A hopeless city without any joy.

When Kim Jong Il of North Korea died in 2011 news channels showed pictures of grown men and women sobbing in offices, as they walked on roads or travelled in trains. It was a shocking display of brain washing of a people so that they were reduced to terrified, soulless puppets. It was comical, tragic and inexplicable. Surely, we Indians are not like that? While we have been conquered and butchered by brutal foreigners there has always been dissent and rebellion. Or, maybe we are not so different after all. When Ms Jayalalithaa was arrested in September 10 people died of heart attacks and 6 committed suicide. However, to get some idea of why all the people in North Korea have been reduced to complete submission you have to visit Kolkata. People here seem defeated. They live in tiny flats, some as small as 500 sq feet in area, in dirty buildings, which have not been painted in years, down lanes so narrow that a small car and a bicycle cannot pass each other. These are doctors, accountants, engineers and surveyors who have worked all their lives. The whole city has a feeling of decay. It is proud to be called the ' City of Joy ', from a book by a white man, which describes the city as a slum. Thirty years of glorification of poverty by communist governments has destroyed its spirit. Bengalis who rejected poverty have left, those left behind do not seem to have any ambition to better themselves. Years of strikes and union thuggery drove away all manufacturing from the state. Groups of young men sit around gossiping, ready to be hired by any political party to create mayhem. The present government of Mamata Bannerjee came to power by preventing Tata from setting up the Nano car plant at Singur. Naturally, no company wants to go anywhere near Bengal. To increase its membership the party has allowed Bangladeshis to flood in unchecked, who have set up bomb manufacturing units all over the state. To win elections the party has been using the old tactics used by the CPM to stay in power for 30 years, which is by frightening people from voting. To do that you need an army of goons, and goons need to be paid, so money has been raised through massive scams, which are gradually being exposed. Roads have been improved and flyovers built. Traffic police are everywhere and road rules are strictly enforced so there is no jam. Because police are around till after midnight the city is much safer than Delhi. But the overall impression is of crowds of sad looking people with black feet and arthritis shuffling painfully into oblivion. Terribly sad.