Indian radical art is probably the best investment there is in the market. Works of radical artists seldom come into the open market. A good Gaganendranath Tagore work, especially his radical departures from the figurative to studies in refraction of light erroneously described as cubism, are seldom seen in the market. It is the same with his excellent drawings of the First World War period. One such volume came up for sale at Bowring?s and was snapped up almost at once.

This radical tradition has continued almost unbroken with artists like Jamini Roy, Chitta Prasad, Zainul Abedin, J Sultan Ali, MF Husain, FN Souza and Somnath Hore, leading the trend and younger artists like Paritosh Sen and Sunil Das, picking up the threads.

?Boat on a back? by Apurva Desai

In the mid 1970s, we get a sharper radicalism in the works of Vivan Sundaram, which gift remarkable painterly qualities to the lives of rape victims like Guddo or a nameless bicycle mechanic burnt in the Delhi carnage after Indira Gandhi?s death. In the same painterly manner, Anil Karanjai, painted the door of the house of Kusma Nain, giving it the grandeur of a Mughal gateway. In fact, the same grandeur of the human being in adverse circumstances is visible in a rare work of Raja Ravi Varma, that portrays a beggar woman and her children singing outside a house.

The 1980 and 1990s saw sharp comments on the keepers of law and order by Arpana Caur on the disintegrative qualities of terrorism by Sidharth, on the emptiness of the closed industrial units of Ahmedabad, the coal mines and miners of Madhya Pradesh and the ship-breaking yards of Alang, by Apurva Desai. Debabrata De has concentrated on the poor of Calcutta. His study of people reading ?Ganshakti? the CPI(M) newspaper, from a board on the roadside reminds one of the celebratory aspect of the struggles of the poor, like Chitta Prasad.

And the 21st century has given us one of the strongest protagonists of our radical art, Yati Jaiswal. His extraordinary ?road map? of the disgraceful wars started by US imperialism is a work that shows our radical art at its contemporary best. Lately, a young Andhra Artist, Rathnam, is emerging as an important portrayer of contemporary peasant life, though it remains to be seen what turn his art will take in the future.

The desire to possess radical art is not limited to Indian collectors alone. One finds the same trend in Japan, Europe and the US as well. The Indian version of this art, however, has certain advantages above the others. It is more subtle, being part of a long and complex art history. It straddles many traditions, with India?s cultural complexity offering the artists a rich repertoire of colours, images and techniques. It also looks to both western and eastern radical traditions as cross-references and evolves its own original expression out of them. But most of all, it is much cheaper while being as good, if not better, in quality. That is why it succeeds.

Indian radical artists do well abroad and are very much a part of the global radical discourse. This is evident from Apurva Desai being invited to join the Braziers international workshop this year in August that is to be held at Oxford in Britain. A special visitor at this workshop will be Khaled Hourani, from Ramallah in Palestine.

Among the other artists invited there, are Marcelo Brantes from Brazil, Vanessa O? Reilly from the Irish Republic, Jo Stockham from Britain, Iliko Zautashvili from Georgia, Yingmei Duan from China, Mohammed Al Hawajri from Palestine, Tamara al Samrraei from Lebanon, Coster Mkoki from Zimbabwe, Baba Jakeh from Zambia, Vukasin Nedeljovic from Serbia, Mariana Viegas from Portugal, Jaroslav Hulboj from Poland, Adele Todd from Trinidad, Jay Wilson from Canada, Kay Walsh from New Zealand, Tanya Abadjieva from Bulgaria and Lamia Puntule from Latvia, to name only a few.

This will give Desai a good window to the world and a rich source of cross-references. His work will no doubt benefit from this. And he, with Shinde, Sundaram and Sharma, is one of the few Indian artists who has tackled industrial India in some depth. His latest work for Gujarat Chemicals, like his panoramic view of the Alang shipyards, is and will remain an important work in the history of our contemporary art.

This young artist can be contacted though his gallery, the Art Alive, in Delhi. One must remember that in art, unlike in the share market, ready-mades do not pay as well as judicious commissions. In the world of art, the investor can and should contribute to creative production as well. And the best such production is what goes by the name of radical art.