Pollution was not the only demon that Calcuttans had to battle during this Kali Puja. The city and its suburbs witnessed an unprecedented level of lawlessness, matched by the tepid response of the police, during this particular festival this year. Most of the crimes were in the form of assaults on citizens — young and old — complaining against the bursting of loud crackers. These transgressions took place across a wide swathe of Calcutta: Girish Park, Garia, Kidderpore, Topsia, Bhowanipore and Bansdroni, among other localities, were some of the spots that witnessed the rampage of rowdies. Sources in the police have offered a novel — disturbing — rationale to explain this spurt in hooliganism. Apparently there were orders, albeit unwritten and uncodified, from the corridors of power that the police were to act with restraint on complaints and not overreact in the face of even flagrant violations. The purported reason being, with only a few months to go before the assembly elections, there was a need, or so go the whispers, to dispel a mischievous narrative crafted principally by the Bharatiya Janata Party that administrative drives often prevent Hindus from observing their festivals in a Bengal ruled by the Trinamool Congress. Incidentally, the leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari, had posted a video of the police, acting on complaints, seizing crackers from a housing complex in South Calcutta. Mr Adhikari alleged that the police were harassing citizens who wanted to celebrate their joyous festival.
Such insinuations on the part of Bengal’s principal Opposition party and the defensive response from the administration and the ruling regime, if the grapevine is to be believed, have extracted a terrible cost in the form of unchecked rowdyism. This goes to show, once again, how the pursuit of cynical — myopic — political considerations
can lead to the undermining of public safety. That the guardians of the law remain putty in the hands of vested interests with questionable designs is another sad revelation. A spirited public denouncement of this kind of complicity and apathy is called for. Recently, the state scored well in a national assessment of civic behaviour: Calcutta, it is often claimed, is a city that is safer than other metropolises. But this rule of rowdy elements cannot be a testament to civic sensibility, civility or safety.