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Please, please announce/share any such lifestyle/sport event with the readers of KolkataMusing. Bring delight to them.
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It won’t be obscuring the truth that Kolkata’s survival depends on the vast wetlands to the east of the city, said to be the largest manmade wastewater recovery system in the world. It is the largest ensemble of sewage fed fishponds in the world in one place.
The wetlands cover an area of about 125 sq km starting just off EM Bypass and extending as far as eye can see. The wastewater and sewage created by the city flow here following natural inclination of the land topography.
Collected in salt marshes and meadows, sewage farms and settling ponds, the nutrients of the wastewater help in sustaining fish production and agriculture that find ready selling in city markets. In the process the wetlands have saved the city from developing and maintaining costly wastewater treatment facilities.
Though this has been going on for ages, no particular attention befell the wetlands till recently. Kolkata is on an expansion binge and since it is bound by the Hooghly river to the west and so difficult to spread, the focus has automatically shifted to the east.
And there lies the danger of the wetlands getting converted into concrete jungle thus endangering city’s sewage facilities.
Fortunately, the wetlands have a stamp of rarity in the form of its being designated as a "wetland of international importance" under the Ramsar Convention on August 19, 2002. To quote Wikipedia:
The Ramsar Convention is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands, i.e. to stem the progressive encroachment on and loss of wetlands now and in the future, recognizing the fundamental ecological functions of wetlands and their economic, cultural, scientific, and recreational value.
What this effectively means is that for retaining Ramsar recognition there must be no wrong utilization of land in Kolkata wetlands. Spurred by this development and also due to incessant pressure by environmental groups in the city, the state government has promulgated controls to preserve the vast water body.
In a meeting yesterday in the city, the state government has decided to pull down more than 30 illegal structures built on the wetlands over past few years. It has been found that there are 2 types of encroachers who pose threat to the wetlands and will be asked to leave the place as soon as possible.
Some of them are local people who are living there for many years and have extended their homes due to increase in family-size. For them the rules may be relaxed because their non-concrete structures do not pose as much threat as the outsiders who have built facilities there for business interest.
The outsiders will have to pull down their structures and move away at the earliest.
It inspires confidence that the government has woken up to look after the wetlands in earnest. Plans are now afoot to create a park there on the lines of the famous Hong Kong Wetland Park that will have world-class conservation, education and tourism facilities.
If done well, Kolkata will soon have another feather in its cap in the form of a unique tourist destination. Let’s welcome that.
As an East Bengal fan I keep my fingers firmly crossed at the prospect in forthcoming season, yet can’t conceal exuberance ever since Subrata Bhattacharjee took over as coach.
Subrata was Mohun Bagan’s coach when it won NFL title 2-1/2 times (the half is because MB was runner-up once). It is easy to say he’s a lucky coach but few would doubt that during his tenure in Bagan, its team was really an excellent performer.
Subrata not only understands football well, having played as a defender for many years, he also has a good grasp on ins and outs of all that goes on in Maidan, Kolkata’s football den.
East Bengal supporters are energized that Bablu da has taken charge of the team. Already, the team is undergoing training camp under his supervision in Kalyani. There is high hope that trophies that have eluded for last couple of years may at last come to the club this year.
Meiyang Chang’s phenomenal success at the Indian Idol has firmly brought the focus on Chinese community in the city. Though Meiyang is shown to be hailing from Dhanbad, there’s no doubt his family has settled there after moving from Kolkata.
Kolkata has the largest population of Chinese in India and they are mostly concentrated in the east of the city at places like Topsia and Tangra. Younger generation like Meiyang’s can barely speak Mandarin though their parents and grandparents may still be conversing in their mother tongue.
In the 60s and 70s when Kolkata was relatively at a prime compared to late 80s and 90s, the Chinese would be found in businesses like dentistry, eatery/restaurant, selling leather shoes, dry cleaning, etc. They were good in business and flourished and they were still living mainly in east Kolkata.
When militant politics started spreading roots in Bengal with the coming of left front, it proved bad for industries many of which closed shops and quit the state. The Chinese too had to leave the city in search of better earnings. The young among them left in droves mostly for abroad, and other cities in India as well.
Some figures suggest that now the members of Chinese community in the city hover around 5000, down from 30,000 a few decades back. In Mumbai the figure is said to be just 400.
Meiyang Chang’s success is a pointer as to how much the Chinese community has merged in India. In Indian Idol’s top 4 is another contestant, Prashant Tamang, who though works with the police in Kolkata is perhaps from Arunachal Pradesh, that wondrous beauty in the north-east bordering China.
May the likes of Meiyang and Prashant succeed so that we, the so-called heartland Indians know that this great country is not only about some states that are more in reckoning. India has much more variation and wealth than many would care to imagine, and all of that constitute the strength of the country.
What is common between Meghnad Saha and Meghnad Desai? I’m afraid there’s no prize for correct answer. For it is so obvious. There is however another common between the two stalwarts. It is the quest for pursuing knowledge.
As per news report in Khaleej Times, Lord Meghnad Desai is so enamored by his namesake that he has chosen Kolkata to set up a liberal arts college that will offer an integrated 4-year B.Phil course.
Dr. Meghnad Saha was an eminent Physicist. In 1949 he established in the city the country’s first-ever institute to study nuclear physics, later christened as Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics. Earlier in 1927 he became Fellow of London’s Royal Society.
Dr. Saha’s eminence can be gauged by the following observation by noted physicist Jayant Narlikar in his book The Scientific Edge (taken from Wikipedia):
"Meghnad Saha’s ionization equation (c. 1920), which opened the door to stellar astrophysics” was one of the top ten achievements of 20th century Indian science [and] could be considered in the Nobel Prize class."
Lord Meghnad Desai is a Vadodara-born economist of great repute who earned his PhD at age 22 at the University of Pennsylvania having completed masters’ before age 20.
Professor Desai taught for long time at London School of Economics and presently he is Professor Emeritus there. He was conferred life peerage as Baron Desai in 1991 in UK.
As for his newly planned institute of liberal arts, Lord Desai has this to say:
"It will not be another run-of-the mill college aping the IITs or IIMs. I want to introduce a free-standing liberal arts college instead of a straitjacketed science or arts curriculum."
"Students can take their pick from a host of subjects ranging from physics to anthropology. The idea is to stretch their ability to explore, assimilate, and think independently. That's what global employers are now looking for."
The state government is actively looking for land to locate Lord Desai’s institute and it appears possible that the institute will come up at Kalyani where already a new central-government accredited institute of science similar to Bangalore’s IIS is underway.
Picture this. A Uchcha Madhyamik (Higher Secondary) examinee, Debapriya Sengupta, fails in all her science subjects, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics in this year’s exam, yet ranks 1700 in Joint Entrance Examination (JEE). The strange dichotomy is so glaring that it required the High Court to actually examine the answer scripts.
On Debapriya’s seeking justice, the Kolkata HC ordered 2 sets of her answer scripts to be shown during hearing yesterday. One set was from her school’s selection tests, and the other her HS answer papers, which the WB Council for Higher Secondary Education was ordered to produce.
The judge went through both and then decided that Debapriya’s HS answer scripts for the 4 subjects must be re-assessed. It will be done by a committee of 3 examiners, not including those who did it in the first place. The council will then submit a confidential report to the court in 10 days.
If this happens, history of sorts is going to happen in the field of education in left-ruled Bengal. For never before since the council came into being in 1976 did any reassessment take place.
When students not satisfied with marks obtained deposit fee for re-examination, all that the council do is to simply see that all answers have been seen and the marks totaled to make sure there was no mistake.
Predictably, the council is in a dilemma, and may decide to challenge the order if it so feels.
Meanwhile, scores of examinees who feel ‘victimized by poor marking’ in board exams may be looking at obtaining succor from court. For the record, this year at least 25 students who have cleared the JEE but failed in HS, have moved court.
Without doubt many eyes will be riveted on what lays in store for Debapriya in time to come.
On the back of ongoing fiasco at Nandigram, which appears to be more about protecting political turf than to address the question of ensuring economic survival of those who loose land for industry, the situation on ground in Bengal regarding land acquisition has undergone a complete change.
Not that it was anything different from what it is now, but at least the government has learnt that land acquisition has to be a political process to start with instead of only relying on administrative machinery to do the work.
Yesterday’s all-party meeting at Barasat to discuss how to proceed to get land for NH-34 and 35 is a pointer in that direction. Nearly all parties barring only SUCI agreed that the highway expansion is a necessity in the interest of the nation. After all it’s a project of central public sector company, NHAI (National Highway Authority of India) whose mandate it is to improve road communication in the entire country.
The meeting was very crucial because it was to be seen how political parties feel about a road project, which is a national priority. Fortunately, it ended in near consensus albeit with conditions by opposition parties that before the actual work begins, the compensation package must be thoroughly discussed and agreed upon.
Since it is a central government project, it is unlikely that compensation for land losers will be any different here from what the government offers everywhere else. Still the fact that the political parties have felt the urgency of the project is itself good news.
Meanwhile the state government has begun preparing a land map of the entire state that will describe in detail the condition of land in the state. In hindsight, it can be said that such an exercise should have been done before the state government embarked upon land acquisition spree for setting up industry.
Hopefully, these steps will ensure that land acquisition for industry and infrastructure needs will be lot smoother compared to what has been happening for a while.
Bengalis are pioneers in many fields, and those they love doing carry their indelible stamp of passion come what may. Food comes to mind first, football next, and of course traveling, not to speak of Durga Pujo that’s so close to heart.
Talking about DP, it’s still three and half months off, but planning for travel at that time has already started in right earnest. And who else but Kundu Special would take the lead in that!
Kundu Special’s booking for this year’s Pujo Special kicked off yesterday in their Central Avenue office. And like every year, this year too most of its packages were declared ‘house full’ before noon.
To be true, Kundu Special has a ‘special’ place in the minds of middle-class Bengalis. It represents a brand that is trusted by people. Once one books in a package, the company takes care of every travel need one can think of. There is no further hassle in arranging for the journey, which is why even single women, widows and divorced like it.
Kundu Special, founded by Sripati Kundu in 1933 when for the first time in India he arranged a 56-day all-India tour after reserving a full train. He thus became the pioneer of organized tourism in India.
Today the company is run by third-generation Kundus after Sripati Kundu, and the tour length has also reduced to an average of 10-12 days per package. But the flavor of the tours organized by it hasn’t changed much.
To quote from Wikipedia, here’s an account about their tourist profile:
Kundu Special reports that 99 per cent of the tourists remain Bengali, too. Their social profile remains unchanged too: they come from the middle-class and upper middle-class. Many clients have been touring with them over generations. There are also the rich who often fly and put up at star restaurants but join the group for sightseeing.
If you’re inclined to know more, do have a look at the article in Feb 11 issue of TT, Kundu Special travels in time. It’s a fascinating revelation about Bengalis’ love for traveling.
Alliance Française de Calcutta, the Kolkata address of The French Association, is located at Khaleel Manzil at Beckbagan off AJC Bose Road. The lane on which the building stands serves as a useful conduit for motorists who wish to take a shortcut after the AJC Bose Road flyover has come up.
It’s a cramped accommodation for AF, and especially since there is no dearth of learners of elementary French, at times the classrooms would have no space left to even move one’s feet. The smallish lobby on the ground floor is rather a passage than a lobby in true sense.
Despite the obvious problem of space the teaching of French is really good. Few years back my daughter studied there for a year, and she speaks highly of the standard there.
All these will change soon when The French Association moves to a spacious venue, possibly somewhere in Salt Lake, in a few months.
The stage seems also set for the city to have full-fledged consulate office in not-so-distant future. Dominique Girard, the French ambassador in India, now in Kolkata on 2-day visit, feels time has come to make French presence felt more strongly in the city in keeping with French companies’ willing to spread wings in the state.
Hope-2007 has dashed the hopes of many. It was planned as a grand spectacle of Bollywood stars making appearance to the gyrating hips on the stage and in gallery. But the hopes dashed like a pack of cards.
What happened? Flash Forward Communications (FFC for short), a city-based event organizing company planned big. It contracted Salman Khan, Diya Mirza and others from Bollywood to appear in Hope-2007 that was to be held at Netaji Indoor Stadium last evening.
But that was not to be. FFC acted a bit too smart. Going by newspaper reports, it did not pay the Bollywood stars the requisite fees in order for them to perform in the city, because the FFC planners thought they would pay the stars with the proceedings from evening’s ticket sale.
It’s clear that the event had ‘failure’ written all over it. It had to fail simply because no performing artiste worth his/her name will ever agree to come on stage unless they are paid the sum they ask in advance.
It’s a case of being too clever by half. No wonder, the organizers have been arrested by the police for cheating people by selling tickets despite knowing that the stars wouldn’t turn up.
In its Feb 22 edition this year, The Telegraph reported that the Tatas and Singapore’s Changi Airport’s investment arm will jointly bid for Kolkata airport’s modernization. Thereafter doubts arose about it since left parties wanted the job to be done by state-run AAI (Airports Authority of India) instead of private parties.
The cloud over the issue has at last cleared. It’s now apparent that while AAI will be monitoring it, the work itself will be contracted out to private company. The cost of project is taken as Rs.1500 crore.
As per today’s news, the DPR or detailed project report is being readied, after which AAI will invite global tender for the project. By September the contract is expected to be finalized, and the work would begin early next year, to be completed by mid-2010 ahead of Commonwealth Games in Delhi.
At present Kolkata’s NSC Bose International Airport has 3 terminal buildings, international, national and cargo, and 2 parallel runways of which one is used for landing and taking off of aircrafts while the other is mostly used as taxiways.
Under the new proposed plan, there will be 2 new terminals. One, an integrated large one for domestic and international flights will annually cater to 16 million passengers. The other, a smaller version with capacity to serve 4 million passengers annually will see only international flights.
Both will have facilities for ground-floor arrival and first-floor departure, a practice followed in many busy airports allover the world.
These apart, the new plan also envisages 4-5 state-of-the-art aerobridges, new parking bays, 2 new car parks with double the present capacity, and upgrading of road networks in and around airport including underpasses and flyovers while approaching the airport from VIP Road. A third runway is also being planned.
As and when all these plans take fruit, Kolkata airport will compare with the best in the country, but perhaps even that would not be sufficient to cope with traffic pressure a decade down the line.
Which is why the state government has already started pressing for a totally new airport somewhere in the southern fringes of the city. But that is a separate story for another day.
Inside Changi - one of world's finest airports. [Image top, bottom]
What is common to coin and shaving blade? The obvious answer is metal that goes to make both. What is not obvious is that the metal of coins comes in unique form of alloy that has definite percentage of different metallic components that make it, which ensures every coin of similar denomination is identical with each other in terms of shape, size and weight.
As raw material coins can be for good use. The recent acute shortage of coins in Kolkata is suspected to be the result of their large-scale smuggling across the border apparently for making shaving blades.
It is said each ‘one rupee’ coin, the actual value of which is greater than a rupee, can be melted to make as many as 6 shaving blades. If a blade costs Rs.2, it’s clear that there’s phenomenal profit to be had using coins as raw material.
Coin shortage in Kolkata is brewing for the last 3 months, and in a city where perhaps coins are used maximum compared to other metros, it is the small traders who are facing the brunt.
The police are working overtime to identify the cause of shortage, and on its part the RBI has recently released coins worth Rs.40 lakhs in the market to tide over the present crisis.
Some years back, on a visit to Dooars, we booked an accommodation near Chalsa that stood on the periphery of a sprawling teagarden inside what was once a plywood factory.
Our rooms were basically part of erstwhile staff quarters, refurbished to accommodate occasional tourists. It was monsoon and rains, when it happened, would be nothing less than heavy downpour.
In most evenings, we would have quick dinner in another building, a short walk from our place, and retire soon after, not having much to do, and also because the pitch darkness outside wouldn’t appear too inviting.
One such evening was decidedly gloomy. It was raining for hours at stretch, and though the dinner was served hot and tasty, we felt it best to quicken our steps to bed as early as 8 on the clock.
About 2 it was in the early hours next day when I woke up, and it seemed to me that perhaps I had heard some sound. It was complete silence save the sounds by night insects. I checked the watch and rolled over for a comfortable position when indeed that sound came again. There was no mistake now.
It seemed so close that for a moment I though it was coming from under the bed. I stayed motionless on bed as if struck by a sudden blow, listening intently. The sound now started coming in a steady pitch and I could feel it originated from just outside our room.
It was a strange sound, unmistakably that of some animals, a mixture of constant shuffling and a suppressed glee. I left the bed and tiptoed to the window that was kept partially closed because of rain the night before.
Pushing the window open, I was greeted with breathtaking scene. The sky was clear, and the teagarden ahead was awash with moonlight, leaves glistening and waving under the spell of a gentle breeze.
Quickly, following the sound that was now louder than before, I peered hard at a collection of moving shadows near the jackfruit tree close to the edge of small pathway leading from our rooms.
The shadows moved constantly in a circle, dipping every now and then in their middle. It took me a while to understand what was going on.
A group of jackals, some 5 or 6 of them, had congregated around something that obviously they were eating with great relish and pleasure. I couldn’t make it out then, and short of courage to venture out to find the reason in the dead of the night I slid back in the bed relieved that after all it was just some jackals.
Next morning, the first thing I did was to check out the spot of jackals’ feast the night before. There laid a couple of jackfruits thoroughly cleared out, swarmed now by bees. A strong smell of ripened jackfruit hung heavy in the air.
The caretaker told me later that not only jackals, even elephants would come at times to eat jackfruits, drawn by their typical odor.
The thoughts rush in as I read the news (ABP, June 15) that elephants are raiding households in both north and south Bengal at night in search of jackfruits. The pachyderms anyway come visiting in the winter when the water in the canals is low.
And now they are here even in summer. Soon may be the entire countryside will see hordes of them all the time of the year.
We the Kolkattans with short civic memory – though skeptical in many areas, and rightly so – are easily taken in by the suave talks of KMC. Each year the rains create havoc in the city several times during monsoon, throwing life out of gear on each occasion.
And each year after the monsoon passes, we are tricked into believing KMC that the coming year would bring respite like never before. But that respite never happens.
Last year’s monsoon brought out flurry of promises from KMC including de-silting of century-old brick sewer in the heart of the city. This was a new addition to the usual ones like installing more booster pumps, cleaning the waterways that crisscross the city, and so on.
The icing on the promise-cake was that after a long while apparently KMC was not short of funds. After all it’s selling the dilapidated markets it owns like hot cakes, so much so that it now plans to fully air-condition the century-old HQ on SN Banerjee Road.
Looking at all these things, feeling proud that the city’s municipal watchdog is sprucing up its image, even letting it out of mind that not long back the KMC faced a fund-collection fiasco at its Gariahat office forcing people this year into unnecessary inconvenience while paying the property tax, the city’s dwellers thought may be this monsoon it would be different.
Perhaps this year we’d be able to bid goodbye to water logging, a nagging annual occurrence that has been happening for as long as one remembers.
But no, that is not to be. Yesterday’s deluge in the morning has washed out any such dreams one dared to harbor. The wading through waist-deep murky waters has come back to haunt us. Yet again.
In November last year, a devastating fire broke out in a 4-storey building in Topsia in the east of the city that housed an illegal factory making leather items for export.
The fire claimed about 10 lives, and the main reason for death of so many people was the fact that the owner of the factory had locked the door of the factory shut so that no laborer could escape in the night.
If this seems inhuman, there’s more in store. The factory allegedly employed child laborers, which is a clear defiance of government rules.
In the aftermath of the incident, there was the usual hue and cry and hotfooting of politicians to the scene. The media covered the incident as long as it was that much hot that people could soak in some warmth from it.
After the trail of the happening went cold, everybody went off in own direction as if nothing of the magnitude that created so much stir has ever happened. In the process however the mishap has chalked out its 'pride of place' in Wikipedia, 2006 Kolkata leather factory fire.
The reason I’m recapitulating is an article below by Davinos Greeno titled, An Ethical Shopping Survey. His is an account of how multinationals are sucking out the cream of money at the cost of poor people’s sweat mainly in third world countries.
Recently we ambushed Oxford Street shoppers for a survey on ethical shopping. But as we pounded the pavements of central London we found lots of shoppers asking us the same questions.
Why should we care about sweatshops? What are they? Shouldnt people be grateful for any work they can get? If they werent working in a sweatshop wouldnt the workers be worse off? How can we change things?
The answers are not always clear-cut, but we hope that this outline guide will bust a few myths about sweatshop workers, owners and customers.
What is a sweatshop anyway?
The word sweatshop described a nineteenth century system where subcontractors sweated out profits from the difference between the price of their product and the wages they paid. In the 21st Century the system is still thriving.
Sweatshops are generally defined as workplaces exploiting manual labourers. This refers to wages that are below the cost of living, dangerous working conditions and arbitrary discipline such as physical and verbal abuse.
A typical example is the Nike factories in Indonesia, which according to the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) report in March 2002, paid its workers so little they cannot afford to have their children living with them.
The factory also refuses to buy their workers protective equipment. Ironically employees making Nikes state-of- the-art trainers may lose their own feet because the factory will not provide them with strong shoes to safeguard them from the heavy machinery they work with.
Why do people work in Sweatshops?
Because they have no other choice. Companies take their factories to areas where wages are low and there is less emphasis on workers rights. The cost of living may be less then in developed nations, but the minimum wage of these countries does not even cover this.
Countries such as China are particularly attractive, not just for their low wages but also because of their repressive apparatus and corporate secrecy, which make human rights hard to patrol.
In a Chinese factory contracting for Disney, workers were threatened or intimidated to ensure they would falsify their work records and lie to any groups who arrived to monitor working conditions (CCC report February 2001).
Foreign-owned companies keep their costs down by not having sick pay, pension insurance or maternity leave. If workers demand better pay, or if demand dries up the company has no difficulty in packing up and leaving the country leaving employees destitute.
Isnt it better then unemployment?
The only answer to this is why should there only be two choices? Multinational clothing companies spend literally millions of pounds on advertising and paying their CEO each year- surely some of this money could be spent paying workers enough so they can buy basic necessities?
Sweatshops are all in the Third World ? Right?
No. According to Sweatshop Watch 98% of garment workers in Los Angeles have health and safety problems, which could lead to serious injury or even death. These include bad ventilation, overcrowded factories which are a fire risk and unsanitary bathrooms.
63% of New York factories violate minimum wage and overtime restrictions. The majority of workers in the US garment industry are immigrant women and many are verbally or even physically abused and intimidated if they speak out.
They can also be threatened with deportation. In 2002 the GMB found in two weeks at least three sweatshops operating in the East End of London. Less than minimum wage, transgression of health and safety regulations and excessive hours were all cited.
How low is low?
For Nike workers in Indonesia one chicken costs more then a days wages. Childrens cough medicine is 121% of a basic daily wage and you would have to save 4 days wages to buy a pair of jeans.
But what can the companies do - if they put up their prices to pay wages, sales will fall and so will jobs?
The Chief Executive of The Gap in 1999 earned in excess of $7,000,000 - yes, seven million dollars a year -according to Sweatshop Watch, while the average worker in China would be paid just 23 cents-an-hour.
The answer doesnt seem to hard- ask the CEO to take a small pay cut. If this seems unfair perhaps the answer is to cut the advertising budget.
Global Exchange says Nike spends $560million on advertising, that means if it spent 2% less it could bring the whole of its Vietnamese workers wages up to a living wage, as requested by Vietnamese Labour Watch.
Cant we just boycott these companies?
For most of us the knee-jerk reaction is to stop buying products made by sweat or child labour. But according to NGOs and The International Labour Organisation (ILO), consumer boycotts can harm workers more than the company.
When sweatshops using child labour were closed in Bangladesh and Pakistan through consumer pressure Save the Children, along with Bangladeshi NGOs, pointed out children were merely forced into worse forms of labour.
This was because children often brought in 30% of a familys income. As girls were only allowed to work in domestic service, prostitution or brick breaking, escaping from the garment industry was not always an improvement.
But, boycotts called by the workers themselves can be effective. Workers at Forever 21 in Los Angeles are trying to make this multi-million pound company pay the back wages they owe them.
After working 10 to 12 hours a day for below minimum wage and no overtime in appalling conditions they are taking their employers to court and trying to ensure a fair deal for others.
Further Information:
The easiest and most effective way to help improve the lives of garment workers is to make sure the shops you buy from know you care about how their clothes are made not just what they look like.
That the realty investment in Kolkata has taken an upswing is already acknowledged, what with large projects of all hues coming up allover the city and new ones debuting every other day.
But it took Reliance's first-move initiative that the dilapidated KMC markets at vantage points in the city are now looked at with renewed vigor.
Reliance won the tender to develop KMC's Park Circus market, but in the process it created so much hullabaloo that there is now a sense of urgency at KMC to hive off other markets at lucrative places for re-development.
The local politicians fear that Reliance's entry would mean that the company might start its large format retail stores, which may be detrimental to the interests of small traders wherever large stores come up.
While the possibility is indeed there, what is also the case is that not only KMC markets would see grand makeovers, it would also fill municipality coffers with much-needed funds.
Which is why KMC is planning to soon handover its other properties like Entally market and New Market to private players for renovation.
It has decided that existing traders will be offered space after renovation is completed, and so it is likely that there will be less resistance to KMC's plans.
Early today in the morning, a smallish nondescript post office in Baranagore in the northern fringes of the city has been relieved of cash amounting to several lakhs of rupees. Police, coming from their station close by, fear there may be an insider hand in the loot happening.
But this incident pales in comparison to what happened at a State Bank of India ATM (Automated Teller Machine) yesterday at Bali in Howrah district. There, from the ATM cash vault, all 500-rupee notes are found missing when a check was done yesterday. The amount: Rs.5.5 lakhs.
The theft at Bali ATM is like a fairy tale. Why? Because no one knows when exactly that happened. It came to notice when the bank’s customers complained that they’re not getting 500-rupee notes even for higher withdrawals. Initially, the bank authorities felt the machine was faulty.
Only later it transpired that the story is rather grave. The thieves have opened the ATM vault using the 6-digit secret password and emptied the tray that carried 500-rupee currency.
According to police it’s difficult to comprehend how the theft took place. The 6-digit secret password was not known to any single person. One person knew the first 3 digits, another the rest.
Clearly a complex issue for the police to find answer for, but who knows there may be an insider hand in Bali as well.
When Star Ananda telecast the 5-match series of Sao Paulo Club’s junior contingent in India, it seemed as if it was a flash in the pan on part of the former. Now it’s clear that it was not so.
Star Ananda has purchased television rights of all CFL (Calcutta Football League) matches for a thumping Rs.12.41 crore for 4 seasons from 2008 to 2011. It’s a record earning for the city-based Indian Football Association (IFA). About Rs.2.5 crore has already been paid as an advance.
On the face of it, this whopping amount for telecast rights may look a bit optimistic. But perhaps it’s the right step by the television company. There is a renewed attempt at every level to invigorate the condition of football in the country.
AIFF, the All India Football Federation, the parent football body of the country, is in dialog with Brazilian reps to initiate various exchange programs between the 2 countries.
And Sepp Blatter, the FIFA chief, when he came calling, is eager that football in India takes off in earnest.
Talking about football in Kolkata, it helps that the recent change of guard at the top of IFA has seen able administrators taking charge of the body. IFA now has some very welcome concrete plans including setting up at least one modern stadium in the heart of the city.
Effort is also on to ensure that football matches are seen at the grounds by entire families like it happens in every other country – all directed toward making the game popular among masses.
Only then we can expect young talents coming up from grassroots level, blossoming like a flower to do the nation proud at international competitions. Till then let’s keep our fingers firmly crossed.
ITC’s prime hotel, Sonar Bangla, is shortly going to have company of similar projects. The first, a 5-star property by Emmar Group, is coming up between it and the highrise, Silver Springs.
And now, DLF plans to build a composite project of 2 hotels and a service apartment block off Bypass on a 5 and a half acre plot close to Sonar Bangla. DLF’s project is to cost Rs.600 crore, the largest in hospitality sector in the city. It has paid Rs.154 crore to KMC to buy the plot in an international auction last year.
Of the 2 hotels DLF plans to build in the same plot, one is a 250-room 5 star facility bearing the Hilton brand name. The second one, a business hotel with 320 rooms will carry Hilton Garden Inn brand.
Lastly, come the service apartments at the same place. The 100-apartment strong edifice will also sport a Hilton tag – this one by the name Homewood Suite.
DLF’s choice of building prime properties off EM Bypass indicates what the future holds for this thoroughfare, billed as the Chowringhee of tomorrow. Incidentally, DLF is coming with an IPO that opens on Monday, June 11, the largest public offering in India thus far.
And yes, DLF is also building a huge township at Dankuni on a vast tract of land admeasuring in excess of 4000 acres. Clearly, the realty boom in Kolkata is now a reality.
Women giving birth to offspring in late 40s is not path breaking news. But the 2 cases I’m going to mention have certain twists to them, even though not rare.
Gurinder Chadha of Bend It Like Beckham fame, all of 47, gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, in London day before yesterday. She has been married for 10 years and eventually her becoming mother – that too of twins – is a great occasion to feel happy and content. Our best wishes to her.
The other incident too has its own share of surprise. Here the mother is 45 year old, but her child, a daughter, is fathered by her husband of 83 year. This too has happened on June 7 at Sambalpur in Orissa.
The woman – Bilasmukhi her name – last became a mother 12 years back. She is married to Ratnakar, her husband, for 22 years after Ratnakar’s first wife died. He has 5 daughters from first marriage.
To become a father at 83 years is certainly rare though doctors opine men can become fathers even at 90 years of age. It’s not that Ratnakar is not facing snide remarks, but then the toothless 83 year old is hardly concerned about what others are saying.
He is happy, his toothless grin never leaving company.
Yet another example of proactive stance of bureaucrats and politicians from Bengal in favor of industrialization is the way in which the proposed deep-sea port off the coast is gradually taking shape.
If news’ in the papers are to be believed, there has been at initial stages considerable opposition to the project at the center. From the nature of opposition it was apparent that vested interest has been at play at the center to nip the possibility of the port in the bud.
But now it seems the deep-sea port project is set to begin. It is still in initial planning stage, and selection of place is yet to be final. Recently, the state’s chief secretary and Kolkata Port Trust’s (KoPT) chairman discussed the issue with secretary in shipping ministry at the center.
KoPT wants the project site at ‘Kanika Sand’ in Bay of Bengal where deep draft of about 23 meters is available all through the year, which will permit the largest ocean-going vessels to berth.
If and when the deep-sea port does come up, it’ll be at least a decade later from now. By that time the whole of eastern region with Kolkata as a hub can be expected to become an industrial hotbed.
The port, when connected with high-speed railway freight corridor, will not only cater to Bengal, but also to all the adjoining states, and even neighboring countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and also part of China, the latter through the now-building trade route at Sikkim’s Nathu-La.
It is entirely possible that the deep-sea port off Bengal coast will eclipse other ports on India’s eastern side. Which may be the reason why there has been opposition at the center for the project.
Ever since trouble at Singur erupted late last year over the issue of land transfer, there was a feeling that perhaps industry can never happen in Bengal. Incidents at Nandigram made matters worse, and economists and planners who knew the dire necessity of industry in Bengal almost wrote off the state's chance of reviving its industrial fortune.
2 things happened thereafter. One, clashes in Nandigram continued even after CM officially announced that there would be no chemical hub there. This clearly explained that even though there was no longer any issue of land transfer, the trouble in Nandigram continued because it was more of a political war to capture 'turf' than real concern about farmers' loosing land.
Second, in last month's mini panchayat and block-level elections at various places across the state, the ruling LF did reasonably well. This came as a surprise to many people, and even to the veteran CPM patriarch, Jyoti Basu. He admitted as much.
From these 2 happenings, it'll not be wrong to draw conclusion that land transfer issue hasn’t turned up as big as it is made out. It helped that the CM relentlessly traveled across the state in the interim, putting it across the people that there is no way other than letting industry to happen in order to create jobs for millions of aspirants in the coming days.
The first sign of people of rural Bengal feeling the need of industry is seen at Bood Bood in Burdwan disrict where farmers and unemployed youth have on their own written to the district magistrate offering their land for industry. The land they want to give up measures as much as 2500 acres.
Nearly similar pattern is seen at Salboni where the Jindals are to set up an integrated steel plant, and Kharagpur where the Tatas will set up a heavy vehicles plant. Salboni and Kharagpur are in Paschim Medinipur district, which is adjacent to Purba Medinipur district where Nandigram lies.
Though it's still early days, but if the trend continues it'll mean that the government has been able to convince people at the grassroots about the need to give up land for creation of industry.
It’s that time of the year when concern for environment reaches peak, only to ebb slowly but surely as days and months progress, until the arrival of next year. To the credit of government and other related agencies, the flavor of concern changes each year, which is good, because otherwise the whole thing becomes very monotonous.
This year the focus is on 3-wheeler autos, the uncrowned king of traffic nuisance in the city. That the autos are controlled by trade unions rather than by the traffic authorities is an open secret. Which means they are a law unto themselves, and just don’t care or bother about anything other than their own selfish interests.
Okay we know how ruthless and unruly they are on city roads when they ply. But do we know how they are poisoning the air day in day out by using a polluting fuel?
The fuel most petrol-driven autos use is a mix of petrol stolen from different vehicles, naptha and kerosene. Obviously this is not a lab-tested standard product, and therefore the amount of pollution it creates is monumental to say the least.
What is unfortunate is that the authorities turn a blind eye to this blatant creation of pollution. The common refrain among powerful auto unionists would perhaps be that the poor auto operators are not able to afford the costly petrol for their vehicles.
Which otherwise means that for the sake of ‘poor’ auto operators there should be no qualms in polluting the air that millions of people breathe. This strange dichotomy perhaps exists only in this city of all places.
In this year’s World Environment Day ‘celebration’ in the city the government’s pledge is to make it mandatory for the autos to convert to LPG as fuel.
The intention is indeed laudable, but let’s take it with a grain of salt. For, at the moment it is just a declaration made in course of the ‘celebration’. Whether it actually happens on ground, and if so when, is something no one knows.
Given the fact that they are hapless as ever, for millions of people who take to roads everyday, the environment minister’s noble declaration of making autos LPG-driven is just that, a declaration in thin air, occasioned by World Environment Day celebrations.
For its typical taste Hilsa is a prized species. No sooner the fish lands in city markets, they are lapped up quickly. The present lot that is doing rounds costs an average of Rs.250 a kg, and many among the catch are small ones weighing less than 500 gms, called khoka elish.
Hilsa is a seawater variety that breeds in sweet water. Around this time when it rains, and the flow of sweet river water reduces the salinity level at the deltaic Bengal, Hilsa takes in the scent of the arrival of its breeding time and swims upstream inside the river to breed. The cloud, the thunder and the rain are conducive for their happy breeding.
The fishermen lay in wait at strategic places to catch Hilsa at this time. When the catch is good they know they can get very good prices for their effort. Unfortunately, out of sheer greed they also capture the small ones, the khoka elish variety.
Here is where the trouble lies. Over past few years the catch of Hilsa has been dwindling, and one main reason attributed to this was indiscriminate killing of smaller varieties. Since Hilsa lives barely for few minutes after they’re caught in fishing nets, there is no chance to return the smaller ones back to the water.
The only solution is to increase the hole-size in the net so that the smaller ones are not retained when the catch is hauled on to the fishing boats. This many fishermen do not do for the simple reason that their catch will be less, and so commensurately less money as profit.
The government has now made it mandatory for all sea-going fishermen to increase hole-size in the nets according to specifications set by it. Also, all fishing activity in the sea has been banned from April 15 to June 30 every year.
Further the government has asked to stop catching baby fish and eggs at the deltaic region of Sunderbans. Instead the focus is on cultivating infant sea-fish in hatcheries.
Today the government reps’ are visiting wholesale fish markets in Patipukur, Sealdah and Howrah to ferret out those who are selling small-sized Hilsas. It remains to be seen if anything concrete comes out of it.
It didn’t take long for Rolta India to decide its Kolkata center. Perhaps theirs is the quickest decision to set foot in Kolkata among major IT companies. Rolta was approached by the state’s IT minister in February last with the offer of land to locate a facility in Kolkata.
Early this week Rolta has disclosed its intention when it informed the stock exchanges that it plans to set up an IT Park in the city that will have facilities for delivering specialized expertise like geospatial services, engineering design, software development and ERP implementation services for its global customers.
Rolta is a major global player in IT-based geospatial services and has subsidiaries in many countries including the prestigious JV with American nuclear energy technology company, Stone & Webster.
Rolta’s facility in Kolkata will be on a 5-acre plot at Nonadanga, and it plans to recruit over 5000 professionals here over time.
Rolta being a highly specialized IT company, its entry in Kolkata is certainly a good news (more in TT).
Today’s MPs from West Bengal are a smarter lot. Gone are days when all they used to do was flexing muscle at the floor of the parliament, and petty politicking back home when the parliament was not is session. Representing state’s cause for investment and clinching ‘favors’ for the state from the center were never treated a priority.
Times have changed. For the last few years the MPs are strongly pursuing projects for the state, and the results of their effort are slowly emerging. It helps that the state has 2 heavyweight ministers in the central cabinet, and the government is supported by the left parties from outside.
Proposed East-West Metro is an example of dogged perseverance by elected representatives form the state. It now looks imminent that Kolkattans will have it after all.
A separate entity, going by the ornamental name, Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV for short), has been formed, which will be headed now by the state’s transport secretary before a suitable person is chosen for the job. SPV will need center’s nod that is expected by October.
Meanwhile, the project has received center’s finance ministry whereby the center will contribute 25% to the SPV – something around Rs.800 crore. The state’s share is 30% of the total cost, while the balance will be met by a soft loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC).
It’s the latter that awaits the final tie-up, which if everything goes as per plan, will materialize only in February next when the final loan agreement is expected.
At a time when Didi has declared war against industry on farmland notwithstanding the fact that every mode of civilized living has built upon where else but farmlands, the situation at Salboni in Paschim Medinipur is markedly different.
The steel empire owned by Sajjan Jindal proposes to build a mammoth steel plant there on a vast tract of land of which nearly 90% is already owned by the government.
The remaining 10% of land measuring about 450 acres is owned by farmers, who are eagerly waiting for the concerned authorities to turn up so that they can offer their land for the steel plant.
So, what the difference is between Salboni and say Singur or Nandigram? One of course is that the land at Salboni is not very fertile compared to Singur and Nandigram. Second is that most of the land is already available with the government, and therefore there is less reason for opposition parties to protest setting up of the steel plant there.
What however is most important is the generous compensation package announced by the Jindals. Apparently, the land losers will not only get cash and an insurance package for recurring income, they are also likely to get jobs at the plant and allotment of shares of the company.
Sajjan Jindal’s offer of compensation has already created a stir in the industry circles. Everybody agrees it’s a grand package, but the big companies are still not unanimous that such compensations are a necessity to alleviate sufferings of poor people, who loose land, which is often their only source of survival.
The willingness with which the farmers are ready to sell their land to the Jindals is a firm indication that given a good compensation, it’ll not be that difficult to build industries on farmlands even if opposition parties are hell-bent to create obstacles.
In a way therefore Jindal’s proposed Salboni steel plant will set a new standard in the way land losers are looked upon by the government and industrialists alike.
While politicians brag about their ‘people’ power, which in many cases is nothing other than protecting their turf, the businessmen, who have the ‘money’ power, go about doing their bit in perfect silence.
The recent winning of the rights to make over Park Circus market by the Reliance group is an example.
Reliance won the contract after KMC floated an open tender. No opposing voice was heard before the event, but after Reliance’s bagging the contract, political parties are afraid that it may be the beginning of the company’s sweep in the lucrative retailing of fresh food items.
Can Reliance be stopped in its fresh food business? One doubts. Why?
Already several giant retailers are selling fruits and vegetables from their outlets for several years, though their scale of operation is not as big as what Reliance proposes to do. But the fact is retailing of vegetables from retail joints is already happening.
The other solid reason is that Reliance has after all won the contract against a valid tender. If they are stopped now, won’t they approach the courts to seek justice? Those perhaps are the reasons why KMC may have to award the contract to Reliance.
That being the case, the fear that small vegetable sellers will feel the heat of Reliance’s competitive prices is not unfounded. Recently in Ranchi an outlet of the company was severely damaged by protesters for this reason.
Is there a way out? Perhaps no. In the immediate term, there’ll be protests by small sellers with the backing of political parties. In the long run, retailing has to happen, if only because the government at the center wants so, and also there cannot be separate yardsticks for different states in the country.
To take the logic of retailing of fresh foods further, there is a strong possibility that intense competition among retailers will force them to look at farming as well on the back of superior technology.
If that happens it’ll be good for Indian agricultural scenario because small land holding among farmers prevent them to invest in advanced techniques to improve productivity. They are also not in a position to adopt means to prevent wastage of their produce.
Here is where large retailers will usher in a sea change. For effective productivity they’ll control large tract of land, use better seeds, improve cultivation and harvesting, and at the end, preserve the produce to prevent unnecessary wastage.
For this to happen, it is quite possible that many lowest-rung people will loose livelihood, but such change will not happen overnight. To one’s best understanding, the concept of contract farming is not very far off.
But to make the transition as painless as possible, the government must initiate every step at the earliest.
Who pioneered low-cost airlines in India? Because of whom is there a rush of air passengers in India?
The answer to both is Captain GR Gopinath. Until he arrived with his Air Deccan in the Indian aviation sky, the pie of lucrative air traffic was firmly in the hands of a few, notably Jet Airways and Air Sahara, apart from the ailing Indian Airlines, now Indian.
Air Deccan’s USP was dirt-cheap air fares, which it maintained and still maintains on the back of no-frill passenger amenity, online ticket booking, bare-bone ground facility, and suchlike. Not that majority of passengers complained.
More importantly, Captain Gopinath opened the floodgate of more cheap airlines taking wings, among which important ones are Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airline, SpiceJet, and GoAir.
It also helped that the country’s economy, growing at a healthy rate, is making more people air-borne to cut traveling time, and the government’s pro-industry moves to allow private airlines offering trips abroad.
Suddenly, air travel is no longer a luxury as it used to be even 3 years back. Common people, who rarely dreamt of traveling by air, are now opting for it more and more. As a result, the airports are choc-a-bloc with passengers all through the day, and even a minor incident can cause to disrupt flight schedules in a row.
Now there is the second phase of expansion of aviation sector in India coming up. On one hand, the equity-level tie-up between Kingfisher Airline and Air Deccan and Jet’s acquisition of Air Sahara are indications of consolidation among airline companies.
On the other, airports are on the path of expansion. Mumbai and Delhi airports are the busiest ones and therefore need urgent upgrading. Kolkata airport too is to start renovation soon, what with alarming rise of passengers of late, causing stampede-like situation often.
In a way, Captain Gopinath is the person to bring about this change in aviation sector. Among other things, the surge in the number of institutes offering courses on in-flight services and plans to open hitherto closed airports in far-flung areas are a testimony to the buoyancy in the sector.
However, for all that matter, may be we would no longer see the dirt-cheap rates that Air Deccan has been offering thus far.
No grudge there, for after all if the industry doesn’t survive, facilities don’t. Captain Gopinath has prized open an avalanche of opportunity in air travel in India. He’ll be remembered for that.
