The Pioneer’s Dalit Diary is a podium for the Dalits to channelise their aspirations. Chadan Mitra has been the sole upholder of this privilege
In February 2000, we got a phone call from Bhopal. It came from the office of the then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Digvijaya Singh. The caller was the visionary Amar Singh who was the secretary of Chief Minister Singh. Singh was moved by The Pioneer’s Dalit Millennium supplement that we had published on January 30, 2000. The then President KR Narayanan received the first copy in a simple ceremony in the Rashtrapati Bhawan. My friend Avijit Ghosh, a staffer with The Pioneer had connected me with the Editor- in-Chief of the newspaper, Chandan Mitra. That meeting had resulted in the birth of the Dalit Diary — the first ever weekly column in an English language daily dedicated to Dalit issues and written by a Dalit.
The first column had appeared on April 4, 1999. Since then, I have missed only two Sundays — one when I was in Bhopal, probably in 2000, from where I had faxed my column; the second page of the fax was unclear and I could not be contacted because I didn’t have a cellphone. The second time, I was in Germany. Due to time-related confusions, I had missed the deadline.
The column was an instant hit amongst the English speaking Dalits. That included Rajashekhar Vundru — a brilliant IAS officer who went to thank Chandan Mitra with a bust of lord Buddha. During the conversation, Chandan Mitra offered us a 12 page supplement that would be edited by some of us. The supplement was to be dedicated to the Dalit cause. We chose Vundru as the editor. The supplement was titled DAlIT.
Amar Singh read that supplement and showed it to Digvijaya Singh. In the meeting that followed, we arrived on a decision to hold a conference of Dalit intellectuals in Bhopal and the expenses were borne by the Madhya Pradesh Government. The conference came to be known as the Bhopal Conference. I was deputed to write a Dalit agenda keeping in mind the challenges in the new century. I wrote the agenda that is known as The Bhopal Document.
It was in this conference that Digvijaya Singh launched the slogan of producing ‘Dalit Crorepatis’. The Bhopal Conference launched a new Dalit agenda — asking the new generation of Dalits to take up entrepreneurship as a career option. Relying heavily on the American experience of supplier diversity in Government and private sectors both, the Bhopal Conference asked both sectors to allocate businesses to Dalits/Adivasis through supplier diversity.
At the concluding moment of the Conference, Singh announced that 30 per cent of all Government procurements will be done from Dalit/Adivasi entrepreneurs. Within months, that announcement became a policy. In contemporary India, if there is anything that is new on the Dalit front, it is Dalit capitalism and them taking entrepreneurship as a new career option. Since the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI) is born and the Dalit Venture Capital Fund launched, the central Government sets aside four per cent of all Government purchases to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMES) owned by Dalits/Adivasis.
The Pioneer has thus, been a platform where I could launch a new Dalit agenda. The newspaper has been my main source of livelihood.
K R Narayanan had said in his speech on January 25, 2002 about the Bhopal Declaration:
“Indeed in the present economic system and of the future, it is necessary for the private sector to adopt social policies that are progressive and more egalitarian for these deprived classes to be uplifted from their state of deprivation and inequality and given the rights of citizens and civilised human beings. This is not to ask the private enterprise accept socialism, but to do something like what the Diversity Bill and the affirmative action that a capitalist country like the United States of America has adopted and is implementing”.
Chandan Mitra joined the BJP but never censored a word unless there was a grammatical error. Dalit Diary is a decade and half old, but we have yet to see a second Chandan Mitra in the entire country who could give a column to another Chandra Bhan Prasad.
My Vote Goes to Chandan Mitra; if only I was a voter registered in Hoogly from where he is contesting for a lok Sabha seat. I wish him good luck.