Calcutta

by Moorhouse, Geoffrey

  The Biswas Commission, which looked into the workings of Calcutta Corporation shortly after Independence, reported in 1950 that instances of corruption were to be discovered throughout the municipal organization. So many people appeared to be involved, or under some obligation to those who were involved, that the members of the commission found fewer witnesses prepared to give them evidence than they expected. All the same, they compiled a dossier so damaging to men of influence that it is perhaps not surprising the authorities shrank from publishing it in the end. Late in 1947, for example, the Government had ordered a sample survey to be made of rating assessments in the city. The commissioners found that, generally, assessments had been undervalued by half and in some cases by up to eighty per cent. ‘A well-known house in Calcutta, for instance, was in the occupation of the Secretary of State for India in Council. He occupied a part on Rs 3,000 a month, and the remainder was in the occupation of a limited company. Rs 2,000 a month was the actual rent, and the annual value was computed on that footing. There is no doubt that if, on the average, half the actual rent was taken as the actual value, described as based on the actual rent, the Assessing Inspector assisted in the undervaluation and he could not have done so unless someone made it worth his while to do so. The Assessing Inspector draws a salary of Rs 60 rising to Rs 185. We have seen no case in which the figure he had put down as the annual figure was increased.’

  The commission found that ‘No Assessing Inspector has ever been punished for dishonest assessment, even when this was manifest. The flats at 6, Bishop Lefroy Road, have an interesting feature. In respect of these flats the tenants mentioned the rents. In each case a lesser figure was adopted as annual value, apparently because the owner was a Councillor, not on the theory of reasonable rent.’ There were even instances of reduction in assessment, such as that in the case of a garden house in Buttokristo Pal Lane. ‘In the first quarter of 1944–5, the Assessor valued the building at old rates and valued the land at Rs 2,250 per kottah, and allowed thirty-six per cent as depreciation on the value of the buildings estimated at the old rate, all obviously intended to reach as low a figure as possible… The Deputy Executive Officer it reduced it to Rs 1,275 as Lump Sum reduction (which means a reduction on no special ground). The owner is an influential Councillor.’

  The commission was suspicious of the public health department, too. ‘In May 1948, Food Inspector Dr Daud sent thirty samples to the laboratory and against only two the result noted is “adulterated”. Against the rest the column was blank and on the day of his examination he put down the word “good” in each of the blanks as though all the samples were good and only two bad. If that was so, the true position would seem to be that Dr Daud is an adept at securing “good” samples, and everyone who lives in Calcutta knows that out of the articles from which he has taken the samples (milk, dahi, butter, ghee, mustard oil etc.) it would be hard to find a single one in Calcutta that is not adulterated.’ There was another racket in the New Market. ‘On 5 March 1946 the Public Utilities and Markets Committee sanctioned settlement of what was called the Chhota Chandney at the South-west corner of the Vegetable Chandney with Sheik Amjadali for the opening of a hotel. The Chhota Chandney, with four doors and measuring 1,636 sq. ft., was numbered as stall No. 40 of Block H. There were seventeen applicants for the stall, which was put to auction. The settlement was made with Sheik Amjadali for an initial rent of Rs 17,000 and a daily rent of Rs 30, calculated on the basis of the usual rate of Rs 50 per 100 sq. ft. of floor space per month plus ten per cent increase as per resolution of the committee meeting dated 17 March 1945. On 26 March 1946, without any application from the party and without calling for any report from the department, the committee, on the motion of Councillor Mr Md Rafique, reduced the daily rent from Rs 30 to Rs 15.’

  The report continues along, those lines for six chapters before it begins to analyse the merely inadequate though not necessarily dishonest workings of the Corporation. It reviews the racket run by the councillor who was trying to get stallholders evicted from one market to another, where they would become his tenants; it notes the curious reappearance of thirty-five cases of tinned butter after reaching the District Health Inspector for destruction because they were judged unfit for consumption; it remarks upon the workings of a Law Department which allowed some very rich people to remain unsummoned for arrears of rates a full fifteen years after the summonses had actually been drawn up ready for serving; it reviews many similar things besides.

  And while the Biswas Commission was investigating a Corporation dominated by Congress councillors, other abuses were mounting in the name of the Congress Ministers of West Bengal and their supporters. These were not to become public knowledge until 1967, when the Communists at last gained power in the state and swiftly opened the accounts as a piece of highly effective propaganda. Quite apart from the nepotism that had been obvious to many people for a couple of decades, there had been financial swindling on a gigantic scale in the year preceding the election; something over Rs 43 millions was involved. This was the amount that had been budgeted for the relief of the poor and distressed in the 24 Parganas, in the Bankura, Purulia and Midnapore districts of West Bengal that year. It had been spent through local government bodies whose chairmen and vice-chairmen were in each case Congressmen. Nominally it had been used on sanctioned schemes of relief, but not once had the spending been first reviewed by the local finance standing committee, as required under law. Where work had been done, it bore no relation to the payments made; account books had not been kept for months and sometimes didn’t even balance. In the 24 Parganas, Rs 850,000 were never accounted for even after the Communists had sent their men in to investigate. In Bankura the sanctioned funds had risen from Rs 2 millions in 1965 to Rs 7.5 millions in the following pre-election year; Rs 84,000 was unaccounted for and relief had apparently been distributed to people who did not exist. In Purulia, three of the paymasters appointed by the local government chiefs were fictitious. All this was merely the tally for one year. In addition, the Government had been allotting Rs 20 millions annually for fifteen years previously for relief and rehabilitation work and, bearing in mind the refugees who spent nine years on the platforms of Sealdah Station and another ten in the decrepitude of a disused jute mill godown, a distinctly non-Communist observer might well remark that ‘one comes to the conclusion, on the evidence, that if all the money allotted had been used for the purpose intended, the problem would have been solved long ago.’

  The last years of Congress rule over Calcutta and surrounding district had become so unpopular that P. C. Sen and his Ministers were unable to address public meetings or move anywhere without very large police escorts. Congress had moreover, suffered a serious internal dispute. Although its effective commander in chief was Atulya Ghosh, its President in West Bengal was Ajoy Mukherjee, and the two had become such bad enemies by September 1965 that Mukherjee was expelled from office; whereupon he publicly denounced corruption among his old colleagues and formed his own party, the Bangla (Bengal) Congress. When the 1967 elections arrived it joined forces with an already shambling collection of political units opposing the Ministry of P. C. Sen. This opposition’s backbone consisted of the original Communist Party of India and the rival Communist Party of India (Marxist). Communism had itself split in 1964 on the issue of Sino-Soviet differences. The CPI broadly maintained its allegiance to Moscow while the CPI (M) was created by those who found themselves much more in sympathy with Peking, and in West Bengal these had now become a loud majority of local Communists.

  A result of this rivalry was that the 1967 elections were contested, roughly speaking, by three political cohorts. One consisted of P. C. Sen’s ruling Congress. A second was called People’s United Left Front and was a combination of Bangla Congress, Communist Party of India, Praja Socialist Party, Bolshevik Party, Gorkha League, Forward Bloc and Lok Sevak Sangha. The third called itself United Left Front and included Communist Party of India (Marxist), Forward Bloc (Marxist), Revolu
tionary Socialist Party, Revolutionary Communist Party of India, Workers Party of India, Socialist Unity Centre and Samyukta Socialist Party. In some constituencies the two popular fronts fought each other, but always they opposed Congress and between them they brought it down. In the 1962 elections, the undivided Communists in West Bengal had collected 50 seats in an Assembly of 280. In 1967 the CPI (M) took 43 seats, the CPI took 16 seats, Bangla Congress took 34 seats and Forward Bloc took 13 seats; the rest of the popular front parties could number their elected representatives in ones and twos. Against this combination of 140 new members of the Legislative Assembly, Congress now had 127. Numerically it was, therefore, quite a close-run thing. Psychologically, it was a crushing blow. Almost all the senior Congress Ministers had been defeated. A former Finance Minister of the Central Government in Delhi had been put out by a nephew of Subhas Chandra Bose. Atulya Ghosh had been ejected by an unknown trade unionist. P. C. Sen had been toppled by Ajoy Mukherjee.

  There was a rapid settling of differences between the bits and pieces of popular frontage and a United Front emerged, with Ajoy Mukherjee as the new Chief Minister of West Bengal, largely in grace and favour for personally removing the previous incumbent. Mukherjee was an elderly man who had built his political life on the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, which he has since topped off with some notably Gandhian mannerisms. He has been seen as little more than a respectable figurehead and, while this probably does him rather less than justice, he has quite clearly been bewildered by many of the subsequent events with which he has been politically associated. From the moment he obtained office it was obvious that the real power in his Government resided immediately in the person of the Deputy Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, of the CPI (M).

  Basu is the kind of man from whom Bengali legends are created. He was a doctor’s son and he was first educated by the nuns of the same Loreto Convent to which Mother Teresa belonged when she came to Calcutta from Albania. After that, the Jesuits of St Xavier’s College had him until he spent time at university before going to London to read law. It was there, in the late thirties and early forties, that he picked up his political training at the hands of the British Communist Palme Dutt. He returned home in time to be put into prison for his politics by an Indian Government and after that he was never anything but a full-time politician, particularly responsible for organizing activity among the railway workers of Calcutta. Like many a Bengali before him, he is idolized by people with whom he has apparently little in common. He is a neat, fastidious-looking man in his early fifties and it is quite impossible to tell whether his bearing and his mannerisms come naturally or whether they are carefully cultivated to fulfil a role. He is never known to smile in public and it is widely believed among the rank and file of party workers that he is a totally ascetic man who has never in his life touched drink; which certainly isn’t true. The point is that he looks ascetic, striding purposefully from the public platform, his hair carefully oiled in an impeccable quiff, his dhoti always immaculately white, his eyes forever hooded by their upper lids.

  There is a tension in him that he never conveys in public. Catch him behind a Ministerial desk, or in an armchair at home, and the foot of his crossed leg never stops moving up and down. Yet on a public platform he stands out from every other Communist leader merely by virtue of his control; he has none of the rhetorical tricks, he does not harangue, he is generally thought slightly dull as a speechmaker in Bengal. But there is no questioning his power. And there is little doubt that the exercise of power satisfies him. Before you are half across his threshold his greeting is ‘Yes?; the impatient gesture of the headmaster who has just been disturbed in his study by some lowly fourth former. He never melts. Every reply he makes is brisk and brief. He gives absolutely nothing away. He makes you feel that you are unforgivably interrupting the world’s work upon which he alone is engaged. Ajoy Mukherjee rambles on for half an hour in reply to just one question, without ever coming within a mile of its point. Jyoti Basu answers fifteen in ten minutes flat and, before you know where you are, you are down the stairs and out into the yard of his thoroughly unpretentious little house, where half a dozen stout party workers are lounging as watchfully as the guardians of Birla Park. You have barely been given time to notice the three plaster ducks flying across the living room wall, or the tubular chrome armchair that would look very nice in the front room of a semi in Enfield.

  This new Government of fourteen political parties began with a sense of flair. It announced that the police would no longer be required to protect the Ministers of West Bengal. It reduced the Chief Minister’s salary from Rs 1,150 a month to Rs 700 and the salaries going with every other portfolio were cut from Rs 900 to Rs 500. It let Calcutta know that air-conditioning would now be shut down in the Writer’s Building, the Government secretariat, as a gesture of solidarity with the poor people. At a mass rally on the Maidan shortly after taking office, it sought and obtained something it called ‘formal approval’ from its supporters for an 18-point programme. According to this document, high on the United Front’s list of priorities were particular attention to the plight of the peasants and to land reform generally, educational reforms and a liberation of the forces of freedom and progress.

  Within a month, the Central Committee of the CPI (M) had produced its own April Resolution on the new situation in West Bengal. This was curiously at odds with the Government’s 18 points. ‘The particular immediate task,’ it decided, ‘is that of educating, reorganizing, rebuilding, consolidating and expanding the Party organization … of proper selection, promotion and grading of cadres and their proper deployment in different class and mass fronts …’ It was, nevertheless, highly conscious of the party role in Government. ‘Our Ministers, without either undue illusions about giving relief in a big way or courting despair that nothing can be done under the present set-up, should always bear in mind that they are the Party’s representatives, should strive to tender our bona-fides to the people. Any failure on this score compromises the Party’s political line … will not help us to resist and overcome the vacillations, wobblings and sometimes even possible backsliding of some democratic parties in the United Front … In a word, the UF Governments that we now have* are to be treated and understood as instruments of struggle in the hands of our people, more than as Governments that actually possess adequate power, that can materially and substantially give relief to the people. In clear class-terms, our Party’s participation in such Governments is one specific form of struggle to win more and more people, and more and more allies, in the cause of People’s Democracy and at a later stage for Socialism.’

  There was much novel activity in the first few weeks of the United Front. Calcutta Corporation was instructed to reduce the tax on bustees and to raise it on buildings with an annual valuation of Rs 15,000. The State Transport Corporation was ordered to reinstate over six hundred workers who had been dismissed for sabotage, violence or theft during the previous few years. The police budget was cut by Rs 4.8 millions and the Commissioner of Police in Calcutta was informed that in future, when a gherao of management by workers was reported, it should be referred to the Labour Minister before any other police action was taken. The refugee families who had spent the best part of twenty years in appalling conditions on Sealdah Station and elsewhere, were finally rehabilitated. And a start was made on a reform of the land question. This was to lead to yet another division within the Communist ranks and to what may be the most crucial political event in India since Independence.

  The average size of land-holding in West Bengal at this time was 3.88 acres, a smaller area than anything else in the country, with the exception of Kerala. There were, nevertheless, 53,000 holdings of between 15 and 30 acres and another 3,000 holdings of more than 30 acres, although an early statute of the new republic had declared that no one could legally own more than 25 acres. That figure is, in effect, a nonsense, for it has been possible to inflate it by dividing a large holding among innumerable members of a family. The s
ystem of cultivation, moreover, has scarcely changed in West Bengal since the Permanent Settlement. A petty landlord, or jotedar, leases ground to a bargadar on a crop-sharing basis. If the jotedar provides seed, bullock, plough and manure he takes half the crop; if he provides only land he takes forty per cent of the crop. It is a primevally miserable arrangement, inviting dishonesty on both sides and offering no security at all to the bargadar. This was the territory into which the United Front swiftly took an important step under a manifesto composed by the Land Minister, Hare Krishna Konar, a senior member of the CPI (M). ‘The primary task,’ this declared, ‘is abolition of large-scale landholding and distribution of land to the landless. The next step would be for the Government to explain to the peasants the disadvantages of cultivating small holdings. The peasants will then voluntarily take to collective farming. Private ownership of land will then be done away with.’

  The method used to abolish the large landholdings was quite simple. Landless peasants were encouraged to march on selected jotedars. A procession would stream upon its target behind a red banner, its members armed with lathis, spears, bows and arrows. They frequently shouted ‘Mao Tse Tung Zindabad’ as they went. On reaching their objective they marked its four corners with red flags, declared it forthwith to be in the possession of their citizen’s committee and, as often as not, looted whatever grains or other crops were in store. If the jotedar was brave enough to get in the way, he was beaten up and sometimes killed. At first, the police took steps to intervene in this procedure, but they were instructed by the Government in Calcutta that this was legitimate and democratic struggle and must not be interfered with. Inside six months the CPI (M) found that its peasant membership had risen by 450,000 in West Bengal. Then Naxalbari happened, and the issue was no longer a simple and straightforward struggle for possession between landless and landed peasants.