Rewriting Writers'

What lies behind the makeover for Kolkata's iconic secretariat

There is no doubt that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has a thing for culture and heritage. Even so, most observers were startled by her plan to move the state secretariat and the chief minister's office out of iconic Writers' Building in the heart of Kolkata, and find new housing for them across the river in Howrah. In the meantime, Writers' Building is to be renovated, possibly for the first time since Independence. Naturally, given the dysfunctional politics of West Bengal, the opposition Communist Party of India (Marxist) has sought to delay this move, demanding a white paper, and plaintively asking "where will people be accommodated?" However, by all accounts, the move will go ahead.

There is no doubt that Writers' Building, like much of central Kolkata, is in dire need of repair, renovation and restoration. The building - the first home of the Indian civil servant, set up in the eighteenth century as a training ground and office for junior clerks of the East India Company, colloquially called "writers" - became the centre of administration in the 1880s, and acquired its familiar façade, a blend of Victorian Gothic and the neoclassical fussiness typical of imperial Calcutta at that time. Like many other buildings of the historic heart of the Raj's first city, however, the years since Independence have not been kind. It now contains many more people than it was designed for, and certainly many more files and much more furniture - perhaps stressing out load-bearing walls. The danger of poor repair to century-old buildings was brought home strongly to Kolkatans when the top floors of equally iconic Queen's Mansions in Park Street went up in flames, caused by faulty, haphazard wiring. However, most of these heritage buildings have disputed or unknown ownership; others suffer from rent control, and the inability of owners to raise enough money against their revenues to repair the structures. If Ms Banerjee recognises that Writers' is in trouble, she should also allow rental and property regulations to be altered so the rest of historic Kolkata can be saved.

Critics of Ms Banerjee will easily detect in this project a touch of the grandiosity that led her to declare that, under her, Kolkata would become a second London - and has caused such oddities to be visited on the city as Rabindrasangeet at traffic lights. And, like her plan to repaint the city blue to ensure that the hated red of the Left Front is no longer associated with it, there is also the distinct desire to wipe out signs of the previous administrations of West Bengal, which added various blocks to Writers' Building over the past decades. Declaring that change would happen has never been Ms Banerjee's problem; getting it to happen has. It remains to be seen whether the building can, in fact, be repaired and renovated within the budgeted time - six months - and at the budgeted cost - '250 crore. And, of course, it is widely expected that Ms Banerjee will seize the opportunity to repaint the building, too, as she has with so many others, a shade of blue that she chose herself, reportedly after several meetings.

Nevertheless, Ms Banerjee's intention at least should be applauded. Free India's governments have been too cavalier with the beautiful buildings that they inherited from the Raj. Even in pampered New Delhi, the sandstone of the imperial-era complexes along Rajpath have begun to erode. Meanwhile, the additions to the area have mainly been ghastly Stalinist monoliths that ruin the vista. If Writers' Building can in fact be renovated, then that will be an example for the rest of India - and West Bengal has provided few enough of those in the past decades. Now, if only Ms Banerjee could reform the administration as well as repair its home.