The dirty state of affairs

The endeavour had started last year. To bring the annual Poush Mela held in Santiniketan under some control. Started by Rabindranath Tagore in 1894 and held every year since then, the official mela was only for three days but the bhanga mela or the mela’s aftermath continued over three weeks. After tourists had left, the bhanga mela would cater to villagers coming from far and near for their year’s supply of utensils, baskets, warm clothes etc. 

But in order that all the shop owners and visitors are fed, the food stalls also persisted much after the official mela was over. As a result the entire — almost three acre — mela ground would be strewn with plastic and thermocol after they departed. Not to mention the open defecating around the ground. For over 5,000 stall owners and helpers and the lakh and a half visitors the mela attracted on an average each day, there were less than a dozen bathrooms!

While last year the order from the green tribunal in response to a petition by environmental activist Subhas Dutta was paid little heed, this year the Visva-Bharati University authorities who organise the mela came to a compromise solution of extending the official mela to six days with a promise that the bhanga mela would not extend beyond that.

And much to all the residents’ pleasant surprise the stalls were dismantled on the sixth day and the ground was cleared up within four/five days of that. Thwarted in their attempts to sell kitschy handicrafts at the extended mela many sellers shifted base to a Saturday market stared in 2003 which has now become a daily ritual. Held in the forest grounds adjoining Santiniketan, this weekly market has become such a huge tourist attraction that suddenly the local political netas, the police and even the state administration have started taking a keen interest in its well-being.

A livelihood initiative which grew without any state intervention may now suffer from too much attention. Already permanent bamboo structures for tourists to rest have sprung up flouting all forest land rules. An entire stretch of one kilometer where the Saturday market (and now weekly market) is held is strewn with litter.

The administration, which is keen on beautification, does not see the increasing garbage probably because the whole of Santiniketan is covered in it. Till Mamata happened. In the midst of the mela ending and hordes of tourists arriving in Santiniketan for New Year revelries, the chief minister decided to spend three days here for two political meetings in the district. Since she had expressed a desire to walk the stretch of the weekly market, just that area was made garbage free.

Many foreign ex-students of Visva-Bharati University and lovers of Santiniketan come almost every year to spend a few weeks here in winter. Many of them, our age, come home to have a cup of freshly brewed coffee and discussions on the state of the university and its environs are inevitable. This year all of them were unanimous in their comment on the garbage that seems to engulf this university town and tourist city. What as Indians we have learnt to ignore distressed our foreign friends hugely. They repeatedly asked why a little of the “beautification fund” could not be spent on dealing with the garbage.

I suppose we only get a government that we deserve. When a long-time Santiniketan lover, a Swede told a Bengali gentleman to not chuck plastic out of his SUV, he apparently turned to him to remark, “So what? This is my country.”