Kolkata's missing millionaires and Lalgarh: rumour-style article

This (Kolkata's missing millionaires Lalgarh) is one of the most highly rated and commented blog from Anand Soondas. It is difficult to understand what was his intention before writing this blog and how a national news paper can allow him to continue to write blog?

First of all, why he has linked number of millionaires with the Lalgarh? There is no apparent relation between the two. Then, he has used some statistics from some source about the number of millionaires in different metros. Though it is difficult to find true number of of millionaires in Indian cities because very few people pay proper tax but lets accept these numbers are true for the sake of argument. If the author wants to assess the prosperity in the state by counting the number of millionaires then it serves no purpose. There can be a state or country that has equal distribution of income and no one is very rich. Does that mean that state is very poor? In the comments, some of the readers have named Cuba as poor state because of the communist rule in that country. These people need to refer to the UN Human development report for Cuba. People might not be earning much but they have best medical facilities in the world. Life expectancy as good as in America. Per capita income might be low in Cuba but HDI is much better than India. So drawing any analogy that a communist state will be poor and low development has no basis.

Per capita income does not reveal any thing about the distribution of the wealth of the state. If the author has done any course in statistics then he must know there is something called the mean and the variation. Having a high mean and huge variation will only create some very rich individuals and a lot of people living in the slums like Dharvi.

This author and some of his comments have talked that communist do not want people to be educated and particularly educated in English. Isn't it sound funny argument. Who said that a multinational company need English educated graduates before investing in a state? We, on average, speak much more English than our counterparts in China. When so many, almost all multinationals in the world, companies can setup their operation in China then why not in India or Bengal? At least language can not be a barrier. (As a country Cuba has second highest literacy rate in the world). It seems while writing this blog the author is having IT workers in his mind. He is thinking of those white coloured workers doing backoffice jobs. That provides good foreign exchange and high paying jobs to some workers but not job to many workers that is something we need to avoid many more situation like Lalgarh.

After reading such superficial piece in a leading news papers people get excited to comments and this brings out how ignorant educated people India has. One comments says that it can happen only in Bengal that people voted for Mamata Benerjee who does not have proper clothes. This gentleman wants nice looking politician. Hmm.. Do we need some very corrupt politicians who have lots of money in the Swiss banks? Perhaps not.

After going through the comments, and so many, it seems that people like this kind of blogs. But it is is the responsibility of the journalists to avoid getting into the popularity traps all the time and talk some sense that might not be good for the educated people's taste but truth, facts and balanced views need to be circulated rather than rumours.