Kolkata comes to a standstill

KOLKATA,21st July: Vehicles were stalled, buses were re-routed and metro trains were brimming with commuters here on Tuesday as traffic across the city plunged into chaos because of a rally held by the Trinamool Congress.

As tens of thousands of Trinamool supporters flocked to Central Kolkata in a multitude of processions, traffic in many of the city’s arterial roads was forced to come to a standstill. Some of the city’s principal roads had to be cleared to allow processions to snake their way to the site of the public meeting.

Several roads remained choked even hours after the rally was over. “The city police had deployed 3,000 policemen to control the crowd and five ambulances in case of an emergency,” said Javed Shamin, Deputy Commissioner (Detective Department), Kolkata Police.

Students on their way home from school were stranded even as some schools had declared half-day sessions in anticipation of the rush.

Business takes a blow, schools & offices deserted

Dalhousie came to a standstill on Wednesday as 1.5 lakh Mamata Banerjee sup-porters packed into a 5-sq-km radius. Attendance was thin at most offices in the city's commercial hub, and work even less. Many schools in the area shut down in view of the bandh-like situation'. At Writers', it was an overwhelmingly holiday mood. Attendance was officially normal, but several employees sneaked off to attend the Trinamool Congress rally while many others including some ministers sat glued before TV sets that beamed live footage of Mamata's call for change. Central government offices in Dalhousie registered just 50% presence.

The picture was the same at state government offices, like West Bengal Industrial Development Finance Corporation and West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation. Tapan Bhattacharya, a retired employee of Food Corporation of India, who had come to Kolkata with the twin objectives of expediting his pension papers and attending the Trinamool rally, was happy that he made it to the rally but disheartened that there was nobody to attend to him in the food ministry's office. A central government employee said that most of the staff had taken leave in advance to avoid the chaos. "It has become a yearly ritual," he said. An HDFC Bank official at Gillander House pointed out that there was hardly any customer. Gillander House, which has over 100 private and government offices, itself had skeletal staff presence.

Ironically, it was left to hawkers and owners of roadside stalls to keep the wheels of commerce moving in the city's business district. Md Umar, a cellphone accessories vendor at Chandni, made brisk business selling mobile phone covers to rallyists on a rainy day. Shakil Hossain of Chandni managed to sell off his lot of rechargeable pocket torches. Roadside gar-ment vendors near Great Eastern, too, had a field day. Many schools chose not to take a risk. A few in central Kolkata shut down, asking students to come on a weekly holiday. Several others rescheduled their timings.

Even schools far off from the rally venue like South Point and St James saw low attendance. Loreto Dharamtola on Lenin Sarani declared Tuesday a holiday and will stay open on Saturday. "I didn't want students to get caught in the chaos," said principal, Sister Mercy. Calcutta Girls off Wellington Square, Calcutta Boys on SN Banerjee Road and Welland Gouldsmith at Bowbazar gave over a few hours earlier.

TNN 22 July 2009, 05:02am IST

VANDALISM AND DISORDER AS PRADESH CONGRESS ‘STRIKES’ AT THE PEOPLE

KOLKATA: The Pradesh Congress at the end of two successive days of vandalism with the people as the convenient ‘soft target,’ claimed ‘spontaneous’ success, over and over again, and then once more, on the airwaves, at the press meets.

Biman Basu, senior CPI (M) and Left Front leader has roundly condemned the disorder, chaos, violence and the suffering of the people.

We prefer here to list the misdeeds on 16 and 17 July (the latter was the ‘official’ bandh day) that were borne out of this spontaneity-- to the background noise of bombs bursting, glass panes smashed up, tyres deflated, and above all the deadly crackle of fire as arsonists went to work hard, having to toil that bit harder to ‘make up’ to the level of Trinamuli ‘actions’ of recent yore, and these were desperately attempted to be surpassed.

• More than 500 public vehicles were torched or otherwise damaged beyond repair, and these were the major incidents. An equally large number of privately owned vehicles were attacked and left more than just large dents.

• Post offices were ransacked, and who could be bothered that the postal service falls into the portal of the central government in which the Congress is the majority partner.

• SDOs and BDOs were heckled, in some cases roughly so, including the shameful jostling of a woman BDO in north Bengal.

• Sick and ailing persons including a busful of cancer patients on way to receiving their weekly radiation/chemotherapy were forcefully dragged out from vehicles, left in a bedraggled state wayside, and then made the target of choice invectives of the unprintable kind.

• Zillah Parishad members in western, central, and northern Bengal were made the subject of heckling, abuse, misaddressing, and were prevented from joining work.

• Kolkata was a scene of multi-point disorder as working people were made the target of abuse, shops forced to close down shutters, and all vehicles including, in some instances, ambulances and even the humble cyclerickshaws obstructed until in isolated instances, the police had to intervene.

• All examinations had to be cancelled including all-India service examinations, depriving the aspirants of perhaps what was once-in-a-lifetime chance-- for a better life.

To these must be added misdeeds having a touch of the macabre.

• In several places, in the metropolis, and perhaps elsewhere, small hotels and restaurants were broken into, the employees, crumbling inside with the fear of the worse, forced to cook, the food taken amidst many-a-whoop of joy by the merry men of the urban jungle, and then the establishments left, wrecked

• Stranded Railway and bus passengers were provided with a modicum of food and a gulp or two of water, agreed, and by the ‘strikers.’

• What, however, was the cost involved? We saw one particular incident ourselves at the Naihati station in north 24 Parganas.

• Shops were forced to part with eatables and bottled water, free and in large quantities.

• Of these, a token amount was then sold to the desperately starving long distance passengers at exactly 10 times the normal price.

• Then, the ‘job done,’ the shops were systematically looted with glee and amidst anti-Communist slogans, and then the shopkeepers forced to down shutters once more: bandh must be abided.

• In the laterite zone at Purulia, prisoners accused of heinous crimes were attempted to be snatched away from police custody by attacking the prison van, trying to overcome the successful resistance from the police personnel.

• As we file this report, the Pradesh Congress has not as yet described this particular incident as a case of ‘police brutality,’ small mercies for which we are always thankful.

‘We are coming back,’ rang out the Pradesh Congress leadership in boastful glee. The gradually ominously louder footfalls of the decade of the 1970s are clearly heard across Bengal.

Biman Basu said that the CPI (M) and the Left Front must organise an intense campaign amongst the youth to explain what the 1970s meant for the toiling masses of Bengal.

HIGHWAY BLOCK WILL CREATE FOOD CRISIS IN CENTRAL BENGAL

On our third visit to Singur on 27 August where the hardy few ‘professionals’ of the Trinamul Congress and the Maoists, plus sundry SUCI elements were desperately ‘holding out’ by blocking the now-deserted NH 6 was filled with the nauseating stench of rotting cauliflowers, cabbages and potatoes, and other perishable vegetables—including tonnes of fish.

The truckers all sixteen thousand of them four thousand drivers, and the rest of them assistants and the ubiquitous headload carriers - were angry – very angry. They had found their way blocked by a few men with blunt and sharp weapons who also had openly on display; large bags of brickbats and stones, collected, the latter I mean, from the nearby Railway tracks.

Thus has been started a ‘counter-blockade’ – if we can call it that. After a brief discussion with the state transport minister, the truckers just parked their vegetable-rice-lentil-edible oil-laden vehicles – ten-tonners all of them, right on the highway albeit a small distance away from where the irresponsible workers of Mamata’s calling were having a disgustingly happy smile pasted on their faces as they sat hurling unprintable abuses at the truckers. The latter were not moved having driven hundreds of kilometres to reach out essential commodities to the people of Bengal.

The crisis will hit the markets within 24 hours of our filing this report and then things may take a very ugly turn – something that Mamata Banerjee blustering to us about her ‘winning ways against your chief minister,’ is yet to understand or is not willing to under stand.

For, understanding would mean acknowledging defeat and she will then have thousands of very angry people of Singur breathing heavily down her neck and worse, as they realised that the ‘show’ was not even close to ‘reality.’ The impasse is surely about to end—with a whimper and not a bang. Nevertheless, as state secretary Biman Basu was urgent in his fervent appeal to the people, the end should never ever be violent – from any sides.(BP)
27.08.08