Mamata's Self-Propaganda Using Public Money

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Jug Suraiya
07 February 2013, 10:06 PM IST

How Didi has made herself Kolkata's most prominent landmark

During a recent visit there, i discovered that Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee — known to all and sundry, particularly sundry, as Didi — has brought about wondrous 'poriborton' (change) to Bengal, or at least to the city of Kolkata in the two years since her Trinamool Congress assumed office after dislodging the Marxists from a power they'd held on to for more years than most cared to remember. One of the problems with Indian cities, all Indian cities, including Kolkata, is that they are difficult places in which to find your way, particularly if you happen to be a visitor and not a local resident.

One of the reasons is that — thanks to mass urban migration from rural areas where there are no jobs, and few if any other sources of livelihood — Indian cities have a tendency to grow like mammoth brick-and-mortar mushrooms. As the construction boom continues unabated, sweeping away established landmarks in a tsunami of concrete, newcomers are often at a loss to find their bearings. I find this to be particularly true of Kolkata, a city i lived in for many years before moving to Delhi.

On my periodic visits there it was brought home to me that the city that was once as familiar to me as the palm of my hand had become a mysterious and misleading maze, thanks to flyovers and other construction projects that have transformed its topography. How do people find their way round, how do they not get lost? i asked a resident on one of my previous visits.

And the answer to that was the State Bank of India, or SBI. The SBI is to the Indian urban dweller what the North Star was to ancient mariners: it is an unfailing point of reference from which to get your bearings and figure out where you are and where you ought to be.

In Indian cities, all Indian cities, the SBI has long fulfilled the function of the North Star by being a navigational aid for people seeking or giving directions. That has traditionally been the primary role of the SBI, the business of receiving and giving out money being an ancillary activity.

A host giving directions to a guest might say something to this effect: Go straight down the road till you come to an SBI, take the first left after that and continue for half a kilometre and then turn right after the SBI there, and my place is three doors down from the second SBI you'll pass on your left — got it?

The SBI remains an infallible city guide all over India. Except in Kolkata. Here it has, literally and metaphorically, been overshadowed by a direction-finder even more ubiquitous than the SBI: Didi. Not Didi in person, of course, but Didi on great big huge hoardings and posters and other forms of public display. Wherever you look there's a larger-than-life Didi, hands joined together in a nomoskar (the Bengali pronunciation of namaskar), welcoming the visitor to her city.

Now, a Kolkata host giving directions to a guest might go something like this: After the 139th hoarding of Didi, go around the roundabout then count off another 17 Didis, turn right, and my place is bang opposite the 10th Didi on the left hand side — got it?

Didi's vote-catching slogan was 'Maa, maati, manoosh'. Ever since she's won, she's cut out all the frills — be it manoosh, maa, or maati — so her new slogan is just plain Mamata: Mamata, ad infinitum. If that ain't poriborton, i don't know what is.