Fleeing from Cal to Bombay. And back?

The Emergency was a sort of awakening for many of us who grew up in the 1970s, as we realised that Indira Gandhi was not just our overarching eternal and universal Mummy -- she had some very nasty claws as well. But still living in Bombay (which it was then) and even having politically aware teachers who brought urban lefties from Elphinstone College to talk to us schoolchildren, did give you a sort of rose-tinted view of the political process. It was exciting but the rough and tumble was all really very far away from us. In 1977, my father got transferred from Bombay to Calcutta (as it was then), and politics exploded in our faces. The Emergency was lifted, Indira Gandhi was out, the Janata experiment was in. The Left came to power in West Bengal.

Pic/Impact Mag

Much as the upper classes bemoaned the rise of trade unionism which was inevitable since the Left politicians were all trade union leaders, for a Bengal just recovering from Naxal violence and the equally violent answer from a Congress led by Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the people had hope.

Not surprisingly, neglect of Calcutta was the first item on the agenda as the focus was on land reforms and rural Bengal. Soon after came the sort of cultural chauvinism which so many politicians in Maharashtra resort to these days -- Bengali became the medium of instruction across schools and English was relegated to the background. The results of that are for everyone to see -- in the last 34 years, the intellectual capital which Bengal was once so proud of being has practically been reduced to a cipher.

As trade unions drove industry out, the common man saw what happens when a party known for its agitational politics gets elected. No day went past without bringing Calcutta to its knees as morchas, gheraos, bandhs, processions and strikes ruled the day. At the same time, the metro railway was being built. So, between the excavations and traffic-numbing processions, there was very little space for the ordinary maanush.

Bombay became like an ideal dream for the Banerji family, and we ran back at every available holiday. Calcutta was not just medieval in its outlook (Bombay in those days, you must remember, took its inspiration straight from Manhattan while Calcutta was a remnant of the British Raj -- and the British had abandoned it for Delhi in the early decades of the 20th century) but it had no electricity, it was still struggling with the burden of refugees from the Bangladesh war, the excesses of the Naxal days and a government which did not care.

Or it did -- in very strange ways; like the culture minister whose wife decided that singer Usha Uthup -- also a Bombay import -- was vulgar. No one could understand how a Kanjeevaram-sari dressed singer with a magical voice could offend anyone. But Uthup was banned from singing in government-owned auditoriums and hotels. Do not ask why the government was running hotels -- think about it this way: communism, the State, everything is owned by the state.

I ran back from Calcutta to Bombay in 1984 and in a few short years, realised two things (a little before Rajiv Gandhi infamously called Calcutta a "dying city"): The Communists may have had some disastrous ideas but as the Rath Yatra movement began building up, the Left's insistence on secularism was commendable. The other was that Bombay was beginning to show the signs of decay which Calcutta had succumbed to -- too many people, outdated infrastructure, and increasingly short-sighted administrators. There were lessons here.

The Hindu-Muslim division which began in the late 1980s, culminating in the demolition of the Babri Masjid, extracted a heavy price from Mumbai, and we have not yet recovered from it. And consistent neglect of a capital city and the reckless and unfocussed use of identity politics meant that Bombay went from India's most desirable residence to the sorry state we find ourselves in today.

The arrival of Mamata Banerjee at Writer's Building after 34 years of rule by the same party -- elected back to power seven times -- is historic and salutary. For the politician, it is about keeping the people's needs in mind at all times. And for the electorate, it is about keeping politicians on their toes. If we don't, they'll run away with us or run us into the ground. Mumbai and Maharashtra are close to being emergency cases -- right back where we started.

The writer is a Mumbai-based journalist