Mission: spare Metro Channel

A day after a fresh petition was filed in the high court to restore the right to your road, Metro went around the city scouting for possible alternatives for the stretch our disruption-happy leaders love to wrest.

CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose had thrown his hands up in the air and pleaded that people’s convenience had to take the backseat when pitched against a party programme.

Mamata Banerjee had blamed the Left Front government for not having created a place to hold rallies and an option other than blocking Esplanade.

But where in the city could the government have found land suitable for rallies — in a zone light on traffic but not a grassland whose damage could denude the smoke-chamber city of the little green it is still left with?

Metro spoke to environment activists, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and citizens to zero in on three places, one that skirts Esplanade but is still not far from the seat of power, one on the eastern fringes of the city and another to the west.

A rally might still trouble people in the pockets suggested, but a more careful and conscientious police force — that does not give in to every whim of the political parties — and some smart restrictions can ensure that trouble does not spill over and bother too many.

It is what economists would like to call a “zero-sum game”, where one gains at the cost of the other. Office-goers at the heart of the city can breathe easy if the rallies shift to other areas but a home-maker in Kalikapur going to fetch her daughter from school may not like the change of plan.

Metro is suggesting the alternatives considering the sheer number of people who travel through Esplanade every day.