Dada is a bhadralok literary critic and film buff, and firebrand Didi likes painting and singing. They are only too eager to promote their artistic patronage and interests in that most self-consciously intellectual of cities, Kolkata. Both have their coteries in the world of art, theatre and film but that common turf is no healing bond between West Bengal’s chief ministers past and present, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Mamata Banerjee. Both kept the portfolio of information and culture with themselves. Petty jealousies are now bubbling over in this poisoned cauldron.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and a number of CPM sympathisers that include actor Soumitra Chatterjee and film makers Mrinal Sen and Tarun Majumdar, were pointedly not invited to the 17th international film festival which opens in Kolkata this weekend. The city’s intellectual elite, which takes pride in having nurtured some of the greatest film makers the country has ever produced, from Satyajit Ray to Ritwik Ghatak, was rightly angered and horrified. The former CM had started the film fest 16 years ago and was known to personally pore over the film selections each year; Chatterjee, Majumdar and Sen were its leading lights at Nandan, the famous film-screening hub. When Didi’s petulant snub became public, hurried amends were made and invites sent out, but, naturally, the offended parties politely declined.
For someone whose cries of poverty are the loudest in the land, who came to power by derailing the industrialisation of the state, who can’t pay employees’ salaries and shouts from the rooftops to seek bailouts from New Delhi and rolling back petrol prices, Didi clearly has spare change in her kitty. She has hiked the film fest’s budget from Rs 1 crore to Rs 2.75 crore this year and has moved the inaugural from Nandan to the Netaji Indoor Stadium, with promises of Shah Rukh Khan, who, as the owner of Kolkata Knight Riders, may have his own interests in attending.
No new government can resist the temptation of poisoning culture’s cauldron further and some fulfil the urge by upturning it altogether. One of Jayalalithaa’s first moves on becoming chief minister of Tamil Nadu, after turning the new DMK-sponsored secretariat building into a multi-speciality hospital, was to convert the nine-storey, Rs 172-crore Anna Centenary Library with a collection of 5.5 million books – another ambitious DMK project, touted as the largest library in South Asia – into a paediatric hospital.
There are only speculative reports and allegations of what these massive upheavals will cost the state exchequer in losses. Asked for his reaction at the changes, the ailing DMK boss M Karunanidhi, who is fire-fighting on other levels, weakly responded: “I do not want to say anything. I am leaving it to Tamil scholars and Tamil people, who have self-respect and wisdom.”
The “self-respect” of people, which includes the ever-growing holes in taxpayers’ pockets, is in jeopardy and held to ransom by political whimsies. In the wildly mercurial and duplicitous world of chief ministers, one leader’s public library is being transformed into a hospital for infants while a film festival is a forum for trading insults. As for the “wisdom” of scholars and institution-building, these are up for sale.
The bidding war for sinecures-– Rajya Sabha nominations, appointments to sports federations, jobs to head the censor board or the art and culture akademis – hits a grasping, noisy nadir each time a new government takes charge in Delhi. Film makers, actors, dancers, academics, journalists and culture mavens, arrayed on opposite sides of the political divide, clamour for positions. Many are honorary or poorly paid. There are rich pickings, however, to be had by way of junkets, committee meetings, hospitality, free cars, and the perception of power and policy-making that patronage brings.
Above all, the perks of office carry the adrenaline rush of settling political scores and humiliating adversaries. Mamata and Jayalalithaa are only living up to their reputations of adding to the witches’ brew.
