• Taslima Nasreen*
  Avijeet Banarjee has won Nobel Prize in Economics. Although he has secured citizenship in America, he is originally an Indian; he was born in India. He happened to be a student of Kolkata Presidency College. Amartya Sen was also a student of Presidency College. As Avijeet Banarjee is a Bengalee, it comes to our mind that he is our man. I feel proud as a Bengalee. The Bengalee people have not received many Nobel as yet; in total four in number. We don’t have much things to be proud. Both Amartya Sen and Avijeet Banarjee are critics of the present Indian government. Just the other day Avijeet Banarjee said ‘the condition of Indian economy is very bad. The growth of the economy is becoming slow at a faster rate. The government also understands the matter’. The husband of present Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman economist Parakal Provakar also suggested in an article that the economic Model of Norsima Rao-Monomohan Singh should have been followed. In the midst of all these things BJP is bewildered at least a little. The Congress leaders are continuously going on telling that the government should pay heed to the contentions of Avijeet Banarjee. If the Nobel winner does not like the policy of the government, it is very uncomfortable on the part of the government to be swollen on the win of a Noble Prize by him. Avijeet was a student of the famous Jawaharlal Nehru University of Delhi. Certainly he was a believer in the Leftist thought. In protest of expulsion of a Leftist student leader in the eighties he gherraoed (besieged) the office of the Vice Chancellor. He had to stay in Tihar jail for ten days. Then it was a regime of Congress. He is that Avijeet who holds Nobel Prize now. The anti-Leftist capitalist government can niether embrace it nor it can ignore the matter.
  With Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus also an antagonism continues against the government of his country for long days. I don’t think that all the Nobel winners are competent to receive the Nobel Prize. Sometimes the Nobel rolls on in the hands of some incompetent person. I don’t understand how an interest eating commercial bank receives a piece prize. It is not in my perception for how many ages by how much sacrifice, doing what sort of works Henry Kissinger, Barak Obama, Malala Yusufzai received Piece Prize.

No less harassment took place on the religious faith of a Nobel Laureate of this sub-continent. Some unidentified persons have erased the word Muslim from the epitaph of Pakistani Nobel Winner Physicist Abdus Salam. The very present government of Pakistan does not think the Ahmedias as Muslims. Abdus Salam happened to be of Ahmedian Community. Abdus Salam received Nobel Prize in 1979. Next year he was invited for extending honor to him by Qaid-E-Azam University of Islamabad, but a big protest started against him. In 1974 when Zaulfiqar Ali Bhutto declared the Ahmadia Muslims as non-Muslim under the pressure of Sunni fundamentalists hatred against the Ahmadia Muslims enhanced strongly. In the face of obstruction by the student organization Jamaat-E-Islami although Abdus Salam reached Islamabad he could not enter Qaid-E-Azam University. After 37 years the former Prime Minsiter Newaz Sharif named the Department of Physics of Qaid-E-Azam University as the ‘Abdus Salam Centre for Physics’. But Imran Khan is a dangerous anti-Ahmedia. Abdus Salam was born in the Punjab of Pakistan. But it was not possible for him to reside in Pakistan. In 1974 the furious persecution to the Ahmadians so enhanced that for saving life he had to leave Pakistan. There is no mention of his winning the Nobel Prize as a Pakistani in the text books of schools.
Avijeet Banarjee is a an American citizen. Amrtya Sen is also a citizen of Britain. I don’t know whether they could have earned Nobel Prize through research if they resided in their country? Now-a-days the European researchers also make their voyage to the USA because Europe can’t spend such an amount of money for research studies what the U.S.A. can do.
From 1901 Nobel Prize was introduced. Considering the size of population the highest number of Nobel Prize have been won by the Jews and the lowest by the Muslims. Nobel should be counted country-based and not on the basis of religion. But the Muslims should know that how backward they remain in terms of knowledge and wisdom. Every Muslim state thinks it right to be dedicated to religious rituals. They are busy with the construction of mosques-madrasas. They are busy to keep intact the religious laws leaving the modern laws. Where is a healthy environment for literature, where is the invention of medical science, what the physicists are doing, where is the research laboratories!
Majority of the Muslims make heaps of money by taking recourse to corruption. By building a mosque or by performing the holy Hajj they think that sins have been cleared. Thus the road to the paradise gets smooth. They have no other responsibility of developing this world further.
With whom the Bengalee Muslim feel proud? Is it when a Bengalee receives a Nobel Prize or when a Muslim receives the same? Out of the Bengalee Muslims someone looks to his Bengalee identity prominently. Some others look at it as prominently as a Muslim. But if we look at the matter as an identity of man as the major factor his citizenship, nationality, religion and all that would be surpassed by his deeds. Not by color, not by religion deeds would identify a person. Avijeet Banarjee is undoubtedly a genius economist. He is in favor of building a society of equality. He wants to break the society of inequality. He is in favor of building welfare state through realization of taxes from the rich people. This is not a new concept. After the II world War from state to state in Europe welfare economy has been established. Now-a-days the discontent, brandishing of the rich people being embittered on paying heavy tax money has increased; they are making threat to leave the country. Leaving a country of high taxation they are leaving for a country having low amount of tax burden. This is a bad side of globalization. Profit making business concerns are allured to stay in the country by giving the benefit of tax minimization. Surely the solution to the problem has with Avijeet Banarjee.
Man wants wealth and resources. This desire has no end. The welfare state transfers excess money from some persons to those who have no money. This is why Soviet Union has broken up. People got annoyed- they told why a person who has not labored should enjoy my money earned through my labor. This question has been raised in welfare states in Europe also. The U.S.A. is always a capitalist country. The objective of the state is to extend facilities to the rich people. Taxes are realized from the rich as less as possible. Throughout the world the popularity of the Rightist capitalists is increasing very rapidly. It is also so in India. Whereas two Nobel Prize winners of India are thinking for the poor and not for the rich. They propose to build a society of equality by breaking the inequality. Majority of the people do not like a society of equality. Accepting this view the human civilization invented that man should live in harmony and make those people free of wants who are poor. What can be more than this fellow feeling. Liberalism, humanity, co-operation, fellow feeling at the end wins against jealousy, hatred, greed, selfishness. Although there may be minor differences of opinion amongst the Nobel Committee Members, yet today in some cases they make shouts of victory for humanity.
In our sub-continent the lion-share of resources lies in the hands of a few. Majority of the people live on hard labor. The politicians are the determinant of the economy of the poor. Lakhs of poor people suffer from the want of food, clothing, housing, etc.
Although hundreds of economists live throughout the sub-continent, even receiving Nobel Prizes one after another the poor would continue to suffer. They would continue to suffer so long the politicians don’t start making politics in favor of poor and have-nots in place of the rich and influential people in the country.E

• Exiled Writer
  ** Translated into English by ‘The Economy’ Analyst.