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| Tagore, culture ride Mamata's train of thought |
| Saubhadro Chatterjee & Sharmistha Mukherjee / New Delhi May 07, 2010, 01:28 IST |
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Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee is set to take some time off from her busy schedule as railway minister and look into another theme close to her heart: Culture.
Although Banerjee was missing in action on Tuesday as commuters in Mumbai sweated it out during the strike by motormen (she was in Kolkata), she feels she has done enough railway work and it is now time to take a holistic view of her portfolio.
In May — an auspicious month in the Bengali calendar with Rabindranath Tagore’s birthday celebrated on May 7 — Banerjee will lay the foundation stones for two museums, unveil the inaugural issue of the cultural magazine of the Indian railways and flag off a special train named after Tagore to commemorate the poet’s 150th birth anniversary.
Banerjee recently told reporters at an informal gathering in her office at Parliament: “I have presented two budgets, tabled the white paper and the Vision 2020. I have approved the new catering policy. I have also started all new trains promised in last year’s budget. All major promises have been fulfilled.”
Banerjee said Eastern Railway officials have already earmarked land for the two museums — at Howrah and Bolpur. She said Rs 46 lakh has been sanctioned in the 2010-11 Railway Budget for building the museums.
The proposed Rabindra Rail Museum will cost approximately Rs 16 crore and will come up in front of the new station complex at Howrah. The second — Gitanjali Museum, named after Tagore’s Nobel Prize winning book — will be built at Bolpur (the railway station at Tagore’s Santiniketan) and is expected to cost Rs 8.32 crore.
The Railway Minister also plans to launch her ministry’s cultural magazine — along the lines of the in-flight journals — which will be available in the Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains. The idea of the Railways’ own magazine was first mooted by the committee on passenger amenities headed by Banerjee’s favourite painter and one-man intellectual think-tank, Suvaprasanna.
On May 9, Banerjee will also flag off a special train — Sanskriti Express — from Howrah to commemorate Tagore’s birth anniversary. The train will be decorated with samples of his work and other memorabilia. “It will travel to all parts of the country for one year and then come back to Kolkata,” Banerjee told reporters.
While Banerjee plans to shower a host of cultural events on unsuspecting rail passengers and other tourists, she refused an invitation from the Lok Sabha secretariat to take part in a cultural programme at Balayogi auditorium. She asked the officials to contact rebel Trinamul Congress MP, singer Kabir Suman.
The Union minister has also mooted a proposal to build the Sambhu Mitra Cultural Complex for performing arts and a music academy at Howrah. She is also likely to set up a Railway Cultural and Heritage Promotion Board soon.
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