Editor,
If the saffron zealots cry ‘Jai Shri Ram’ as a victory slogan of their numero uno political leader while the East-West Kolkata metro was passing under the Hooghly river, surely the authorities concerned can’t do anything about it. But how could those political/’religious’ lumpens succeed in entering the station complex and coaches with not only posters, but loudhailers as well?
Far from expressing regret over failure to control such unruly bhakts, if some ordinary cop pleads that it is election season and he/she cannot do anything about it, another top official offers sermons like “all of them had tickets.” You can talk sense into one or two individuals, but can you talk sense into such a large group?
What an honest confession by the metro officials. That means that the metro is indirectly admitting that if you are part of a large group, you are fully entitled to create all sorts of nuisance within the station complex and coaches, provided you possess tickets. Bravo metro mandarins. Bravo.
Lastly, the political/’religious’ zealots who were shouting Jai Shri Ram’ and victory slogan of their much-cherished leader, when the coaches were running under the Hooghly, must be told clearly that neither Rama nor any particular party/leader has created the underwater East-West metro vide their own pocket.
Rather, it is a project of the government (who are constitutionally bound to serve the people) built through public money garnered through the direct tax of the privileged few and indirect tax of each and every citizen of the land. Perhaps shameless sycophancy and blatant politicisation of national project should have a limit.
And government project is government project, which continues irrespective of the colour of power. It cannot be a monopoly of any particular political party or regime. This is the reason why the metro project, completed during the NDA regime, was part and parcel of the UPA years also. So how can a single individual or party or government be credited for its successful completion?
And while the underwater metro project might serve as a specimen of technological development, India does not become ‘developed’ only through it. Rather, when each and every Indian receives basic human necessities of food, clothing, shelter, medicine, education and livelihood with travelling like cattle (rather worse than cattle) in local/long-distance trains (in unreserved coaches) ceasing to exist, can India afford to claim that it has indeed developed?
Kajal Chatterjee,
D-2/403,
Peerless Nagar, Kolkata