Ranabir Samaddar

Kolkata has changed quite a lot in the last few decades. It wants to become Delhi. It must catch up with the flash and glitz found elsewhere. It too must have its high-tech township and must embody a new mode of circulation of money, information, human resources, and power. It does not think that its old organic character is worth retaining. If discarding the old organic character is the necessary sacrifice to make in order to develop, let that be. If road space increases while the space for human interaction decreases, that price Kolkata must pay. Likewise parallel journals have lost their edge, parallel theatre has lost audience, the river line earlier dotted with old storehouses has changed, and tram cars carry only the distant memories of a city criss-crossed with tramlines and streetcars. Old urban resources have wasted in a state of neglect. In this change of guards, something new is happening. As a product of this developmental imagination Rajarhat is coming up beyond Kolkata.