Calcutta Gets Major Facelift Ahead Of British Pms Visit

Calcutta is getting a Major facelift. Over the past fortnight, the city has been getting used to something new: Looking beautiful.

As Calcutta waits for the British Prime Minister John Major to arrive for a two-day whistlestop tour, the administration, led by the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, is busy giving finishing touches to a host of things, starting with quickly refurbishing the pot-holed roads through which Major would pass to sprucing up the roundabouts near the venue of the three-day Partnership Summit, hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry, which the British premier will attend.

Major will stay at the plush Taj Bengal near the city zoo, and the dusty railings of the bridge leading up to the hotel are also being given a fresh coat of paint. After all, several leading Indian and British industrialists would be trading memoranda of joint ventures in Majors presence on January 9 at the Taj.

 

Majors well-hyped trip would cover, in a single sweep, visits to the Victoria Memorial, one of the last well-maintained relics of the Raj, to a visit to the GEC Alsthom factory on Taratolla Road in south-west Calcutta to a ``bustee in the Slum Improvement Project in south-east Calcutta.

In preparation, the battered Taratolla Road has been patched up and the harrowing stretch of road near the crossing of Taratolla has been made pretty for the occasion. Twenty one major roads, from where several thousand hawkers had recently been displaced by the state government in a much-discussed Operation Sunshine, are being washed after decades.

The slums visit has been necessitated by the fact that Britain has extended some economic assistance towards slum improvement and the British Prime Minister is eager to see the progress on this front, Ian Hughes, first secretary, press and public affairs, British High Commission said.

Those coordinating the visit appear to be aware that the state government has spruced up the slum just in time for Majors visit there. A sudden flurry of educational activity and quickly drafted lessons in basic English language are being doled out at the slums, so that the poverty-and-awe-stricken can at least muster up the vocabulary to thank the Prime Minister.

Not to be outdone, Writers Bui-ldings, the venerable state secretariat housing the offices of the Marxist state government, is also being beautified and lit up every evening in the run-up to Major. So is the Raj Bhavan, the residence of the British and Indian governors.

A touch of drama, which was being anticipated, may not come about after all. Calcuttas friendly neighbourhood rabble-rouser, Mamata Banerjee, had planned to greet Major with several thousand displaced hawkers armed with begging bowls on January 8. But the twist to the tale is that Major is only due in Calcutta the next day.

Believe it or not, the entire Operation Major is costing the municipal authorities no more than Rs 5 lakh.

The expectation is that this is a good enough investment to garner millions of pounds into West Bengal and India by way of Indo-British joint ventures.

As an investment, this option is being viewed as one which, by far, is more humble than the annual jamboree which chief minister Jyoti Basu leads to Majors country and elsewhere.