I was born in Tehran because my parents were Indian diplomats there, and I would love to go back to visit Iran someday. Not right now though as the country seems to be plunging itself into a new Revolution and yesterday’s Revolutionaries are today’s Reactionaries in a way that George Orwell would have understood and might have predicted. (Back in December 1982, at the American Economic Association meetings in New York City, a man looking surprisingly similar to Mr Mohammad Ahmadinajad approached me after I had read a paper “Economic Theory and Development Economics” to a large audience, introducing himself as a member of the UN delegation of the new Islamic Republic, giving me his card which I never kept… a story for another time…)
It would appear to me that the right political course of action would be for the disputed poll to be cancelled — with the consent and indeed at the statesmanlike initiative of its declared winner; to be followed by a short interregnum for normalisation and a calming down of all tempers to occur; and then for fresh polls to occur within, say, two or three months, taking transparent precautions that such an ugly mess not be repeated.
Subroto Roy, Kolkata
