Kolkata Korner

Story Of A Tree
This is, perhaps, the best illustration of how things work, or don't, in thiscity. A truck dashed into a tree early one Saturday morning, sending it crashingon the road that happens to be an arterial one. It remained there for the wholeof Saturday, Sunday and the better part of Monday, causing huge traffic snarlsnot only on that road, but even the ones leading to and away from it. And guesswhy the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) didn't hack the large, uprooted treeinto small pieces and cart them away? Because of archaic, time-consuming andopaque rules that aren't even lucid. 

It seems whenever such a thing happens, the traffic department of the KolkataPolice (whose responsibility it is to keep traffic moving on the city's streets)dashes off a letter to the KMC, with a carbon copy duly sent to the forestdepartment (the custodian of all trees) stating that a tree has fallen and needsto be removed to clear a road/pavement/pathway. The forest department and theKMC then acknowledge receipt of the letter, after which the forest departmentsends a team to the spot to verify the cause of the 'accident' and the speciesof the tree that has fallen to put a price for the log that the KMC will paylater to the forest department. Once the portly babus complete the inspectionand put in a report that's studied and vetted by their seniors, the forestdepartment gives permission to the KMC to remove the fallen tree. 

Saturday and Sunday being holidays, none of all this cumbersome processeshappened on the two days, thus inconveniencing lakhs of people. Things startedmoving only on Monday morning, and that too after local newspapers and TVchannels lampooned the civic authorities, the traffic police and the forestdepartment, forcing the Mayor to intervene personally. The road was ultimatelycleared late Monday afternoon. And the 'do it now' Buddhadeb Bhattacharjeehappily presides over this slack, inept, hidebound and downright ridiculousmachinery.

Marxist Menace
The Marxists' outrage over the attack on their party HQs at New Delhi is hardlyjustifiable. For, they do exactly the same, and much worse, to their politicalrivals in the states where they call the shots. In Tripura, for instance, justafter winning the Assembly polls last week, CPI(M) activists went on a rampageand attacked offices of the Congress--its main rival there--and activists of theparty. 

Closer home, members of the CPI(M)'s students' wing--the notorious SFI--won'tallow space even to the students' bodies affiliated to the junior partners ofthe Left Front in college elections. At the South Calcutta Law College,candidates from rival formations were barred from even collecting nominationforms for the college students' union elections earlier this week. Scores of SFIactivists queued up before the counter distributing the forms and preventedothers, including the daughter of senior RSP leader and state PWD MinisterKshiti Goswami (who has been sharply critical of the Marxists of late on quite afew issues), from getting anywhere near the counter to collect the forms withinthe stipulated time. The SFI rogues dispersed only after the deadline forsubmitting the forms expired. And with no contestants, the SFI's nominees wonthe 18 posts in the college's students' union uncontested. That was elections,China style. 

If these are tactics that the junior Marxists can employ in college unionelections, it doesn't need much imagination to fathom what deadlier, morevicious, totally undemocratic and grossly authoritarian measures the CPI(M)deploys to hang on to power and maintain its vice-like grip on the people. Aparty which, thus, does not practice democracy or believe in democraticpractices can hardly cry foul when it is beaten with the same stick that it usesto thrash others.

P.S. The SFI was handed a humiliating defeat at the students' union polls atPresidency College which has, along with many faculties at the JadavpurUniversity, been a stronghold of anti-CPI(M) forces. Graceless in defeat, theSFI is moaning now that its rival rigged the polls!

Ides Of March
Friday was the first anniversary of the beastly firing on protesting farmers atNandigram by the Bengal police and armed CPI(M) goons. And a host oforganizations ranging from the Trinamool Congress to human rights bodies tookout a series of processions and rallies that choked Kolkata, putting to severeinconvenience and extreme harassment lakhs of citizens. Rallyists took over theroads and interminable traffic snarl-ups clogged Kolkata till well into theevening. Angry slogans were shouted and angrier speeches delivered. But what wasachieved at the end of the day? NOTHING. It was all a show of power, albeitwhatever little the opposition parties and apolitical outfits can lay claim to. 

Why is it that Kolkatans have to pay for all the acts of omission andcommission committed in any other part of not only Bengal, but the country andeven the world at large? Couldn't the Nandigram killings, condemnable as theincident was and filled with 'cold horror' (to borrow Governor GopalkrishnaGandhi's phrase) as we all were, have been observed in a less-intrusive manner?Seminars, silent demonstrations, exhibitions detailing the Nandigram horrors andmore could have been held and would have, I'm sure, done more in focusingattention not only on the March 14 incident at Nandigram, but also on thecontinuing violence and repression there by CPI(M) cadres. Holding an art camp,for instance, with participation from top artists who would have turned outcanvases on the Nandigram killings would have had a greater impact, I say, thana noisy and disruptive procession passing down Chowringee.

Airport Mess
Talking about Kolkata having to pay for incidents in faraway places, the recentstrike by Airports Authority of India (AAI) employees at airports all across thecountry to protest the imminent closure of the Bangalore and Hyderabad airportsleft the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International airport here theworst-affected among all airports in the country. Thanks to the high level ofunionization among employees here, the airport turned into a huge, stinkinggarbage dump in a matter of just a day. I've been told by people flying in fromacross the country that the airports there were hardly affected. I flew out ofGuwahati and none could tell, by the look of the airport, that the AAI employeeswere on strike there. Only at Kolkata did air passengers find stinking toilets,messy lobbies, absence of luggage trolleys and lack of other amenities as wellas belligerent, slogan-shouting and militant AAI employees taking outprocessions periodically. 

So why is it that Kolkata airport suffered so much? Because here, allemployees are highly unionized, are militant and care little for the convenienceof those (the air passengers) from whom they earn their ill-deserved salaries.What is all the more frustrating is that the AAI strike didn't achieve anypurpose; the existing airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore will definitely beshut down once their swankier private counterparts are opened soon. The old hasto give way to the new. It's unfortunate that the CPI(M)-affiliated CITU, whichled the AAI employees' protest, has never been able to face this reality.

Stinking Toilets
There has been a lot of hullabaloo in the Kolkata press over the AAI employeesstrike resulting in dirty toilets at the airport here. Air travelers will bebemused over this. Because, even during normal times, the toilets at Kolkataairport are dirty and stinking. Fact is, they're hardly ever cleaned and anycleaning that happens is, at best, perfunctory. Wash basins and porcelain tileson the walls bear betel leaf stains while cisterns in the loos would put eventhe ones at free public toilets to shame. Faucets leak and the floors are quiteoften slippery and unclean. The toilets at the Kolkata airport could easily passoff for ones at a sarkari office. So why blame the AAI employees' strike fordirty washrooms at the airport getting dirtier? What is always filthy merely gotfilthier.

Irresponsible Citizens
The strike also served to exposed the ugly side of Kolkata's citizenry. Evenafter knowing fully well that the AAI employees were on strike and wouldn'tclean the floors or empty the trash cans, air passengers threw paper cups,plates and empty packets of chips and other eatables on the floor. I sawhalf-eaten sandwiches strewn around at the departure lounge and nearly slippedon some coffee that a middle-aged Bengali woman had carelessly spilt on thefloor. I saw a young man with just a small briefcase rudely shoving away andgrabbing a luggage trolley from an elderly woman who had three bags with her.Another young couple kept watching their toddler son relieve himself on thefloor. A few pan-masala chewing folks spat into overflowing trash cans. It issaid that people's characters are revealed at times of crisis. The character ofKolkata's untidy citizens, whose lack of civic sense is well known, was on fulldisplay at the airport during the two days the AAI employees were on strike.Hadn't it been for us, our airport would have been far cleaner that it wasduring those two days.