Former Top Lutyens’ Bureaucrat Launches Bengali Memoir in Delhi

Former Top Lutyens’ Bureaucrat Launches Bengali Memoir in Delhi

Kolkata, 2nd December, 2023: Sumit Dutt Majumder, former Chairman of the Central Board of Excise and Customs, launched his Bengali memoir titled Jonopod Thekey Rajpath – A Memoir (loose translation: From The Streets of a Small Town to the King’s Way) in an event at the Chittaranjan Bhavan’s ‘Bhavan Bookfest 2023’ in Chittaranjan Park.

Besides his work in the field of customs, excise, anti-smuggling and narcotics in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Pune, Mr. Dutt Majumder has also worked in other areas, on deputation. These include being Joint Director (Works), monitoring and coordinating the construction and renovation of seventeen stadia spread across Delhi for the 1982 Asian Games. He was also a Special Assistant to Rajiv Gandhi (then MP) at this time. He has also worked on the Non-Alignment Meet of 1983 as Joint Director (Security Access Control). And he served in Bahrain as Director (Trade Promotion), Cardamom Board (later expanded into the Spices Board), where his beat was the entire West Asian and North African (WANA) region.

“Jonopod Thekey Rajpth – A Memoir is a documentation of my lifelong experience of working in different areas,” Sumit Dutt Majumder says. “It is the story of my journey from a small town to the corridors of Lutyens’ Delhi, told so that it is easy to understand and enjoy, even for a layperson.”

The book was released after an initial talk by Siddhartha Dasgupta, a theatre personality and General Secretary, of the Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Memorial Society. For the launch, the author was in conversation with Gautam Hore, author and senior journalist at Deutsche Welle, Bangla.

Sumit Dutt Majumder has previously authored many books, in English, on Customs Valuation, the Goods and Services (GST) Act, and Article 370. While some of these books have been authored for practitioners, two of his books—GST: Explained for the Common Man and Article 370: Explained for the Common Man—have been bestsellers and have been translated into Hindi. He has also written a Bengali novel titled Donde Chonde in 1984. Mr. Dutt Majumder is the recipient of the ‘Asiad Jyoti’ for his work in the preparation for the Asian Games in 1982, and the ‘Presidential Award’ for his investigation of Customs frauds, in 1991.