Rainy Exposure and Red Monsoon!
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: alashchandrabiswas@gmail.com">palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com
First Rain of Mansoon exposed Ruling leftfront in Kolkata as Sonia Gandhi exposed the Brahminical marxists in New Delhi.Status report claims a calmer Nandigram and Peace remains far away from Nandigram contradicting official claims vehemently! Fresh violence rocks Nandigram once again, four policemen shot.
Advocate-General Mr Balai Ray who submitted a status report on the situation in Nandigram to Calcutta High Court Thursday told reporters that there had been a gradual improvement in the situation in recent weeks. Since 16 May no major incident had happened in the disturbed areas of Nandigram. While A fresh wave of violence rocked Nandigram nextday, on Friday as four policemen were injured, one of them seriously, in bomb blasts and firing allegedly by members of a Trinamool Congress-backed group opposing the acquisition of farm land for industry. This was the first major incident of violence in Nandigram since 14 people were killed in police firing and clashes on March 14.
Well, it is all over Red Monsoon in Bengal!
Marxist patriarch Comrade Jyoti Basu welcomes Pratibha Patil`s candidature for Raiseena Hills! While his party left no stone unturned to launch Pranab Mukherjee as the Next Brahmin President of India discarding both Basu and somnath Chatterjee!
Veteran CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu today hailed the selection of Rajasthan Governor Pratibha Patil as the UPA-Left candidate for the presidential election. The nonagenarian leader was speaking to reporters after attending a meeting of the party's state secretariat here.
"This is a wonderful choice. We could not imagine that a such wonderful thing could happen," Basu said when reporters sought his reaction on the possibility of the country getting its first woman president.
The West Bengal government has worked out an unbeatable compensation package for the farmers of Singur in lieu of the land acquired for the Tata Motors project, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) patriarch Jyoti Basu said Friday.The package, however, would be disclosed by Sen after hearing of a land acquisition case in the High Court on June 18, he said.
'The package worked out by Nirupam Sen (state industry minister) is something never seen before anywhere in India,' Basu said. But the Trinamool Congress refused to accept anything short of returning the plots.
'The package would be unveiled after June 18 because of a court hearing on Singur,' Basu said after the CPI-M's state committee meeting here.
Commenting on the Trinamool rejecting anything short of returning the land to the farmers who did not accept cheques, Basu said: 'Has Mamata Banerjee seen the package? How can she comment without seeing it?
'She (Mamata) has suggested availability of 600 acres of land across the road in Singur (for relocation of the project) but we found out that the land does not belong to the government. It belongs to individuals.'
Reacting to Basu's comments, Trinamool leader Saugato Roy said: 'We would not accept this. We demand return of original land inside the boundary wall of the Tata project to the unwilling farmers who were agitating for so many months holding on their beliefs. We stick to our stand.'
Citing legal handicaps, the West Bengal government Thursday said the opposition's demand for return of land acquired from unwilling farmers could not be met.
Mamata Banerjee in response vowed to intensify the fight for recovering the acquired land.
Basu, who held talks with Banerjee recently and pledged to look into the possibility of reorganising land given to Tata Motors, later said that land could not be returned but a handsome compensation package could be worked out.
The Basu-Mamata talks rekindled hopes of a political consensus on Singur and Nandigram, where trouble broke out afresh Friday with CPI-M workers and anti-acquisition villagers clashing over a planned special economic zone (SEZ).
A total of 997 acres of land in Singur, about 40 km from Kolkata in Hooghly district, have been chosen by Tata Motors for its small car project. The issue has triggered a violent face-off between the government and farmers led by civil society groups and parties like the Trinamool.
While some farmers committed suicide in Singur, at least 21 people have been killed, hundreds injured and several women raped in the continuing violence in Nandigram, about 150 km from here in East Midnapore district, since January.
Police fired two rounds in the air to ward off attackers from Sonachura, close to Nandigram, but this proved futile and firing allegedly by members of the Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee continued in two phases during the day, IGP (law and order) Raj Kanojia said here.
District Enforcement Branch Inspector Prabhat Kumar was critically injured when he was hit in the head by a bullet. He was brought to SSKM Hospital here for surgery. Three other policemen sustained bullet injuries. "The firing was carried out from along a canal bordering Nandigram and Khejuri. The police outpost at Bhangabera was attacked twice, at 8 am and at 1.30 pm," Kanojia said.
Tension also gripped Gokulnagar area in Nandigram early on Friday when some 1,500 students ransacked a police camp within a school to protest against the presence of police in the area for the past two months. The students were chased away by police.
Home Secretary P R Roy said Nandigram was in the grip of violence since this morning and the situation there was reviewed by Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee and state police chief A B Vohra at the state secretariat.
It was being ascertained whether people in a relief camp near Bhangabera or police at a nearby camp were the target of the firing, officials said.
Meanwhile dismissed is Basu Peace initiative! And Shahi Imam Bukhari carried Peace Message of nonviolent Gestapo Head Buddhadev to Nandigram. Returned empty handed!
Just Read and remember!
Kolkata, June. 11 (PTI): The agitation at Nandigram would end as the West Bengal Government has decided against acquiring farmland for industry there, the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari said today.
Bukhari who met Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for 70 minutes at the state secretariat said he had been assured that the state government was taking adequate administrative steps to ensure return of those rendered homeless at Nandigram in violence. "There is no need for anymore agitation."
He said that the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind's five month agitation for the cause of the Nandigram farmers had succeeded in forcing the state government to concede the demand of not acquiring land there any further.....
Got it?
The West Bengal government has already made it official that there’s no question of returning to unwilling farmers the land acquired for the Tata small car project at Singur. Nothing changes in Bengal. Not the geopolitics. Not the Economy. Not the society. Even the so much hyped Infrastructure, Capitalist dvelopment, indiscrimainate Industyrialisation and Urbanisation and IT could not change anything.Peasants living on the edges of this eastern metropolis are seething in anger at the world's longest serving provincial communist government which wants them to hand over their lush green farmlands for an automobile plant being set up by the Tata group, a flag bearer of capitalist enterprise in this country.
Cpim led Left front is nowhere involved in governance. It is always busy to feed its Gestapo plus scientific rigging machinery. It always plays tricks with Vote Bank. Law and order does not exist at all. maintaining Brahminical dominance is the greatest challange for the WB Capitalist marxist Government faced with Dalit Muslim United Peasants` movement with a glorious history.
Rainy day exposed the darinage in Kolkata. On the first day of the monsoon, accompanied by heavy showers, cyclone and thunderstorm, lashed the city today along with the other south Bengal districts ...Kolkata was reeling under heavy downpour that began late on Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning the city was waterlogged and the traffic was in a mess.The first Rainy Day claimed five lives in and around Kolkata and threw normal life out of gear as the southwest monsoon hit parts of Gangetic West Bengal on Wednesday. Large parts of the city went under water, disrupting road transport and affecting commuters. The heavy downpour lasted for about two hours in the morning. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had to change vehicles to reach the State headquarters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) due to flooding of roads. Mr. Bhattacharjee spoke to Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharjee and inquired of the steps being taken to flush out water from the streets. Two people were said to have been electrocuted in a flooded street in the northern part of the city
Maulana Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid, had visited Nandigram on June 12 of his own and not at the request of the West Bengal government, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee clarified to his cabinet colleagues on Thursday after some Left Front partners wanted to know why Bhattacharjee's name was being linked with the visit.
"He had come down to visit Nandigram on his own, but when he met me before going there, I explained the government's position to him," Bhattacharjee said.
We know the truth. Why did not the chiefminister contradrict the claims of the Imam Live on TV channels that he carried Chief Minister`s Peace Message? On Tuesday, when Bukhari went to Nandigram with a police escort, he had faced protests by the Bhoomi Uchched Protirodh Committee, which includes the Jamat-e-ulema Hind. The members shouted slogans alleging that Bukhari had been sent by the chief minister, and asked him to go back. Sources said that, at Thursday's cabinet meeting, after all items on the agenda had been discussed, public works minister Kshiti Goswami, a senior RSP leader, asked Bhattacharjee whether the government was behind Bukhari's visit to Nandigram. Minor irrigation minister Nandagopal Bhattacharya, a senior CPI leader, backed Goswami.
The chief minister, after clarifying that he had nothing to do with the Nandigram visit, said Bukhari had heard about the March 14 police firing in which 14 villagers opposed to land acquisition had been killed after a protest turned violent.
Well, CPIM is well exposed with its Muslim card. Only it could save its Woman Empowerment Crad tahnks to the meek subordination to the UPA President!
CPI (M) is responsible for the outbreak of fresh violence at Nandigram, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee alleged on Friday.Banerjee also alleged that people of the Nandigram area have not got justice for the March 14 "genocide".
"The attack by the CPI-M had been going on for the last three months. They are hurling bombs and firing on the people at Nandigram," she said.
When pointed out that a police officer was injured in the firing by the activists of anti-displacement Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) at Nandigram during the day, the TC supremo retorted that hundreds of people had suffered injuries in the attack by the CPI-M cadres.
"Whether it is the police or the common people, injury to anyone is not desirable," she said.
Meanwhile, Niranjan Sihi, chief of East Midnapore Zilla Parishad, accused BUPC of attacking the relief camps at Bhangabera where CPI-M supporters who had fled Nandigram, were lodged.
"They (BUPC) are accusing CPI-M, but engineering the violence in a planned way. They are doing this with an eye to the coming election to the civic body in Haldia (near Nandigram) and the panchayat poll next year," he alleged.
On 3 May, the High Court had directed the state to take certain steps to restore normalcy in Nandigram. The government had been asked to restore the ferry service between Nandigram and Haldia. The status report says that the ferry service had been resumed since 8 May.
The state government had been directed by the High Court to ensure that there was no obstruction to the people of Nandigram and other adjoining areas going to markets, marts, schools and colleges. The status report says that the educational institutions are functioning and marts, markets and shops are open.
The High Court had directed the state to ensure free and adequate medical assistance to the victims of the carnage at Nandigram and the adjoining villages. The status report says that after the police firing of 14 March adequate and free medical assistance had been extended to the victims at Janka PHC, Nandigram BPHC, Tamluk District Hospital and the SSKM Hospital. Immediate medical care had also been extended to the injured persons after the incident of 29 April. During the entire period of disturbance since January, medical care, both preventive and curative, had been extended from the health sub-centres in the affected gram panchayats of Nandigram.
The High Court order had stated that a large number of people had been rendered homeless and without any means of sustenance. The Government should supply free ration to the affected families ~ rice, wheat, kerosene and other essential commodities. The status report says that the Department of Disaster Management had sanctioned 54 MT of rice, a sum of Rs 4,75,200 as matching cost and Rs 6 lakh as contingency.
The status report further says that roads, culverts and bridges in the affected areas have been restored temporarily and there is no blockade on any road at present. The report states that since 16 May the situation in Nandigram and the surrounding areas has remained largely peaceful though there have been a number of minor incidents which were tackled by the local administration.
The district magistrate, Purba Medinipur, has informed the state government that there is a general agreement among all local political parties about the need for rehabilitation of displaced people of both groups who have been displaced from their houses. Such rehabilitation under the supervision of the police and the general administration has started since 6 June. About 4,000 people have been rendered homeless because of violent clashes between rival political parties in Nandigram. It is expected that the situation will be further normalised in another week or so. Ten writ petitions on Nandigram filed by different parties praying for appropriate orders have been bunched up. The Division Bench of the Chief Justice, Mr SS Nijjar and Mr Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose will start hearing the case tomorrow.
Marxists claim to follow the Chinese line! What is Chinese line ,dear?
CHINA: Food First, Not Fuel
By Antoaneta Bezlova
Credit:morgueFile.com
BEIJING, Jun 15 (IPS) - A customary Chinese greeting from the years of rations and shortages -- "have you eaten yet" -- is being jokingly resurrected here as the public watches the prices of key staples, particularly pork, soaring by the day.
Chinese economic minders however, are not amused. Worried about social instability fuelled by inflation, they have been mulling over whether to steady prices by using the state strategic reserve of hundreds of thousands of live pigs kept at special farms for contingencies.
Disturbingly, this is the second time in six months that the Chinese leadership has had to resort to the country's strategic reserves to stave off politically dangerous increases in food prices. In December, Beijing ordered the auctioning of some of the state wheat reserves to halt the rise in crops prices and prevent panic among the public.
"Almost every inflationary crisis in the last 20 years has begun with an increase in food prices," notes Xia Yeliang, professor of economics at Beijing University. "Historically Chinese people have always regarded food as their first necessity. For people of middle age and elderly the memories of most recent times when food was lacking still endure."
The last big famine China experienced -- arguably the greatest in human history -- during the disastrous Great Leap Forward experiment with communist industrialisation in late 1950s, killed up to 30 million people. Since then, ensuring food sufficiency for the country's population of 1.3 billion has been regarded by Chinese leaders as a matter of national security.
Current hikes in grain and pork prices are blamed on the same culprit -- the ethanol industry, whose explosive growth has been gobbling up a growing share of China's corn harvest traditionally preserved for food and animal feed.
Having promoted the production of the environmentally-friendly gasoline additive for years, Chinese economic planners now fear the sector has grown too much and too quickly, presenting them with an uncomfortable dilemma of choosing between the country's green agenda and its national food security.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38186
Singur fuels unrest at IISCO site
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Burnpur, June 14: Villagers of Purushottampur in Burnpur today prevented IISCO authorities from taking possession of about 240 acres acquired in 1989, demanding compensation to match that of Singur.
The villagers’ resistance has blocked work on the Rs 10,000-crore expansion and modernisation of the IISCO steel plant in the Asansol sub-division.
About 350 families of Purushottampur argue that the compensation they got in 1989 for their non-agricultural land was inadequate. They are now demanding revised compensation to match that of Singur and also a job for a member from each family at the plant.
“Singur and Nandigram have shown us the way. We will give our land only on our terms,” said Akhil Chandra, a 40-year-old grocer and member of the Purushottampur Land-Losers’ Committee.
The villagers moved the high court in January. On June 11, the court dismissed the committee’s petition challenging the legality of the acquisition. Today, about 200 villagers chased out executives of the steel plant when, armed with the high court order, they went to inspect the site, about 250 km from Calcutta.
IISCO has paid the government Rs 40 crore for 305 acres in the Purushottampur, Nagrasoda and Hirapur mouzas. “We paid the government Rs 88 lakh as advance in 1989. We paid another Rs 39.12 crore in September 2006,” said an IISCO official.
Asansol sub-divisional officer A.P. Roy said: “We started distributing compensation cheques to the villagers from September 2006. The land-losers of Nagrasoda and Hirapur accepted the cheques but those of Purushottampur refused.”
Mangalore: Villagers Oppose Acquisition of Land for SEZ
Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (MM/RD)
Mangalore, Jun 14: The residents of Permude and nearby villagers of Kuttettur and Yekkar have shown strong resistance to land acquisition process related to setting up Special Economic Zone (SEZ). A meeting was called at Hunsekatte, St.Xavier?s School to chalk out the policy and modalities of protest. Over 300 villagers attended the meeting to discuss this issue.
Moreover, the residents expressed their dissatisfaction over not having been given reasonable time to file their objections against the land acquisition.However, the villagers have strongly committed not to sacrifice their land for setting up SEZ and accordingly decided to fight against land acquisition.
INDIA: Land Developers Eye Top Cultural Campus
By Keya Acharya
SANTINIKETAN, West Bengal, Jun 13 (IPS) - Intellectuals in this famous university town founded by nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore, 210 km from Kolkata, have taken the state government to court for defacing its unique cultural and environmental heritage in the name of development.
An open-air 3,000-acre autonomous university with a history of internationally famous faculty and alumni, including another Indian nobel laureate, the economist, Amartya Sen, Santiniketan's rugged natural beauty have inspired Tagore and several famous artists and scholars since its inception in 1921.
Santiniketan is also a popular tourist destination which includes Tagore's university, now called Visva Bharati.
But the government-run Santiniketan-Sriniketan Development Authority (SSDA)'s slew of major housing and commercial projects is causing anguish among Bengali intellectuals.
"This is just part of the state government's pattern of development that is causing such distress in West Bengal," says Partha Ghose, retired faculty of Visva Bharati, now with the Bose National Centre of Basic Sciences at Kolkata.
West Bengal's leftist government caused a national uproar in January this year with its bid to forcefully acquire 14,000 acres of agricultural land in Nandigram in Midnapore district for an Indonesian industrial conglomerate, the Selim Group.
The land was to be acquired under India's new and controversial Special Economic Zones (SEZs) wherein the government gives lands at lower-than-market rates with tax exemptions and large incentives to industry.
West Bengal's Marxist government, in power for over 30 years, is now trying to ‘develop' the state's low performance index by inviting private industrial ventures with various incentives that are dispossessing rural populations.
In 2005, the state government gave 25 acres of agricultural land in Bhangur, 25 km from the capital city Kolkata, to the Selim group for a road and real-estate venture. Protests from local farmers over their poor rehabilitation package went largely unheeded.
In the same year, the government gave 1,000 acres of farmland at Singur, 40 km from Kolkata, to the giant Tata group for a car-manufacturing plant.
Protests from farmers and ‘bargadars' or sharecroppers developed into a state-wide agitation led by opposition Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, with violence and police repression ensuing. Discussions over those sharecroppers who have lost out are still continuing.
In Nandigram, reports of police brutality on agitating farmers unwilling to give up fertile lands has led to a series of heated debates in parliament over the government's handling of the issue.
The matter is still to be resolved, in spite of the state chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya conceding the acquisition to be a "mistake". Farmers have yet to receive their official papers declaring the lands as having been returned.
"This is not the first time that police brutality has happened in this so-called leftist, socialist State," says Magsasay award-winning activist and writer, Mahasweta Devi.
Devi has taken the government to court in Santiniketan over their planned filling up of a 17.7acre, centuries-old water body called ‘Lahabandh', traditionally accessed by local people and home to several bird species. The government wants to turn the pond into a commercial entertainment park.
"The present condition of Lahabandh, which is already partially filled, will unfortunately not allow surface run-off during these monsoons," rues Sushanta Tagore, grandson of Rabindranath.
"What is the value of Tagore's name and its value for India, if the cultural ethos of what he built is being defaced ?" asks Devi. Sushanta Tagore and 14 others including famous writers, film-makers, artistes and activists have also gone to court charging the local development body with encroaching university land and with indiscriminate construction that is destroying the purpose of establishing Santiniketan.
India's Supreme Court, which heard Tagore's appeal, has ordered that Santiniketan's future land-use plans be sensitive to Tagore's ideals, as well as obey environmental laws.
The court however, did not halt construction already underway, which encouraged Bengal Ambuja, a real estate company in collaboration with the local authorities, to continue with their project. The university has blocked access to the site through its campus.
Mahasweta Devi now spearheads a citizens' campaign called ‘All of Us‘ to halt construction activity on the land. "This new campaign spearheaded by Mahasweta Devi has infused youth and encouraged me to continue fighting this terrible defacement", says Tagore's grandson.
Santiniketan however is seeing an unprecedented rise in tourism and urbanisation that is spearheading real estate interest in the place. "I am apprehensive about environmental fallouts from all this rapid urbanization,'' worries Ghose. (END/2007)
“This is an interim economy”
Interview with Baburam Bhattarai in Abhiyan, 11-17 June
http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/353/FromtheNepaliPress/13631
Abhiyan: Has there been any change in your party’s economic policy now that you are in parliamentary politics?
Baburam Bhattarai: First of all your vocabulary is all wrong. We haven’t joined parliamentary politics, we are in a transition phase through an interim parliament. Our destination is a transformation of the state through the constituent assembly election. And just like we are in an interim government, we are also in an interim economy.
What is your party’s view on foreign direct investment?
Our economy needs to be oriented towards self-sufficiency, self-respect, and industrial capitalism. For this we need to lay the foundation by mobilising national capital and using local labour and markets. We are not against FDI, it could complement our efforts. But FDI needs to be in the national interest. We don’t think Nepal’s economy can grow unless we can completely uproot feudalism and imperialism and replace it with national industrial capitalism.
You have put forward a populist land reform program but, instead of trying to get it through parliament, you are forcibly taking over private property.
These are lies propagated by a class of well-heeled, feudal, servile middlemen. If you look at world history a new foundation has never been possible without forcibly demolishing the old state structure. You can’t make minor repairs on a tottering old house and convert it into a skyscraper. Similarly, you can’t build a new economy without destroying an old one. We have been destroying for the past ten years, and done the right thing. But we aren’t finished yet. We are now protecting our achievements of the past through a peaceful campaign.
Hasn’t the violent enforcement of bandas, hartals and other disruptions by organisations affiliated with your party ruined the economy?
It’s a mistake to say these measures are ruining the economy. Annual economic growth in the past 50 years has barely been more than two percent. You forget about the past 50 years and to hide that non-performance blame our movement?
What do you say about complaints from businesses that the YCL is creating a negative business climate?
That’s completely wrong. The well-to-do who are being discarded by the people are spreading this disinformation to hide the real truth. The YCL is a political grouping that is doing some important work trying to help development and social service.
Like what?
The YCL widened the Kalanki road, it demolished illegal construction on the Ring Road, it cleaned up the streets. It has caught smugglers. Isn’t this development work? The corrupt are panicking and blaming the YCL for high-handedness.
How about the YCL setting fire to government buildings, destroying government property, and beating up civil servants?
If you don’t see the hundred good things we do and only highlight one weakness, I have nothing to say...
How are you managing your costs? How much are Maoist leaders paid and where do you get the money from?
We have a regular levy, we do farming, we work. We have collectivised our personal property and we also request sympathetic businessmen to make political contributions.
Shouldn’t you be transparent about how these monies are raised and how they are spent?
We don’t see the need to. If our main leaders have not kept any personal property and they live lives at the same level as the people, this issue of misuse doesn’t arise.
Apparently you haven’t yet accounted for money you got for cantonment management.
That is disinformation propagated by corrupt people of the likes of Ram Sharan Mahat and those who remain in power by being middlemen for foreign forces. We have kept all the accounts and we will make them public when the time comes.
Foreign investment has dried up and everyone is in wait-and-see mode. They say they have to pay taxes not just to the government but also to the Maoists.
It is wrong to blame us for the lack of foreign investment. These are accusations made by a feudal smuggling class that doesn’t want domestic industrial capitalism to thrive.
You say you have to resolve politics before the economy can be mended. But what if it takes years?
We are the only party that is convinced that there will be no political, economic, and social change without ending the 250 year-old feudal monarchy and bringing in a people’s republic. The monarchy hasn’t ended yet and palace forces still control the economy. It is 50 years too late to end the monarchy. But once that happens we can launch this country into long-term development and in the next 15-20 years we can transform this country into, I wouldn’t say Switzerland, but at least the most-developed in South Asia.
Even West Bengal has given up on communism and is welcoming foreign investment. Isn’t there a lesson there?
West Bengal is a part of a larger capitalist entity that is India. That is why West Bengal’s communists weren’t able to transform the state. There will never be peace or development until there is an end to feudalism and imperialism in the world. That is why the world needs to move towards socialism.
Unchanging Kolkata
Hiranmay Karlekar
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist&file_name=karlekar%2Fkarlekar133.txt&writer=karlekar
Despite the flyovers and all that, Kolkata remains where it was. Or does it?
At a seminar recently in Kolkata, a respected senior colleague, Mr Ajit Bhattacharjea, referred appreciatively to how the city had changed since he had been to it eight years ago. He referred, among other things, to the way traffic was moving. It warmed my heart. I remain fiercely loyal to the city despite over three decades of expatriate life in Delhi.
In the course of its chequered existence, Kolkata has had many detractors and many labels, some not terribly complimentary. Thus Rudyard Kipling, once an assistant editor with The Pioneer, called it "the proud and pestilential town". Yes, town. It was then nowhere near the megalopolis it is now. Jawaharlal Nehru called it "the city of processions", and his grandson Rajiv Gandhi, "a dying city" - also from a prime ministerial perch. Dominique Lapierre gave it another moniker, The City of Joy. The latest is, "City of Flyovers".
One does not know whether it will stick. Labels have unpredictable lives; crystal-gazing about their unfolding is as hazardous a business as making a poll forecast. But let that be. At present, Kolkata's new label, afloat in the air, is occasionally downloaded as much at the historic College Street Coffee House - now intellectually in rather straitened circumstances - as at the Calcutta and Bengal Clubs, in mushrooming restaurants bursting at the seams with those on the make or have made it lately, and, of course, wherever loquacious Bengalis collect over cups of tea and under an overhang of cigarette smoke.
As one might have already guessed, the latest nomenclature comes from the flyovers that now mark the city, with the one from Park Circus to the Victoria Memorial being the longest. There is now a Gariahat Flyover that goes over Rashbehary Avenue, another that lifts Chowringhee Road over the Park Street-Mayo Road crossing, and another that takes off from the VIP Road, vaults over it and continues as the Rajarhat Bypass to the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, as Kolkata Airport is known today. One can go on mentioning other ones, but that will be at the risk of taxing the patience of all uninterested in Kolkata's urban geography. Suffice it to say, quite a few flyovers have sprouted and more are supposed to be on the drawing board.
The question arises: Have the flyovers, or the other great symbol of Kolkata's resurgence, the metro rail, made a difference to the city's life? Traffic moves faster than eight years ago, though most streets remain narrow and vastly more numerous cars, two-wheelers, lorries, buses and auto-rickshaws now speed in all directions. Has easier mobility altered the city's ethos, at the heart of which lies a creative response through the arts and a visceral proneness toward dialectical disputation?
C
