Apart from the courts and a lone petitioner, nobody really seems to care about what happens to the Maidan in Calcutta. When it comes to their environment, Calcuttans have been managing without health for decades, and it should not be difficult at all to dispense with beauty as well. Besides, there is the city?s abiding love for books which amply makes up for damaged lungs, ugliness and filth. So let the city?s widest stretch of green be dug up and dirtied again. The Book Fair and other fairs lined up for the coming season are all a lot of fun ? and this is what a city should be all about. The suicidal callousness that goes in the name of civic sense in Calcutta is founded, more or less, on such a line of thinking, or not thinking. This is, of course, supported by an ancient infrastructure, or non infrastructure, jointly maintained by the principal civic and defence institutions of the country.

The bafflingly multiple character of the Maidan?s ?keepers? is by now part of its miserable legend. The state government, the judiciary, the police, the state public works and environment departments and pollution control board are all terribly concerned about preserving this patch of green. But none can, or will, do a thing to stall its systematic degradation. Non-governmental organizations do their bit and concerned citizens file one PIL after another, and the court intervenes. Trees planted by the first are routinely uprooted, and orders passed by the court ? such as the banning of rallies ? are ignored, citing one loophole or the other. The network of red-tape and hazily defined responsibilities makes it impossible to pin the authorities down to any form of accountability. And the alternative fairground is well behind schedule. Every civic body and its officials have ready excuses, and nobody is actually breaking any law in any clear way. So, nothing ?wrong? is being done as the Maidan gets messed up again for the fairs. Looking after this part of the city has nothing to do, therefore, with a civilized, healthy and aesthetic urban existence. It has everything to do with getting past the law and unthinkingly maintaining a status quo that benefits different people in different ways, but results in the killing of a city ? its morale and its health. Clean air, safe traffic, good roads and healthy greens are not essentials in Calcutta any more, but luxuries that a terminally ill ? and ill-making ? city deserves to forget about.