With puja pandals sprouting up across Kolkata and the rest of the state, there is collective jubilation over Mamata Banerjee’s bonanza of Rs 28 crore to all puja committees. A fair amount of money will, therefore, be shelled out by the West Bengal government that since 2011 has contended with a torpid economy.

Doublethink runs wild as the puja profligacy chimes oddly with the relentless refrain that the CPI-M’s fiscal mismanagement is at the core of the state’s fiscal straits. By and large, even the investments that are pledged at the annual “business conclaves” in salubrious January every year have not materialised. And Bengal stutters in the absence of resource mobilisation through a judicious state tax regime.

The Chief Minister’s generosity runs counter to the budgetary resolve (2018-19) to effect a Rs 1000- crore cut in subsidies. General subsidies, which had ballooned to Rs 7685.99 crore, are proposed to be truncated to Rs 6648 crore.

Misgivings that the calculation might now go haywire are not wholly unfounded when contextualised with the gift-pack for the 28,000 Durga puja organisers in West Bengal ~ 25,000 outside Kolkata and 3,000 in the city. But we are coming to an election year and a Chief Minister accused by her political rivals of pandering to minorities cannot be blamed for using this opportunity to announce that she can cater to the dominant community as well. The gift-pack is not limited to the Rs 28-crore outgo.

Additionally, every puja organiser will be entitled to a 23 per cent concession on electricity bills. This is three percentage points more than the 20 per cent concession that was granted in 2017. Yet another concession is the waiver of the licence fee, that has to be paid to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. This is a mandatory payment before any puja committee gets the go-ahead from the KMC or the Fire Brigade.

A concert of departments will conduct the joint endeavour ~ finance, tourism, consumer affairs, self-help/self-employment, and home (police). The Chief Minister’s package is seemingly intended to blunt the BJP’s charge, orchestrated last year, of “minority appeasement” by the Trinamul Congress, most particularly after the Chief Minister had appealed for the postponement of immersion of images ~ a ritual that had coincided with Muharram.

This was a rational request on the part of a responsible administration. Unwarranted, therefore, was the communal spin given by the state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party. For all the bounty, the collapse of Kolkata ~ as it did on the day before the Pujas last year ~ must be forestalled. Discipline must prevail. As must be the crackdown on extortion, almost endemic.