Interviewed by: Sharmishtha Dutta-Gupta
Interview place: IIM-C, Kolkata
Interview Date: 16th November 2011

Table of contents:
• Early life; Bibhuti Bhushan Chattopadhyay; association with music.
• Education and the Air Force Dream.
• Participation in the food movement 1965; Association with a secret Left organisation.
• Anushilan Samiti; Influence of Naxalbari.
• Armed revolution as last resort; Aneek, SRY.
• Masters in Economics; Professor Amiya Bagchi; New Alipore College; Anartho.
• Goals of Anartho; Publication in the Economic and Political Weekly.
• De-industrialisation debate.
• Dipesh Chakrabarty; views on Naxalism; battle with tumor; introduction to Subaltern Studies.
• Stint at ANU (1982); completion of Ph.D under Dr. Ranajit Guha; Doctoral Thesis.
• Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
• Teaching career at IIMC – part time (1985 -1987); Directors of IIMC (1985-1987).
• Ramu Aiyar; arrest; return to music.
• Sitar as a pastime; time in prison.
• The Naxal movement and good students; the politics of education.
• Inclination toward CPI (M) ideals; Leftist stance by the Social Science Faculty at IIMC.
• The liberal teaching atmosphere at IIMC; informal professional relationships.
• Ramu Aiyar’s vote out; support for Ramu Aiyar; Silver Jubilee function.
• Publications at the Centre; teaching full time at IIMC.
• Economics Department at IIMC; Professor Barun De.
• Business Environment Group.
• Status of the Business Environment course; freedom to design courses.
• Intra-faculty relationships; ‘Politics of Development’; Quality of students; Changing fee structure.
• Government fund withdrawal; Five year period to build IIMC corpus; IAS and NGO jobs before the nineties.
• Changing career orientation; loans taken; living expenses at IIMC.
• ‘Debt traps’; career choice; OBC quota; ratio between the OBC and General students.
• Composition of students; admission process; classroom interactions; casteism; failure rate.
• Family status of students; ‘destitute’ cases.
• Social awareness among students; drop in female composition of students; male dominance of the engineering field.
• Double disadvantage for women (gender and caste); ‘Affirmative action’; opposed by the women students.
     2011-11-16

     IIM Calcutta

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