Primary colours

Railway stations in the country are increasingly acquiring a political colour and nowhere is this more visible than in West Bengal and, specifically, the shed of the Sealdah-EMU local train. The walls of the shed recently got a fresh coat of saffron and white, replacing the blue and white of the Trinamool Congress, whose partyman Dinesh Trivedi was briefly railway minister in the second United Progressive Alliance government. Several small stations were also painted blue and white from that time but local railway officials reckon they'll be saffronised soon too. So far, though, only a Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, a former junior railway minister, has criticised this competitive paint job, saying it didn't serve any purpose to spend so much money on paint when fares were being raised to meet rising operating costs, other than to score cheap political points.