Collapsed: Just a flyover?

A painting by my friend Soumya Sankar Mitra

Last month, a TV journalist put on the public domain some videos of a sting operation in which almost the entire top leadership of the Bengal ruling party, TMC had been caught accepting bribe in hundreds of thousands of rupees from a fictitious company. Clearly, they were doing it in the normal course of business, just as any businessman would accept an advance for a legal contract. The Number-2 in the party didn’t accept the bribe himself, but wanted it to be handed over to his pimp, who is – hold your breath – a senior police officer in charge of law and order in the most prosperous district of West Bengal.

However, there was an exception. On one leader’s face, we did see a shadow of guilt – Sougata Roy, MP and ex-prof of physics. Poor idiot – it seemed such a big bribe was for the first time in his hardly illustrious career. Confused, while pocketing Rs.500,000 in currency notes, he said, “ও বাবা, এত’ অনেক টাকা!” (Oh God! It’s a lot of money.)

On the other end of the spectrum was Bobby Hakim, the urban development minister and a close confidant of the plenipotentiary chief minister of West Bengal. He said, “I don’t deal in peanuts.”

Yeah, he’s a big fish. And he continued to brag before the hidden camera. Like any good don, he took care of his underlings: “What will be left for the kids if we dealt in small stuff?”

My wife and I were discussing what could happen if the ultimate authority in sanctioning large infrastructure projects in Bengal deals in “big stuff”. No wonder reputable civil contractors like L&T or Gammon India have stopped bidding for projects in West Bengal.

And as we talked, a flyover collapsed before our eyes on the TV screen. At one of the busiest junctions in Kolkata. In a moment, buried under the debris were dozens of men and women, auto-rickshaws, taxies, SUVs, … and hopes, aspirations, and future of many a family. …

It’s 2.30 in the afternoon, we have just turned on the TV. A tragedy unfolds before our eyes in real time. It is mind-numbing, physically sickening. As we sit in the comfort of our home, the TV shows bloody legs jutting out from under thousands of tonnes of rubble … a fortyish driver hopelessly trapped in his taxi crumpled like a sheet of useless paper. He opened his door and tried to escape, but managed to free only his head – groaning and looking at the world possibly for the last time with blank eyes. There was no anger in his face, just pain and helpless acceptance of fate. He seemed to be one of the thousands of Bihari taxi drivers in Kolkata. My mind drifted away to his family in Darbhanga or Madhubani. What if his mother, wife, and little kids are watching him at this moment? Couldn’t the TV channels show a little compassion and blur the image of his face?

The flyover has collapsed shortly before 1.00. The channels have already managed to grab a footage from a roadside CCTV camera which shows a span of the bridge collapse on moving traffic. They are showing it every five minutes. But there is still hardly any sign of disaster management except firemen who are on the job, but totally unprepared to handle a disaster of this magnitude. Local people are trying to disentangle bodies. A man splashes water on the head of the dying taxi driver from a plastic bottle and gives him some to drink. The chief minister has cancelled her election campaign and is helicoptering back to Kolkata.

3.00 PM: Over two hours has passed since the tragedy. Still, the rescue operations are hopelessly disorganised and inadequate. You can see the National Disaster Management Team in action – their orange jackets stand out. But there are only a few bubbles of orange in that sea of humanity. Fort William, the HQ of the Eastern Command of the Indian Army is less than five kilometres away – but there is no sign of Army jawans, who are most well-equipped to handle such calamities. Why? The Indian Army has never been accused of taking things lightly in emergencies. But in West Bengal today, the bureaucracy doesn’t dare pee without the CM’s consent. Possibly no one risk calling in the army in the CM’s absence.

3.00 PM: The Chief Minister arrives, but is hardly bothered about the shoddy rescue efforts or the absence of the army in the scene. Always paranoid with self-publicity, she grabs a mike and starts addressing TV cameras, even when people are dying before her eyes. Rather than checking where things stand, she says: “Nobody should play politics over this tragedy…. The contract was given in 2007 during the Left Front regime.” [That is, before we came to power.]

Then she goes on to add something bizarre: “All the drawings are with them [them who? The Left Front?] Although we asked for the designs a number of times, they haven’t given it to us.”

The CM is not particularly famous for her intelligence or education, but with incredible stupidity, she in fact indicts her own government. The construction of the flyover is supervised by Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authorities (KMDA), which has been under the above mentioned Bobby Hakim, who – you might recall – doesn’t deal in peanuts. If the CM is correct, it would mean the Government of WB allowed the flyover to be constructed for five long years, without even having the design, which ought to be the first point to begin supervision of any civil structure. Her minister and the KMDA authorities who supervised the construction without the drawings ought to be in jail.

3.10 PM: Neat columns of army men arrive, every one of them carrying a shovel or some other equipment. They rush in – they will save a number of people by pulling them out alive.

3.15 PM: The CM, the chief secretary of the state, the home secretary are sitting on plastic chairs by the roadside … no communication devices with them except cell phones. Sundry politicians including the mayor of Kolkata are hanging around. The top officials of the state are doing nothing except giving their boss company. The CM is giving instructions randomly: “Ei Mayor, you go to Medical College (Hospital), I will take care of things here.” Shouldn’t these worthies be in a control room now and coordinating activities of the different agencies engaged in rescue?

3.37 PM: Ordinary people (none of them in uniform) carry a lump of flesh and blood on a stretcher. The untrained hands cannot hold the stretcher – the body falls off. Dead or alive?

4.28 PM: The army men cut through a part of the debris – recovers more bodies.

4.30 PM: The CM and her team still sitting by the roadside. But a table covered with a white sheet and a laptop has appeared before them. In three and a half hours not even an emergency telephone number has been given for anxious relatives to enquire about lost people. Can a government be more incompetent?

8.00 PM (Approximately): There is still hope of finding people alive under the debris, but the army contingent is standing on one side of the road. Apparently, a police officer has just told the army men to keep off.

*

Many conjectures have been made, tonnes of newsprint have been used to analyse the reasons behind the collapse. Let’s not go into them. The reason for the collapse can be summed up in just one word: CORRUPTION. In most parts of West Bengal today, you cannot lay a brick without paying money to the ruling party and without buying materials from goons controlled by them.

On the day of the collapse, the civil contractor who had been constructing the particular span closed his office and vanished from the scene. He is the nephew of a senior TMC leader. He’s one of the “kids who deals in small stuff”?

In short, long before the flyover collapsed, governance had collapsed in West Bengal.

Kolkata / 14 April 2016

Can I ask for a bigger prize?

Certain mornings come in with a special message. Maybe, an unusual colour of the rising sun, maybe, dark nimbus clouds after weeks of scorching heat, or maybe, a story in the newspaper that reinforces your faith in human beings. For me, the morning today began with an amazingly beautiful note from a student.

Two points before I share the note. When I first met her last year, she was an excellent student, but was still learning to stitch together sentences in English. After just a year, I find the grace and beauty of her language is so refined! And I can honestly say that -- maybe, we teachers at the British Council have showed her the way -- but the actual learning had to be done by her. It's always so.

So if you are a student of English who is still struggling, do take heart from her language. I will be proud to write as beautifully as she does. And here is her message, with NO editing:

DEAR SIR,

Thanks a lot for your support and guidance.

I can still remember those days when I was looking for someone who could assist me developing my CV meticulously. I did not find any expert or any of my teachers (except one of my sisters). May be that was my mistake, I could not ask them properly. Yesterday, when you asked me to forward my CV for your review and feedback, I felt delighted.

I am feeling much confident now only because you have vetted my CV and other documents. Until now I believe that, except my parents no one has time to take out from their busy schedule. But I am happy that you proved me wrong.

I have had a face like a wet week-end when I saw you are moving to B’lore shortly. I wish I had attended your last term in the British Council. I always feel motivated after attending your class. I hardly found any repetition in your classes. You always explore innovative teaching techniques, which make your sessions more and more interesting. Thanks to the British Council for gifting us an enthusiastic, experienced, affectionate English teacher. I haven’t ever seen any language teacher as good as you.

Take care, stay healthy and keep posting on FB. Please keep in touch and I am always there to extend any kind of support to you.

Warm regards & affection,

...

===
Kolkata / 5 April 2016

Can we learn from this conservative politician?

John McCain, the Republican Senator from Arizona, famously lost to Barack Obama in the US presidential elections in 2008. I happened to be in the US during the elections and followed the debates as closely as I could. 

The Grand Old Party that McCain belongs to had just produced one of the worst Presidents in the American history, George Bush, besides the Iraq war and the financial melt-down that brought the entire world to the brink of a disaster. Like most human beings who were not insane, I detested the American Conservatives, I still do. 

But despite my inhibition about the party and the values that the GOP stands for, I couldn't but admire McCain as an individual. He had a simple, practical, down-to-earth approach to the issues and was infinitely graceful in defeat. And his background helped. 

Fighter pilot John McCain's plane was shot down in Vietnam. McCain, who survived the crash with severe injuries, was tortured even when he had been injured. He spent a long time in Vietnamese jails, and although he could have bought his freedom early thanks to his connections -- his father was, if I am not mistaken, a navy admiral and consequently a part of the ruling elite of the US. But John McCain refused to tread that path, didn't wish to leave his comrades behind in jail by exploiting the accident of his birth. 

So I was not surprised when I read this in the New York Times. It is a touching obituary for an ordinary American, who had been -- trust me -- a communist! 

Do we Indians, tormented by an at-times-violent tolerance-intolerance debate, have anything to learn from John McCain?

If you wish to read the article, please click on this link.

[Photo - Courtesy New York Times]

Kolkata / 29 March 2016

If you want to live in India, do you have to chant Vande Mataram?

As an Indian reader, what will you do after reading the headline of this story? Please tick one of the options in your head.

1.       I may or may not read it, but I know you’ve written yet another biased article against a government that is trying hard to take India ahead.

2.       Let me decide, but I don’t think it’s an important issue.

3.       I’ll definitely read it – maybe it contains information that I need.

4.       I might read it or might not – maybe I will come back to it if I don’t find anything interesting.

5.       I’ll move on to the next post. I couldn’t care less.

There are five kinds of Indians in India today – and your answer will perhaps tell you which category you belong to.

1.       People who care for India and support the government of the day or the ruling party or both.

2.       People who care for India but who believe nothing is especially wrong in the present time – we’ve had problems all along.

3.       People who care for India and are seriously concerned about the direction in which the present rulers are taking us.

4.       People who are otherwise preoccupied, who would think politics when they have free time, if any.

5.       People who think of the country or the nation or the state as an abstract entity: “I really can’t change anything, I don’t have a role in it. Why should I bother, let me watch the butterflies in my garden.” 

Dear Rader, I respect your right to have any of the above views or anything else that’s beyond my head, but I am writing this just to tell you why I think you MUST care about what’s happening around us.

Democracy is a story, the country is a story, the nation is a story, and so is the state. India functions as a liberal democracy because lots of people believe in the STORY of a pluralistic society consisting of many languages, religions, and faiths. In parts of India, e.g., Kashmir, people, at least a huge chunk of them, have stopped believing in the story and the Indian Democracy simply doesn’t work there.

… Kashmir valley, … the most densely militarised zone in the world, where half a million Indian soldiers (one to every four civilians) and a maze of army camps and torture chambers that would put Abu Ghraib in the shade are bringing secularism and democracy to the Kashmiri people. Since 1990, when the struggle for self-determination became militant, 68,000 people have died, 10,000 have disappeared, and at least 100,000 have been tortured. [Arundhati Roy in the Guardian, 10 Feb 2013]

While Kashmir and parts of the North East are a colossal tragedy, fortunately for us, the situation is entirely different across the length and breadth of India. We vote for different political parties, but we will never vote against Democracy. Most Indians have heard stories of alternative political structures – of Tamil Eelam, of Khalistan, of a totalitarian Maoist state. But we haven’t bought those stories because we believe that parliamentary democracy is a better story.

And the central part of this story is that every Indian has equal space and some rights that are enshrined in a bound volume called the Constitution of India. Freedom of speech and action – without harming others – is fundamental to our Constitution. I have the choice to be Hindu or a Muslim or an agnostic. I have the right to eat what I like, including beef and pork. I have the right to love my country – even if I didn’t, as long as I didn’t bother others, my constitution gives me the right to live with dignity.

We do not live in Hitler’s Germany, where one could be imprisoned or killed simply because one refused to chant “Hitler is Germany! Hitler is victory! Hail Hitler!”

Or do we? On 16 March 2016, the Maharashtra Assembly unanimously (BJP, Congress, NCP, et al) suspended Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) MLA, Waris Pathan, after he said he would not chant “Bharat Mata ki Jai” (Hail Mother India) even if someone held a knife to his throat.

Incidentally, Pathan’s statement came in response to what RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had said a week before: “Now the time has come when we have to tell the new generation to chant Bharat Mata ki Jai.”

In the Assembly too, BJP and Shiv Sena members shouted slogans like “Is desh mein agar rehna hoga, Vande Mataram kehna hoga (If you want to live in India, you have to chant Vande Mataram)”. [The Hindu 17 March 2016]

Reacting to his suspension, Pathan later said: “I love my country. I was born here and I will die here. I can never dream of insulting my country. Don’t judge anyone’s love for the country by just one slogan. Jai Hind, Jai Bharat, Jai Maharashtra.” So here, he is actually reciting “Jai Hind” although he refuses to say, “Bharat Mata ki Jay.”

I believe MIM is one of the worst political parties whose primary aim is to spread communal hatred among Muslims. But the finest legal brains in India say that our Constitution gives Pathan the right not to chant any slogan that the ruling party of the day, or their mentors want him to chant.

In the 1980s, some students were rusticated from a Kerala school because they refused to sing the National Anthem on the ground that they belonged to a religious group known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the group only sang in praise of the Lord and would not sing any other song. So the students were willing to stand up respectfully, but would not sing the anthem. The case came up in the Supreme Court and it reversed the expulsion in 1986.

In doing so, Justice O. Chinnappa Reddy noted: “Our tradition teaches tolerance; our philosophy preaches tolerance; our Constitution practices tolerance; let us not dilute it.”

Soli Sorabjee, a legal luminary and a former Attorney General has written:

"New-fangled notions of nationalism and patriotism have recently erupted. In substance, they equate patriotism with the chanting of certain words with the clear implication that those who do not do so are anti-national and unpatriotic. It must be remembered that nationalism is a mindset arising from spontaneous feelings of genuine affection for the country and its people. It cannot be manufactured by recitation of certain verses." [Indian Express, 20 March 2016]

And that brings us to the conclusion. India has remained a country despite pundits from all corners of the world predicting since 1947 that she would not survive as a political unit because of her wide diversities. India has survived not because everyone shouted ONE slogan, but because we have the right to shout MANY slogans. And more importantly, because most of us believe in the story of Indian Democracy. Presently, BJP and their mentors, RSS are trying to change that story.

This is dangerous. This will definitely lead more and more people not to believe the story of India. And when people stop believing that story, the government has to use force to keep the country together, like in Kashmir.

Who then are anti-national and who are trying to write a different script that might lead to breaking up India? And finally, do you, Gentle Reader, have a role in continuing the India story?

Kolkata / Friday, March 25, 2016