Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Bungle on, Mr Mayor

WHERE MONEY TALKS

Sadly, the media isn't much better and has only sketchily covered the water crisis.

Kolkata's mayor has earned a prominent place for himself in the Guinness Book of World Records. While the city sweltered in Friday's summer heat without a drop of water, because a corrupt and inefficient municipal authority cannot afford to repair pipes laid by the British, the mayor, Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya, magnanimously gave Rs 25,000 to a Kidderpore tailor who hankers to feature in the Guinness Book.

Kolkata has been without water for about 40 hours at the time of writing. Anywhere else, London or New York, the city's first citizen would have been out in front explaining and apologising. Not a squeak from the head of a corporation that my old colleague, Lindsay Emmerson always called "chorporation". But then, the city's mayors have occupied a special position high above mundane public concerns since Indianisation.

Sir Surendranath "" famously known as "Surrender Not" "" Banerjea, the first Indian mayor, formerly of the Indian Civil Service, was too busy earning his defiant sobriquet to bother with simple sewage. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose set his gaze on an equally patriotic horizon. Once two men claimed to be elected mayor, both pushing and shoving into the carved high-backed mayoral chair.

A recent Marxist incumbent approached the American consul-general to twin Kolkata with San Francisco. When the surprised diplomat remarked that Kolkata was already twinned with Odessa (which hardly any Kolkatan knows), the mayor announced that his son was studying in California and he needed an official reason to visit him.

Another mayor, Subrata Mukherjee, couldn't decide whether he was a loyal foot soldier of the Congress or a Trinamool Congress pioneer. So, when Madam (not Sonia Gandhi but Mamata Banerjee) frowned, he had to hastily backtrack on his West Bengal Municipal (Amendment) Bill to levy a water tax. Madam Banerjee, who herself can't decide between saffron and tricolour, didn't want voters upset. Perhaps she was upset at the ebullient Mukherjee's comment, "When I saw her coming from a distance, I thought she was Saira Bano, but when she came closer, I realised she was Haridasi (plain Jane)."

Yet a tax there has to be. One reason is the Asian Development Bank's threat to withhold the next tranche of its Rs 1,245-crore loan for environmental improvement unless water is taxed. A more pressing reason is that there is no money for necessary maintenance. This crisis may have been averted, for instance, if a 23-km polythene tube had replaced the 5-ft diameter metal pipe (one of five of varying sizes) that carries water from the Palta treatment plant to the Tallah pumping station. Laid under the Barrackpore Trunk Road in 1926, it sprang a hole on Thursday because of steady corrosion by the chemical waste from factories with which the area bristles. Corporation officials were aware of the danger but had abandoned the replacement plan as too expensive.

Cost may also explain why a promise made in 1998 hasn't been realised. Kolkata then received a daily 250 million gallons of water. We were assured that an outlay of Rs 180 crore on six underground booster pumping stations and two sewage treatment plants would increase the supply to 330 million gallons every day by 2000. Six years later, we are still about 50 million gallons short of that target, even after taking into account additional water from Garden Reach and 30 deep tube wells.

Sadly, the media isn't much better than the mayor. I looked in vain for an explanation of the crisis and for details of improvements "" if any "" carried out after Independence to the system the British created 140 years ago. There was nothing. No history of the waterworks; no explanation of the presumably sudden cracks in one of the five Palta-Tallah pipes. Bengali TV salivated over a young European female tennis wizard. Cricket, an unbalanced ethnic Indian running amuck with a gun in Canada and the shenanigans in Jharkhand dominated the papers. Coverage of the water crisis could not have been more sketchy and perfunctory.

I gather that there is no space under the Barrackpore Trunk Road for additional pipes, that roadside taps waste at least 20 million gallons of water every day while the police look on, and that there is no money to upgrade the system. Some say that even if money was available, it would line pockets instead of alleviating distress.

Yet Bhattacharya has money to squander on 11,716 metres of cloth and 90 buttons for Muhammad Nasim Qureishi to stitch his mammoth shirt. The garment will be 264 ft long "" beating the present Guinness Book record shirt which is only 146.9 ft "" with 190 ft sleeves.

The mayor might even think of increasing his gift since Rs 25,000 won't cover everything. Qureishi must hire 10 assistants. They will have to toil for 45 days. The total cost has been estimated at Rs 4,13,560. But whether or not Bhattacharya can improve on his generosity, it's he, more than the tailor, who deserves a prominent place in the Guinness Book of World Records. No one can compete with him for inanity, even in an institution long noted for colossal bungling.

sunanda.dattaray@gmail.com