The memory of violence persists in a city that can claim the politics of paralysis as a prevailing feature of its recent past. Last year, on December 01, Kolkata was caught dangerously unawares when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) declared, and subsequently violently enforced, a 12-hour bandh, which shattered the CPI(M) and Trinamool Congress's duopoly over politically-driven shutdowns. Smashed glass and mutilated buses had lined the streets of Kolkata then, provoking Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee to allege that the state administration and the BJP supporters were in cahoots.
Shock and awe, it seems, has a prolonged shelf life in West Bengal. On Monday, the city lay shorn of its vitality for the second time in as many weeks. The chronically chaotic avenues sported itinerant cricket matches, with clumps of policemen for added attraction. Public transport remained parked; Sector V, the IT district, nearly abandoned; the Railways routed by agitations; and the common man afflicted, again. Only if Mamata had made a prophecy last December, instead of registering a protest. Today, The Left and the Right came together to enact a consummate shutdown.
