I live at Kolkata. It’s the capital city of West Bengal. The city of cultural heritage, political resurgence, spiritual rejuvenation. The Mecca of football. The city which stood tall during the freedom struggle of India. The city that gave India its first Oscar and most number of Nobel Prizes. The Land where both National Song and National Anthem was composed. The city of art, literature and cinematography. The city where you can get lost in the greenery of the Maidan in the morning and reclaim yourself in the Ganga Ghats at night. The city that always stands up for right. It will take ages to describe the beauty, culture and history of the city.
But is everything so good? Had everything been perfect in here? Let us find out. There was issue of electricity till the 90’s but after that electricity production increased and even though there are incidents of power cuts in the summer months but nothing much to complain.
So, are the roads good? We have issues of water logging during the rainy seasons, the streets also get broken after rains. But as a whole, conditions had improved. Parks and streets are decorated with light. Its gives a spectacular sight if you are coming from Howrah to Kolkata in a cab during the night.
We have slums too, but not as huge as Mumbai.
So, what’s really the problem in Kolkata? Well, Kolkata is a metro city and it is the gateway of Eastern India. People from North East India and Bihar, Uttar Pradesh Orissa come in and settle here in search of job. And sadly, we don’t have enough jobs to support the entire ethnic population and the migraters from other states. Hence, there is an issue of unemployment.
The reason behind unemployment had been a certain kind of politics, that had been encouraged in Kolkata and Bengal that causes disruption of land and property and had forced industries to decline. Sometime after Independence we forgot that we are free now and continued with the same type of protests as in Civil Disobedience Movement. The movements like strikes in factories, in the name of welfare for workers had led to a state where the poorly surviving industries got bankrupted and had to wrap up its business, thereby causing unemployment for workers in large number. Newer ventures are still afraid of the political vandalization in Kolkata so they are reluctant to set up new plants and projects in Kolkata and adjoining areas. We have historically failed to invite and introduce new industries here. We have huge populations of unemployed engineers and other higher educated people, who just after getting a degree tries to migrate to other states like Bangalore or Mumbai or in some foreign destinations. There by decreasing the good skilled professionals in the state and city. That would lead to poor production eventually. Just few days back we have someone possessing master degree committed suicide because he got a job of house maid. We also have PHD applicant for the post of crematorium caretaker. Lesser educated people joins politics to earn their living by gaining certain benefits like permissions for supplying bricks, sands and cements to any new constructions, no matter how small or big the construction may be. This eventually lead to certain state where whenever any property owner either tries to sell his property or create a new construction people gears up, threatens them and forces them to either purchase raw martials of compromised quality from them in much higher price or the owners are threatened to sell their property to promoters or builders as suggested to them.
Then there is an issue of syndicate. Whereby any new business set up is being forced to acquire manual labor resources for their organization according to the will of any political parties.
So, having a political background or a political shelter under banner of any political party proves much helpful, which in turn lead to another situation, “Political Violence”.
Living organisms thrives for power. They want to establish themselves as driving force. And in such condition where they are being encouraged things get more complicated. We see dogs fight each other for area control. Same thing is practiced here by political parties, where by to gain certain advantages political parties tries to establish a strong hold in certain areas which lead to clashes between rival parties and at times between rivals among two gangs of same political parties. Victim of this political violence had always maintained high number in the state and city.
This game of gaining political supremacy don’t stop even in educational institutes. Private colleges may not be a part of the game but the colleges that are been run on government aid falls victims in this play.
Lack of jobs means lack of engagement in constructive thought process. And an ideal mind is devil’s workshop. It had been witnessed that long after pass out many students don’t leave college hostels and campuses. They may be seen loitering in the campuses and hostel grounds engaging themselves in non- productive stuff. They act as an agent of political parties to establish power in the colleges. They accumulate young students to join their parties. At times they even meddle with the selection process. In many colleges the selection of the students is not done by teachers rather it’s done in party offices. So, someone with political influences or one with wealthy background gets a college admission ahead of a deserved talented student. This causes an overall decrease in the talent acquisition of the state. It being long debated that educational institutes should be kept away from political influences but never been truly practiced as the educational institutes are one of primary places to gather political leaders for future generations. Student politics may also be encouraged to certain extent. Because they are the feature of the society but student politics should be different from state politics.
So main issue is politics itself. Form political resurgence to bad influence of politics, we have seen the good bad and ugly faces of politics. Maybe we need another renaissance. We have talent. We have potential. But we have lost track quite a bit in last few decades. We need to work on that and maybe someday we can say again “What Bengal and Kolkata thinks today India will think it tomorrow.”