One evening, last week, I told her about the collapse of this cheat, sorry chit, fund company, which ran a major media empire in Bengal that included television stations and newspapers, including the English Bengal Post.
Shobha called up her family and received the news that her son had been one of those countless investors, who believed in the word of Saradha group operatives and invested in a “savings” scheme.
He’s not getting his money back. And neither are all those investors, who put in their money in good faith as the losses of the group have been estimated at Rs. 30,000 crore.
Then there is my long-standing friend and senior journalist, Seema Guha, who was one of those who lost her job as the Bengal Post newspaper, owned by Sudipta Sen, very close to local leaders of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, the party in power in West Bengal.
In an account of what happened to her and other colleagues, Seema lays bare the bizarre operations of the company, which initially didn’t even have bank accounts for salaries and all cheques were signed by Mr. Sudipta Sen, now under arrest, himself.
In her only meeting with Sudpita Sen, she described him as a “slightly built man, a smooth-talker who was completely relaxed and giggled and flattered both of us (Seema and another female colleague). He was in a mood to talk that day and told us that there were many people in his media set-up who wanted to squeeze as much money as they could from him. Who was he talking about, we wondered. If he knew they were out to squeeze money out of him, why did he not take action. In hindsight we realised that he must have been paying protection money to people close to the powers that be.”
“Sen, despite his reputation as a business tycoon, came across like the small time munim, one saw in old Hindi movies. A provincial soul, he ran his business like a village money lender. He was also a night owl, holding meetings at 10pm, and going on for hours. He stayed in office till early morning,” she added in her account, published in The Hoot.
Over 100 journalists lost their jobs in the Bengal Post alone and when you add up other papers and TV channels, an estimated 1,500 journalists and non-journalists have lost their jobs in closures linked to the Saradha collapse.
In an environment where there are no media jobs, and companies are simply thinking up novel ways of cutting costs, many of these people will have a hard time to pay their rents, feed their families or find alternative work.
This is the sad reality of new India.
Gone is the “security” that came with jobs. In this era of jobless growth and a sense that employees are “cost centres”, we are witnessing a time of unprecedented insecurity in our lives.
I hasten to add that it’s not just in the media.
A friend of mine, who worked in a large corporate for nearly two decades, was told that she was being fired on mobile phone while shopping with her family. The toll that it took on her and her family was obvious.
The impact isn’t just monetary. It’s psychological and physical. You lose your self-esteem and confidence in the process. And, rebuilding your life takes time and lots of support.
Returning to the Saradha collapse, it’s been reported that at least two depositors have committed suicide and the distress of others is visible on television.
Yet another “collapse”, this time of a building, was reported from Dhaka in which over 400 persons have been killed.
Reports suggest that garment workers were trapped under when the eight-storey building came crashing down. Here’s what the Bangladeshi Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu had to say about the collapse: “It is not an accident, it is a killing incident.”
It is right to be angry, to demand justice.
But it’s also right to be sceptical – be it in Bengal or Bangladesh – and recognise that the wheels of justice won’t move for the poor and the powerless in our part of the world.
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Amit Baruah is an independent, Delhi-based journalist. He is the author of Dateline Islamabad and reported for The Hindu newspaper from Pakistan.————————————————————————————————————————————————The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.