theres been another fire as i write this that too in the governments calcutta medical college hospital in a pharmacy this latest fire does wake up the ghost of the 2011 fire in a privatelyowned hospital in dhakuria or should that be the ghosts of a good 92 of the helpless innocent patients who died in it that was manslaughter by any name and the ones responsible have got away and the ones who suffered are yet to get justice its bad enough getting killed in a hospital when you go there to get well but to brush the whole incident under the carpet and carry on as usual is inhuman frankly i hold everyone the owners the government the judiciary as culpable in this crime as an aside why dont the realestate magnates one of whom also owns the dhakuria hospital selling us horridly expensive steel glass and concrete bubbles that are taller more green and all the other bumf they peddle ever tell us about the fire prevention measures taken by them to keep residents safe were informed about earthquake resistance environmental beauty proximity to highways and metros but never about fire and i wonder if the sad buyers ever ask especially when they realise theyve been sold another piece of overrated junknevertheless not all the news is so depressing it made my heart skip a beat to read the report that reappeared from january this year from the ministry of micro small and medium enterprises i dont know why it popped up again in my news feed but the fact that bengal leads out of the top 10 industrialised states in the country is news that should not be glossed over the state has some 53 lakh msme units as of 201617 1162 of the panindia total leaving even maharashtra and gujarat behind msmes also offer huge scope to largescale industries according to the msme secretary rajiva sinhathis fact leads me to wonder why people say nothing is happening in calcutta and bengal obviously our people here are as industrious as anywhere else of course political shortsightedness over the years has contributed to the decline in the states fortunes but its pretty clear that we in bengal know how to bounce back in fact a report from the centre for sustainable employment of the azim premji university state of working india 2018 says that wages are not just low in india 82 male and 92 female workers are grossly underpaid with employment opportunities below 1 this is a trend showing itself since the 2000s and as the report states this suggests that a large majority of indians are not being paid what may be termed a living wage and it explains the intense hunger for government jobs it also states that this phenomenon is most evident in the northern statesare msmes in bengal stemming the rot of unemployment in the state i would like to think so i recently had the occasion to meet a