THE PRICE OF BEING BENGAL
KIt’s not poverty that strikes one most after a stint abroad. Bengal has suffered a surfeit of political circus and far too little bread for many decades.
olkata seems expensive after London. I say seems because cost is usually a matter of perception. Despite the consoling purchasing power parity formula, no comparison is ever absolutely exact. I remember the artist Sheila Auden’s amazement when I happened to mention paying Rs 20 for a kebab roll. That must have been 20 years ago. But Sheila, W.C. Bonnerjee’s granddaughter and widow of John Auden, the noted geologist and explorer, had settled in London 30 years earlier. Street food boasted no razzmatazz in the India she remembered; a rupee was ample for a kebab roll.
Prices have galloped ahead the world over since then but India, especially West Bengal, compounds bad management with the underworld’s tightening grip on daily life. London’s murderous gangs have only a localised impact. The strong sense of community—utterly absent here— won’t let them hold society to ransom. Yet, Kolkata (or the parts of it that matter) was built in London’s image. The architectural resemblance hit me when I first stepped off the boat train at King’s Cross station 59 years ago. The Second City (as Kolkata was called in its Calcutta heyday) marched in close step with the first. Reginald Heber, a 19th century Bishop of Calcutta, recorded that La Martiniere masters were as well paid as in any English public school. Malcolm Muggeridge didn’t take a pay cut when leaving Fleet Street for the Statesman. Nothing remains of that commonality. A church or an insurance building might spark fleeting recognition but the human element which alone brings brick and mortar to life is callously indifferent in Kolkata to the communitarian spirit.
Food costs more than in London because comparison must consider what else the same unit of currency can buy. Money value is subjective. The loaf that provides me with two lunches cost seven rupees before I went away. Now, it’s nine, a 29 per cent jump in three months. After paying Rs 60 for the papaya she had bought only the day before for just half that amount, my wife yearns even more for London’s North End Road where Cockney barrow boys lay out bowls of luscious peaches and succulent plums, ripe melons, two dozen juicy Satsuma oranges and scarlet capsicums. Each bowl is a pound. You wouldn’t get it here for Rs 100, a pound’s outrageously high new equivalent.
One can rage at manipulated oil prices, too much or too little rain, double taxation by state and Central governments and forward trading. Official incompetence is manifest in distribution bottlenecks, poor storage, theft and wastage. The licence retailers enjoy forces consumers to pay for a ruling party’s votes. But it’s the black hand of the mafia that is most ominous for the long term. Ruffians extort protection money from meat trucks from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, thereby inflating the price of mutton. They or their peers smuggle potatoes to Jharkhand and Odisha and act as praetorian guard for hoarders and property speculators. Arriving at the shabby morgue of Dum Dum’s brand new airport, we drove through forests of rising condominiums that create an illusion of frenetic activity while 22 per cent of Kolkata languishes below the poverty line. India’s per capita income may scale a dizzy Rs 53,000 but Kolkata’s poor manages on a daily Rs 27. Edward Heath would have called this the “unacceptable face of capitalism”. Browsing through old newspapers gives one the impression that Kolkata, priding itself on its culture, is India’s rape capital.
Exploitation is aggravated by the ethnic interpretation of Disraeli’s two nations “between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws”. Distress doesn’t touch those who can do something about soaring prices. Instead, it generates crass flippancy. The radio commentator who suggested eating broccoli since potatoes and onions are so expensive may not have heard of Marie Antoinette.
It’s not poverty that strikes one most after a stint abroad. Bengal has suffered a surfeit of political circus and far too little bread for many decades. The bright blue and white paint in which Kolkata is smothered may highlight the dereliction within but what depresses most is that no one cares as politically protected mafias extend their stranglehold. Whether Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee or Mamata Banerjee governs in Writers Buildings, the roughs whom Jyoti Basu dismissed as “wagon-breakers” govern life. It’s happening elsewhere too but Kolkata sets the trend. The London ideal gone awry is the shape of urban India’s future. To adapt Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s famous comment, what Bengal is today India will be tomorrow.