Bengal's ministers ignore Bengal, especially Kolkata

For the first time in quarter of a century, both central government Budgets this year were presented by Bengali ministers. While it is the responsibility of every minister to look at the broad national interest rather than local interests, it is a truth universally acknowledged that ministers everywhere know how to direct atleast some of the national pie in the direction of their constituents. By that yardstick, both Mamata and (especially) Pranab failed miserably.

Pranab-babu's Budget, in fact, directed lots of special goodies toward Maharashtra and specifically toward Mumbai, including a massive additional allocation toward dealing with that city's drainage challenges. The JNNURM aims toward "eliminating slums within five years"; if you listen to the PM and FM speak, it is clear that Mumbai's slums are the eye-sore they seek to remove with the greatest zeal. Calcutta, once the commercial heart of India (apart from being its cultural and intellectual capital), continues to be neglected -- nay, utterly ignored. Mamata's budget contained a small reference to upgrading Calcutta's Metro, but when you compare the goodies that Laloo directed toward Bihar (or even Barkat-da toward Malda in the 1980s), Mamata's efforts were feeble by comparison. But Pranab-babu's budget was conspicuous for the way in which it utterly ignored Bengal and Kolkata's growing needs. If Mumbai's drainage problems need to be addressed, Kolkata's are no less pressing (as any monsoon downpour will immediately attest). Providing a bit of relief on account of Typhoon Aila does nothing to address Kolkata's future, serving instead as nothing but a band-aid to heal a wound that is too large to be covered by it.

Kolkata had the second largest stock-exchange in the country; with the emergence of the NSE (based in Mumbai), the CSE is now a ghost exchange with minimal turnover and rapidly declining relevance. It hosted SBI's foreign-exchange trading hub until a few years ago, and other banks were obliged to do a lot of their FX trading in Kolkata as a result -- but with SBI's quiet departure, this too is gone. The Birlas used to be Kolkata-based, but their main branch (Aditya/Kumaramangalam) is in Mumbai, and increasingly the RPG group is more Mumbai than Kolkata-focused too. With the demise of the managing agencies, Kolkata's potential MNCs have migrated elsewhere and those that remain are pale shadows of themselves. Even its role as the main hub for tea auctions is being eroded as Guwahati and Kochi emerge (and the quiet demise of the second-largest tea-broker, Carritt Moran, barely registers in the news). Even the Eden Gardens, India's greatest cricketing venue, continues to be neglected: not a single international fixture was played at the Eden throughout the last season (despite tours from Australia, and two from England) and the next Australia tour (for ODIs) will again leave the Eden out. The Sharad Pawar-controlled BCCI gratuitously ensured that even the semifinal and final of major domestic fixtures (Ranji, Duleep, Salve Trophies) deliberately left out Kolkata's Eden Gardens.

What are Bengal's representatives in the Union Cabinet doing about this wilful neglect of Kolkata? Will nobody step in to preserve something of the great legacy of Bengal and Kolkata as an intellectual, cultural, financial and sporting hub?