(April 2012) – A seminar on PROUT at Moulali Yuba Kendra, Kolkata earlier this month has caught the interest of the Bengal media. Kolkata’s most popular anti-communist newspaper Bartaman, as well as Pratidin, the Bengali Statesman and Times of Indiaall covered the event in detail.

At the event, economist Dilip Haldar, formerly of Kolkata’s renowed Jhadavpur University, offered that everybody is aware that communism as an economic theory has died.

“The fact is that communism never existed as an economy anywhere in the world — it was just an imagination. Communism never existed in the past, is not existing at present and will never return!” Prof. Haldar said.

Haldar received a standing ovation on his bold assertion. He added that he is a student of PROUT and wants to “learn more of it as it has potential to solve the problems.”

West Bengal was under brutal communist rule for decades until May last year when the Trinamool (“Grassroots”) Congress party under Mamata Banerjee’s leadership got the vote of confidence.

Last year’s statement by District Magistrate Sheer Singh, that PROUT was the direct cause of the 1982 Bijon Setu massacre, seems to have pricked the conscience of the intellectuals of Kolkata.

Last month, the West Bengal government formed an inquiry commission to look into the massacre, 30 years after 17 Ananda Margis cadres were burnt to death after having been mishandled most cruelly in full daylight on Kolkata streets.

The 400 seat Moulali Yuba auditorium overflowed as crowds of teachers, students, vice-chancellors, column writers, IAS officers, linguistics, educationists and economists, etc. gathered for the seminar.