Calcutta Corner

The Maoist Virus

Whenever there is a political murder in the vicinity of Lalgarh – and there have been quite a few in the last couple of weeks – some journalists get SMS texts in their inboxes. The messages are signed off by the Maoist leader Bikas. Days before the joint West Bengal-Centre operations began in Lalgarh to recapture Jungle Mahal from Maoist control in June, it was Bikas who spoke to the press, face covered, back to television cameras, an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. None of the other militants of this underground outfit have made any public appearance lately. After Operation Lalgarh, initially they had all retreated to the jungles bordering Bengal and Jharkhand. There was no way to reach them for comment unless they decided to get in touch with you. Texts arrived from their hideouts at odd hours of the day and night. But if you tried calling on the same number immediately after, it would be switched off. The police and the paramilitary were hot on their trails. The Maoists knew that. The last thing that they wanted was to be traced via satellite. “It is dangerous to call from the battlefield,” said one SMS in late June, around the time when the joint forces announced their plans to comb the forests after successfully ‘recapturing’ Lalgarh.

But a little more than a month later, they are back. The Maoists, that is. And they are on a killing spree. Right under the noses of the joint forces, as it were. And they are no longer targeting only members of the Communist Party of India (Marxists), but also police and paramilitary forces. In one SMS this week the Maoists took responsibility for dragging a man out of his house in the middle of the night, taking him to a paddy field and butchering him. The text:

“He was a CPIM supporter and a police informer. Last night we delivered justice by serving on him the ultimate punishment. With everyone’s consent we got rid of him.”

The state government has come out and confessed that the “second phase” of the operations has been a failure. If the first phase was all about entering the area and establishing their presence, in the second phase they were supposed to flush out and capture the Maoists. Instead, it is the Maoists who are on a rampage. They seem to be operating like a mutant virus, having adjusted to the strength of dosage administered by the joint forces, they have grown immune to it and turned more virulent.

Choti and Genji Police

What are ‘choti police’ and ‘genji police’? These are two phrases coined last week by Trinamool Chief and union railway minister Mamata Banerjee. At the time of the Nandigram massacre in March 2007, CPIM cadres allegedly entered the area dressed up as police and opened fire on the local people protesting land acquisition. Apparently, the dead giveaway was the chappals (‘choti’ in Bengali) they wore on their feet.

Late last week, when TMC leaders held a political rally in Burdwan, men in police uniform lathi-charged and tear-gassed the crowd that had gathered at the venue and dragged speakers off the stage, tugging at their hair and ears. Banerjee, who was not present at the scene, watched the entire spectacle on TV. Alleging that the men who roughed up her party workers were CPIM goons disguised as police, she pointed out that they wore white ‘genjis (Bengali for undershirts) instead of the standard police khaki shirts. Banerjee has accused the CPIM of handing out police jobs to its own party members who freely lend out their police uniforms to thugs.

Hashi and Khusi

Who are Hashi and Khusi? To describe her equal commitment to industry and agriculture for the state of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee called agriculture Hashi (“laughter”) and industry, her twin sister Khushi (“happiness”). And the state’s Communists, who for all these years, relished every chance to poke fun at the quaint little things she says, let this one pass. Looks like the election took more than a few parliamentary seats away from the Communists. It has taken away their Hashi and their Khushi.

Monkey Business

Earlier this week, Calcutta woke up to front page headlines about eight rare monkeys that had been stolen from the city’s only (and the country’s oldest) zoological garden, the Alipore Zoo. The first thing I wondered was: What a strange thing for anyone to want to steal! Why on earth would anyone want to steal even one monkey, let alone eight? What would they do with the monkeys? Where would they hide them? What would they feed them? Sure, you still see the odd ‘monkey-man’ roaming the streets of Calcutta with his little primate friend on a leash, dressed up in little girls’ clothes, performing sundry monkey-tricks for small change. But it’s a dying occupation and certainly not the sort of thing you can do inconspicuously – at least not with 8 exotic Brazilian specimen stolen from the prized collection of a celebrated local institution. Surely, someone smart enough to pull off the heist is smart enough to know that.

As it turns out, these monkeys are probably headed, not for the local streets, but for the global market in unusual wildlife. The stolen animals are reported to be a rare breed of the Common Marmoset (Callithrix jacchus). In 2001, a pair of the Marmoset was brought to the zoo from the Delhi Institute of Immunology for breeding. In eight years they had 14 offspring, including the stolen eight. These are tiny creatures, about 14 to 18 cm tall and – with a diet of spiders and other insects – relatively inexpensive to keep. But if sold on the international market, each could fetch approximately Rs 1.5 lakh. Police suspect that a gang trading in illegal wildlife was behind the theft. But how did someone pull-off the break-in despite the security around the cages and the creatures’ well-known propensity for biting and screaming? Zoo authorities speculate that the thieves, possibly with help from bribed zoo employees, cut a hole into the wire mesh, drugged the animals, put them in a sack and fled. Or they may have patiently cased the area, waiting for that opportune moment when the cage may have been left briefly unattended during the changing of the guards between shifts.

Incidentally, the Alipore zoo is no stranger to breaches in security. The monkey theft, although potentially very expensive, is hardly the most dramatic. For instance, several years ago, a drunk man swam across the moat around a tiger’s enclosure, climbed over the wire fencing and tried to garland the beast until he was mauled to death by it. By comparison, the current incident is just a bit of monkey-business.

Fake Greens

For the average Calcutta commuter the choice is between the devil and the deep blue sea. Either die slowly of pollution in your lungs or pray for death to deliver you from the interminable wait for some kind of conveyance to get you home. For years, the Calcutta High Court has been issuing orders, at the behest of anti-pollution lobbies in the city, for the state government to ban autos, buses and cabs that don’t conform to certain pollution-control standards. The state government has managed to get stays on these orders on a number of occasions citing ‘vast numbers of job loss’ as reason for delay.

It’s been argued that switching to the new standards is a cumbersome process and often too expensive for ordinary drivers and transport sector workers to afford. It’s been argued that if implemented, the new standards would throw thousands of auto, taxi and bus drivers – and conductors – out of work. So all these jobs were preserved, pollution continued to rise and Calcutta’s population breathed uneasy.

Finally the Supreme Court issued an order directing the state government to actually impose the ban. The deadline was July 31. Any vehicle on the road that’s more than 15 years old and found to be pollution-causing would be confiscated. Ever since, thousands of autos, taxis and buses went off the road. Those autos which had converted to the LPG system and painted green and yellow were few in number and certainly not enough to support the city’s vast commuting public. Each day the streets of Calcutta are virtual battlefields with hundreds of stranded commuters pushing, shoving and jostling each other to get into the rare auto, bus or taxi that comes along. The drivers of these are capitalizing on their advantage and charging exorbitant fares. Last heard, some of the older two-stroke auto models which run on a toxic fuel called ‘katatel’ are painting themselves green and yellow to pass themselves off as LPG models.