have improved, but at that time, sometimes it only once. So that food thing was there. The other thing was language. At that time, they never spoken needed, very few people spoke Hindi, they spoke their own language. So I had to pick up the language. So at a personal level, these problems were there, then that whole area of the hilly area, so there is no transport, so you have to walk all the time going up and down the hill. So it's a hard life.

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 11:13

Did you have a salary? No, no,

Unknown: 11:16

we didn't have any salary, you spend most of the time with the people. So the the two advantages, one is that your costs go down, because they are taking care of your costs. And the other is that because you have so such a huge introduction with the people, then the amount of you know, mobilization work that goes up. So that's how it is some money used to come from as WRC, you know, the cost needs to be as low as possible. Nowadays, it's not possible to work like that. So the various other costs, and over time, we didn't have radios, let alone laptops and things like that, and mobile phones and all that that would not. So I remember that in 1984, when Indira Gandhi was assassinated, Cambridge told me that for 15 days, he didn't know about that, because there's no access to any news,

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 12:06

should we look at that experience, as a romantic experience,

Unknown: 12:11

my personal case, it's not romantic, because I'm not that kind of I told you right from the beginning, I have doubts. In fact, when I went there also doubts about exactly how much we can achieve, given the kind of oppressive structures that are there. And the people, the status of the people, you know, the at that time, the people they didn't even know that they were part of a democracy. So very few people used to vote, first of all, from 10% to 5%, that they still thought that they were part of working. And the earlier King had been replaced. And instead, you had the forest department and the police department, and the various other government employees, they were like representatives of the king, actually, in those early, early part of work. Our main work used to be to try and convince these people that you are part of a democracy. There is a constitution, however flawed that constitution is, but it still has some rights and entitlements, and especially for tribal, for for indigenous people. There is a special there are some special sections in the Constitution, and there are special laws that give them some protection. romanticism comes in when you want to overthrow the state and things like that, you know, we are not in that our thing was that let us try and implement the constitution and various other laws that are there in favor of tribals. And the other aspect was that there are some laws that are inimical to the titles like POTUS laws and things like that, to how to counter those laws, the laws of the state that are against you, you have to fight that. So there's no romanticism in that.

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 13:50

How does your work relate to the changes that have taken place over the last 40 years?

Unknown: 13:57

The main thing is that, as I said that the constitutional provisions they have begun working, so whatever the positive provisions that are there, for the tribes, people, not only in our area, but throughout the country. So that that is one aspect. The other aspect is that the inimical Lord like Indian forest act, for instance, that has been countered by the forest Rights Act. And this, this whole problem of Adi adivasis, historically, having the cultivated and the community control of the forest, which was taken away by the British, so that had been corrected this forest Rights Act, then the land acquisition Act, which was very anti people that has been changed that that's gone and now you have a better act for compensating people and rehabilitating them if there had to be a displace. Then there's something called the PunchOut extension shedding videos act. So in India, what you have is you have two kinds of shadowed areas. One is in the northeast. Which is called the sixth shedule area. And the rest is the places where we work most of the tribes areas in this country, which are the fifth sheduled areas, I will not talk about the six shedule area, because that's in the northeast, I will just restrict myself to the fifth shaded area where we work. So in that there is a provision within the schedule that adivasis, their traditional, Hamlet's the grants above that the goal called the traditional Hamlet, they can control their development, all all the all everything, everything with respect to their development needs, and even their policing. And, you know, education needs everything they can control that has become operational, then there's the Mahatma Gandhi, National Rural Employment Guarantee act, then the Right to Education Act, all these acts that have come, which give a lot of entitlement to the people. So if you have a strong organization that you can implement these ads, it's not as if you know, the act is there certainly detrimental. It's not like that the kind of resources that they can get from the state, or even from the market, their bargaining power in the market, that will increase as a consequence of this work that we have done. At a larger level, if you see, you know, this whole thing of development itself, that is problematical on two levels. One is the the just justice aspect, where people most of the people don't get paid minimum wages. And the other aspect is the environment aspect where you know, the nature has been devastated, and you have climate change, and now you have COVID, and all these kinds of things. COVID is just the trailer, however much we say that we are going to control and all that it's gone, you know, that whatever the golden era of capitalism is now in bad shape, because nature has stopped, started striking back. So at that level, that we need a different kind of development, which respects both the people gives them a decent wage, and also respects nature does not, you know, harm nature. At that level, we have not been able to do much.

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 17:08

What is your response? If someone says that Roberto Jesus socialist,

Unknown: 17:13

although I'm not a socialist, because I try to say I try to classify myself as an anarchist, though, even that is problematical. The basic thing is that you have to have a bottom up system, you know, who are going to take the decisions with regard to the economy, main thing with the economy, how are you going to run the economy. So at present, the decision is taken in New York, you know, if you see the whole world, it's basically controlled by wall street, you know, all the big biggest financial institutions are all in Wall Street. So, it is they who decide, and the thing is that if you see the world trade, the amount of trade in currencies, you know, just buying and selling the dollar, rupee yen and all that, that is 20 times the trade in actual goods and services. Now, what is this trade in currencies, it is whatever resources that the whole human civilization has accumulated over the years, it started 10,000 years ago, when agriculture came and surplus it basically you have to accumulate surplus. If you accumulate surplus, then you can think of multiplying that, if you're just living hand to help you go out and do some hunting and gathering and come back and finish it off, then you cannot you know, progress. So, that that became possible with animal husbandry and agriculture 10,000 years ago, which is called the Neolithic Revolution. Now, from that time onwards, we have been accumulating resources and resources and resources and today that all that resources is in the banks, and that has been created all the time. Now, now, the thing is that whatever is traded in currencies, that does not produce any surplus, actual surplus will come only from goods and services, you know, somebody makes a laptop or somebody makes a table, then there is some actual addition of value, somebody sells a stock or a currency for some money and make some money from that, that does not produce any value, that value has to come from somebody making the table or whatever, this is the system that is there that is controlled by these financial institutions, and they are the ones who are deciding what is to be done and what is not to be done. Whereas people like us, we are saying that this is a destructive system, it destroys society destroys the economy and it destroys the environment. You have to have a bottom up system where all these resources you distribute once again, you know from the banks to put back into the people's hands, not a question of going back back to nature or anything not like that thing is that there are technologies, you have to decide how to use that technology, whether whether that technology how you use, so that the least amount of harm is done to society and to environment. So, you work the other way, though, you do not work that you have 1000 rupees with you, you do not think about how to increase that 1000 to 1100 or something like that, you know, which is how the people in New York in the financial sector, they are not bothered about what is happening, they are just bothered that that 1000 was become 11 B, on the other hand, we are saying that, don't do it in money terms, you see that that person who is living there at the bottom? How can his living improve? And how can nature not be destroyed? For instance, in GDP term that that joke is there that if there's a tree standing there, it has no value? When you cut it, then it becomes part of the GDP. So this whole priority has to change. So that is how I see the whole,

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 21:12

it seems to me that all levels of socialist, capitalist, nationalist, whatever it is, they're also being disrupted in the current disruption in the world. Is there a name for it? Or should we give it a name?

Unknown: 21:27

Oh, actually, the thing is that see, right from the 1930s, there's nothing called capitalism or socialism, you know, you have a mixture of the two. So if you take the United States, also, United States has three forms of government, the federal government is there, then the state governments are there. And then the local government said, the most important work is done by the local government, it provides education free, and it provides policing this whole thing, this capitalism, socialism, all that that become obsolete. Now, that is why you have concepts like universal basic income and all that committee, if you take family as a unit, every family must be able to fulfill its potential in terms of education, health, and whatever it wants to do. That is one aspect. And the other aspect is nature. There are decentral, workable, viable, decentralized method, only problem is that there is no state support for that. We don't have the power to you know, convince governments to go for decentralized systems,

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 22:34

that is a problem. At one level, I can think of you having multiple dreams of women's rights, environmental rights and Environmental Action, the rights of the downtrodden. In our socio political sense, how should we grasp it? under one package,

Unknown: 22:55

basically, you have to see in terms of justice, how to formulate this whole thing. But each and every point, you ask whether whatever you're doing is just or no. So, so whether it doesn't depend on which community you're working with, might be women, transgenders or whatever. The thing is, that justice should be ensured. And similarly environmental justice, whether you are being just towards nature, how are we behaving towards nature, is our behavior towards nature, just towards nature. So that is what I feel that, you know, all this, this, this, this, this whole concept of dreams and all that, you know, that has been proved to be utopia, you know, whether it's marks of Gandhi, or whatever, they come up with the ideal kind of situation that was civil society like that, and all that. But that doesn't work in fiction. So the thing is that you have to ensure justice at every point of time,

Sanjeev Chatterjee: 23:56

Robert G. Thank you very much for taking the hour. Ultimately, as I understand from my conversation with Raul bannerjee. In the search for solutions, labels lose their meaning. It's all about purpose, driven by ideologies with names bannerjee was propelled into serving the poor in India. But hard work on the ground taught him not to chase utopian dreams, just do the work, persist. Perhaps there is no destination, just the ongoing struggle for betterment, for media for change. I'm Sanjeev Chatterjee