The heart of Kolkata has been roiled by real estate Syndicate rivalry… and with mortal effect. Last  Tuesday’s killing of a promoter by the leader of a rival gang in the Karaya area of Park Circus, near the glitzy Quest mall, has jolted a respectable area of the city. In death, Fazlur Rehman represents the malaise, just as the alleged killer, Sheikh Idris, personifies the underbelly of urban development. Or more accurately, the development of under-development, to borrow the title of  Andre Gunder Frank’s seminal book. Nay more, it has happened when the city ought to have put its best foot forward ~ exactly a week before yet another global business summit on January 16 and 17.

The political affiliation of the Park Circus syndicates is not of overriding relevance to the context though political involvement cannot be discounted. Small wonder that there has been a boom in illegal constructions in the Park Circus-Beniapukur area ~ in the heart of the city. Of far greater moment  is the fact that these dubious entities are thriving in Kolkata and its peripheral areas despite the Chief Minister’s tough talk a few months ago, even prompting Begum Hasina to complain to Mamata Banerjee against one such operative in Salt Lake.

The unprecedented intervention by a neighbouring Prime Minister in an essentially civic issue was a grave embarrasment to the state government. These syndicates have been thriving since the high noon of the Left; the  process has been finetuned by the present dispensation. Allegations that the syndicate leaders are in cahoots with the police are not wholly unfounded; the immediate transfer of the head of the anti-rowdy section to an obscure police outpost is a dire reflection on policing. As often as not, MLAs head rival gangs… as in New Town and Salt Lake.

The nub of the matter must be that there has been a mushroom expansion of these thriving syndicates throughout the state in the absence of employment opportunities… for all the pledges on investment at the annual summits.  The mayhem at Karaya is but the symptom of a canker, indeed the third such incident since September 2016.  There is little doubt that matters have come to a head after a spree of rioting, criminal intimidation, and extortion.

It is a testament to the gravity of the problem that at least six syndicate activists in Park Circus have incurred the appellation of “crime lords”, in itself a confirmation of sinister reality ~ their operations are tacitly condoned by the law-enforcement authorities. Reports suggest that these easy riders on bikes are engaged to force tenants to vacate their homes  before the land comes under the pickaxe for the construction of flats, not necessarily  legal. Yet the criminal gangs thrive… with the Kolkata Municipal Corporation often facilitating the real estate boom. Kolkata bears witness to a potentially murderous cocktail of syndicate activists, the political class, the police, and the civic authorities. It is time to crack the whip.