Kolkata Korner

Bloodshed, Again
January 6 was the third shutdown Bengal witnessed in four months. The reasonthis time was the police firing on riotous Forward Bloc activists that left fiveof them dead. Yes, the police should have gone strictly by the rulebook andissued enough warnings before opening fire. Yes, the cops should have firedbelow the waist with the intention of injuring and dispersing the mob, insteadof killing people. But all said and done, the fact remains--and we all saw thaton our TV screens--that these political activists were hell bent on creatingtrouble. They were carrying cans filled with petrol and kerosene and were armedwith lethal weapons. People who intend to march peacefully (as the Forward Blocleaders are now claiming) to submit a memorandum don't go with fuel-filled cansand weapons. 

The police, as much as we may accuse them now of being trigger-happy, firedonly when the 10,000-strong mob torched two police vehicles and was about tooverrun, ransack and perhaps set ablaze a government office. The fact is thatthe police had no option but to open fire. Forward Bloc activists have, over thepast few months, ransacked many government offices and destroyed governmentproperties; there were thus genuine grounds for the police to fear that theseruffians would go berserk. That they fired above the waist and not below it is amatter of academic debate; for a policeman facing a murderous mob, shoutingwarnings, kneeling down, taking aim below the waist and firing (the properprocedure, according to the rulebook) would be well nigh impossible. Those whoargue otherwise should put themselves in the cops' shoes.

Legacy Shamed
For the Forward Bloc to continue to lay claim to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose'slegacy is shameful and unjustified. Bose was a patriot, he fought against theBritish rulers. Those who claim to be the inheritors of his ideology have shownthemselves to be a band of hooligans who destroy government properties andindulge in shameful anti-social acts. Bose raised a disciplined force to fightthe British; these Forward Bloc activists are a rag-tag bunch of louts. On theday of the bandh, and for many weeks preceding it, these hooligans ransackedgovernment offices, stoned government buses and took the law into their hands.That the enforcers of the law allowed them to do so only emboldened them. 

The point here is that they had destroyed properties, or assets, bought withthe taxpayers' money. Money that we folks paid to the government. I'm sure noneof these Forward Bloc leaders or activists pay a single paise as tax. What rightdo they have to destroy furniture, computers, buses etc bought with our money?We, the taxpayers, ought to demand that the Forward Bloc (and any other partywhich indulges in similar acts) be held responsible and forced to cough updamages and a stiff penalty; that is the only way they can be taught a lessonand made to think twice before hurling a brick at the windshield of a governmentbus or ransack a government office ever again. But getting back to Netaji, I'msure he'd have disowned the Forward Bloc had he been alive (with apologies toall those who assert he's alive and kicking).

Oddballs
Doddering, decrepit old men who can't walk without support, spewing rhetoric andinanities and hell-bent on keeping Bengal as the last, impoverished bastion ofcommunism. That is what most of the Forward Bloc (why on earth do they claim tobe 'forward' at all?) leaders come across as--anachronistic, dogmatic,anti-development and stumbling blocks in the path of Bengal's acceleratedprogress. They don't want entry of retail chains into Bengal, they don't wantunrestricted flow of investments into the state, they don't want farmlands to betaken over for industries, commercial or housing purposes, they want free watersupply for ever, they're opposed to hikes in user charges for electricity,transport and all other services, they're opposed to private groups setting upeducational institutions in the state, they don't want the Tatas to set up thesmall car plant at Singur, they want all sick (public sector) industrial unitsto be revived (irrespective of their viability), and they want income tax andother taxes to be hiked exponentially. In short, the Forward Bloc stands foreverything that Bengal doesn't want to be. It is for status quo and wants tokeep Bengal backward. Does a party like this have any place in a BuddhadebBhattacharjee's 'resurgent' Bengal?

Petty Parochialism
Earlier this week, all TV news channels were running stories on Raj Thackeray'scriticism of Amitabh Bachchan and north Indians. One evening, after surfing thenational news channels, I started watching a Bengali channel that wasbroadcasting a discussion on the Kolkata Book Fair (yes, this is still the topicof discussion on Bengali TV channels at least). The anchor, a well-known andsenior mediaperson who was associated with a leading Bengali daily, was deridingthe Publishers' & Booksellers' Guild, the organizers of the Kolkata BookFair. Nothing wrong with that, except for the point that he was choosing tohighlight: that about eight to nine members of the Guild (out of the 32-odd)were non-Bengalis who have been voting en bloc for the present lot ofoffice-bearers of the Guild who are close to the CPI(M). The Guild'soffice-bearers, in turn, help their supporters (the non-Bengalis) get contractsand undue favours from the government. 

Thus, the non-Bengali members of the Guild were acting against the Guild's,and booklovers', larger interests; the anchor went on to dub the Guild as anon-Bengali body promoting the interests of non-Bengalis and asked the panelistsif they thought it was proper for the state government to extend support to sucha body in organizing the book fair every year. Would any other state do thesame? he asked. I was aghast at this shameless display of narrow-mindedness,parochialism and chauvinism. And I realized that there was little differencebetween the rabble-rousing Raj Thackeray and this senior mediaperson whodisplays airs of intellectualism and sophistication. Chauvinists and parochialpersons exist in every state; in Bengal, they pose as intellectuals. 

Out Of Reach
The bird flu has hit us hard. Taking advantage of the paucity of chicken andfowl and people's aversion to consuming poultry, butchers have hiked prices ofgoat meat ('mutton', as most call it erroneously) by as much as 40 percent.Worse still, one has to wait in a queue to procure this meat. Till the outbreakof this flu, my meat seller at Gariahat market was a decent, well-behaved,solicitous man who would spot me from a few hundred metres away, hail me andsweet-talk me into buying at least some quantity of meat; he would offer me anyportion of my choice. He used to get his helpers to deliver meat at my doorstep.And I was only one among many, many of his regular customers to be accorded suchtreatment. Today, he talks in monosyllables at the best of times; most of thetime, he's gruff and curt and couldn't care less if a customer doesn't like themeat he's weighing for him--take it or leave it, he says. He refuses anypreferential treatment to regular customers. 

He used to sell the meat at Rs 190 a kg, it's Rs 240 a kg now and he sayshe's doing us a favour by selling it less than many others who're charging up toRs 280 a kg. I waited for 35 minutes by my watch in the queue to get my share ofthe assorted pieces that he throws my way. Home delivery? Was I joking? This isthe flip side, I guess, of allowing market forces a free run and at times likethese, one really wishes there would be some control on unscrupulous practices.By the way, residents of Midnapore are a luckier lot--their municipal bosseshave issued a decree against such hikes in prices of goat meat and violatorshave had their licences cancelled. Can't our Mayor do the same, too, instead ofwasting his time on the lost cause that the Kolkata Book Fair has become thisyear?

No Foresight
Eastern India's biggest mall--the South City mega mall on Prince Anwar ShahRoad--was inaugurated with a lot of fanfare a few days ago. It's become anightmare for everyone now. An additional 2000 cars that descend on Prince AnwarShah Road to make their way to the mall have become too much for the road tobear. Once people move into the upscale housing complex adjacent to the mall,the additional vehicles would result in complete chaos on the road. A portion ofthe mall has encroached onto the road and had to be demolished. Now, cityplanners and the traffic police have concluded that a flyover has to beconstructed to ease congestion on the road. The promoters of themall-cum-condominium have offered to bear a portion of the cost of constructingthe flyover. 

Why is it that those who gave permission for constructing this mall andhousing complex never factored in the increase in volume of traffic on thearterial Prince Anwar Shah Road? Isn't that a deplorable and unacceptable lackof foresight on the part of those who're supposed to possess such faculties andplan ahead? Unfortunately for us in Kolkata, this is not a one-off case. Lack offoresight characterizes every large project that has taken off in the city. Infact, over the last three decades, all physical growth that has taken place inthe city has been totally unplanned, unscientific and haphazard. Those whooccupy posts of city planners are paid by taxpayers' money. It's high time thenthat we, the taxpayers, hold them accountable for their deeds. And in the caseof South City Mall, those who gave the clearances for this project ought to beissued show-cause notices immediately and penalized stiffly for their idiocy.

Chinatown
Kolkata's Chinatowns (there are two--Tangra and Teretti Bazar) are perhaps theworst spots in the city in terms of civic amenities--old, dilapidated andunattractive edifices look down on potholed and cratered streets lined bystinking, overflowing drains. But both these areas, and more so Tangra, areinhabited by quite affluent people (the Chinese) and yield a lot of revenue tothe state. Tangra has a large number of eateries and watering holes (someillicit, though) that draw a large number of people, most of them well-heeled,who flock to the place for authentic (or the nearest to it that you generallyget in India) Chinese dishes. The apparent and abject neglect of these two areasby Kolkata's civic authorities is, thus, inexplicable and deplorable.

Now, it appears, things are set for a welcome change. Plans are being drawnup to revamp both these spots. The exteriors of all structures is proposed to bere-fashioned with Chinese-style facades; signages in Mandarin and largeChinese-style gateways would be erected. The economies of these spots would alsobe given a boost with shops selling Chinese goods and knick-knacks, schoolsteaching Mandarin and even Chinese martial arts training schools being set up.Tangra and Teretti Bazar would then become tourist hotspots and would not onlyshowcase, but also arrest the decline of, Kolkata's once-thriving cosmopolitanculture. Let's hope these two mega projects don't get caught in bureaucraticred-tape or fall victim to short-sightedness of our planners, like so manyambitious projects in Kolkata have. 

Made in China
Saraswati Puja will be celebrated on Monday (Feb 11) and many markets andpavement stalls are selling idols of the Goddess in various shapes and sizes.Not all, however, are clay idols made by Bengal's artisans; the ones in demandare made of tough plastic, are more attractive and imported. From China. Theysport beautiful miniature ornaments and attractive brocade sarees. The onlydrawback is that the idols from China have Mongoloid features. But that sort ofmakes them cuter and adds to their novelty factor. So is Prakash Karat's dreamof making India a vassal of China on the road to fruition, now that we'vestarted worshipping China-made Gods and Goddesses?