दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

I am in Salt Lake for almost a month now. I sit in my balcony on the second floor sometimes. I enjoy the quietness and solitude and sometimes the real and rare beauty of the rising sun. Rarely, any car passes by. I hear almost everything that the passersby are arguing for while going to their destinations. There is hardly any smog. The tall trees lining the avenues present serene surroundings, but for the time when you receive something obnoxious from little birds on the trees without my knowledge. Some roads are bad but mostly the internal roads are smooth and clean. Even with the sand used as filling materials, the dust in atmosphere is less. May be it is because of the number of vehicles and lack of construction work.

But there are many reasons to hate Salt Lake. As I walk down the second avenue and then to the first one for my morning walk, the pungent smoke in the air from the oil fired stoves used by the roadside shabby snack shops sickens me. All along the administrative buildings, be it Unnayan Bhawan housing Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority, or Bikash Bhawan, these eyesores to help poor way of creating employment pains me. Why can’t the government create well done Kiosks and hand over to the deserving vendors? Why should we, as residents of the area tolerate these mushrooming and chaos of these stalls? Perhaps India has such has not developed the right way of doing things that provides the delight of a better ambience. Perhaps all the citizens require a compulsory training in good housekeeping and Japanese workplace management tools Five S.

The political unrest over land acquisition that forced the West Bengal government to withdraw plans of a massive chemical hub in Nandigram and Tata Motors to relocate its main ‘Nano’-manufacturing plant from Singur to Gujarat has certainly taken its toll on wider scale including the development work in Salt Lake too. The stopped construction work of the school complex in front of my house or the rusting columns of the project on the way to central park with growing plantations around it shock me. I am sure the government could have developed the central park of the Salt Lake as a showpiece like Hyde Park. A huge plot of land around it is still lying idle. May be one day some project of commercial importance will get preference over the greenery. A cricket academy has already come up using a lot of land and the bus stand and stalls around it are already an eyesore. I hate the slow or no changing city. I used to tell my friends in other city that even after years when I visited Salt Lake, I could remember the brick left by some and lying on the walking route in the same place. In January 2008, I found Salt Lake changing fast, but surprisingly Salt Lake development but for the Sector V has frozen again. It is disturbing. I hate it. Even the much talked about Sector V needs a lot of work. The roads must get it footpaths. Shabby stalls must go. It must go Bangalore class, if it wishes to compete. I was surprised to find a traffic jam at the entrance to Sector V from the Karunamoyee side. Perhaps, a flyover under construction may ease the problem.

From Telegraph

But before I could complete this writing on Salt Lake, I found a good reason to be happy. Yesterday, the chief minister along with the strong man of Congress, Pranab Mukherji laid the foundation of the 13.77 kilometer (km) long East-West Metro corridor that would run from Salt Lake Sector V up to Howrah Maidan. I wish West Bengal to prove that it can work under a promised time frame of completing it by 2014.

I and my sons who were born and brought up in West Bengal shall love to ride on it from Howrah to Karunamoyee that will be my station, according to the announcement.

I wish the authority would have shown a more futuristic insight and extended it to the new township of Rajarahaat and the Kolkata Airport.

I could never think that HM would be news material worth a place as the main headline on the front page of Telegraph. Only yesterday, a worker from HM visited me hearing that we were here in Salt Lake. I got the information of the headline from him. But he was just surprised rather annoyed why the company is deducting Rs 400 from all the permanent workers. He is still temporary after working for more than 12 years. He still hopes that if the company executes the agreement with the union, he will be become permanent. And he gets work hardly for 15 days a month.

In January 2008, we visited the residential zone of HM. I saw it dying and barren. Whatever had been constructed with lot of fanfare is decaying in the ghost township. When I remember of 60s and 70s, I feel anguished. For the facilities for employees and their children such as the dispensary and the high school, the present workmen are to pay. Teachers in school are on contract and paid nominally. I wanted to go in the factory and take some photographs of the places where I worked for so many years. I talked with a senior executive of our time who still holds an important position. He, a civil engineer by profession, is local with political connections working as administrator is the main executer of the management’s labour related issues. However, I didn’t get a favorable response about my visiting HM. And I didn’t want to do that without permission that I could have.

With forced VRS, the employees were made to leave. Those who refused to accept VRS were transferred to far distant places to make them leave. The largest manufacturing unit in West Bengal has become unrecognizable. Heavy engineering division has been sold out. However, the company still produces some Ambassadors. Other products such as Contessa, Trekker and Hindustan Trucks have gone in history. I don’t know why the pundits in CII still talk of the labour reform. With militant unions in India, the only beneficiaries are the officeholders in union.

I don’t know but perhaps today’s story of the workers at Hindustan Motors (HM) having responded to a management appeal to join executives in accepting a pay cut is that of the reporter or planted by the management. Unfortunately, the reporter does talk about the pay inequity between the executives and workers. Most of the executives including the CEO with almost no responsibility because of no work going on inside the factory are very highly paid are all from the South. For long the CEO has started believing that the local executives can’t be that rough and tough with workmen. The union office bearers have colluded with the management to damage this industrial giant of the state. And the promoters have squeezed the best from it.

I feel bad only as the story has tried to paint the executives pay cut as exemplary to please Pranab Mukherji and the government that suggested the preference of pay cut over the layoffs. Even the name of Vikram Pundit of Citi Bank has been referred in the report. I don’t think there was any dialogue with the workmen at large with an appeal of pay cut, which is very much possible with the dwindled numbers of workmen now employed in the factory.

I don’t know why the media play in the hand of unscrupulous business houses.