Yet another election is knocking on Calcutta’s door. Polls to 144 wards of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation will take place on December 19 — they are being conducted after 2015 — and the results would be announced two days later. Having trounced the Bharatiya Janata Party in the assembly elections, the Trinamul Congress, which has been running Calcutta’s corporation since 2010, is expected to do well. Its manifesto remains focused on improving the city’s civic architecture, especially urban drainage and sanitation. A demoralized BJP is going into battle by prioritizing ‘local’ faces, while the Left, buoyed by a rise in the vote share in urban constituencies in the recent by-elections, is in war mode too.
Civic issues, as opposed to an ideological focus, usually dominate the discourse on municipal elections. It would, however, be interesting to reflect on a relevant question. Just as the ruling political party is expected to provide seamless, quality urban services — roads, water, drainage, electricity and so on — and the Opposition is meant to point out lapses, should the citizen not be invested with civic responsibilities too? The answer is, certainly, in the affirmative. Calcuttans have an elementary role to play in improving their city. One way of doing this would be for them to direct the attention of the authorities towards, what are deemed as, ‘marginal’ civic amenities. Two such areas that seldom receive adequate attention, much to Calcutta’s peril, are the environment and heritage. It is, for instance, shocking that the city has largely stood as a mute witness to the mauling of its precious wetlands by a nexus comprising developers and successive administrators. Climate change would open new fronts of destruction that must be identified and plugged. This needs cooperation between citizens and civic services. Similar inertia marks the civic consciousness when it comes to protecting heritage — not just ‘built heritage’ — or incentivizing such conservation. Public awareness and the consequent pressure on governments hold the key to reimagining what constitutes the civic and, indeed, civility in a metropolis. The reductive attitude that leads to the dismissal of an informed citizenry as ‘activists’ must also be shunned. A democratic, modern, functioning metropolis is a compact between the civilian and the civic authority. Neither citizen nor municipality has the right to violate this code.
