Monthly Archives: June 2018

An orator and a gentleman

Leaders

In memoriam: Satya Sadhan Chakraborty(1933 – 2018) FE Block

Satya Sadhan Chakraborty, former higher education minister in the Left Front government, passed away at his FE Block residence on Saturday morning. He was 85.

According to family sources, he suffered a massive cardiac arrest at 10.30am. He leaves behind his only daughter Sharmistha Bhattacharjee. “I stay in Delhi but was spending a lot of time in Calcutta to be with Baba and was there with him continually since May,” she said. Chakraborty’s wife Shukla had died four years ago.

Chakraborty hailed from Comilla, now in Bangladesh, and came to Calcutta for higher studies after Partition. He did an MA in political science from Calcutta University.

He became an MP defeating Bhola Sen in the Calcutta South constituency in 1980 but was defeated by the same rival in 1984. “It was one of the 16 seats we lost in the Congress wave after Indira Gandhi was killed,” recalled colleague and Salt Lake neighbour Rabin Deb. He also worked in the education cell of the West Bengal College and University teachers’ Association (WBCUTA) and became its general secretary.

He was elected thrice from Chakdah to the Assembly. After his first victory in 1991, he became the higher education minister in Jyoti Basu’s cabinet, a post he held till 2006 even after Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee succeeded Basu as chief minister in 2000.

“Baba had suffered a slipped disc when he was a minister. That led to a problem in movement in later life. For the last few years, he was wheelchair-bound,” recalls Sharmistha, who remembers her father as a “very positive thinking individual”.

Deb, a resident of FD Block, knew Chakraborty as a teacher at Vidyasagar College from the time he was a student himself in a different college. Chakraborty would later retire as head of the political science department there. “But he caught my eye with his impromptu Bengali translation of (Marxist leader) B.T. Ranadive’s speech at the Lenin centenary celebration at Eden Gardens.”

Chakraborty, Deb recalls, was a large-hearted man and a good orator. “Such was his way with words that he could say tough things couched in high civility, leaving the Opposition at a loss for response on the Assembly floor. He had come up the hard way. He worked on the factory floor to support his family even as he studied in the evening course.”

In those days, they lived in Dum Dum. Chakraborty shifted to Salt Lake in 1992.

During his own stint as Ballygunge MLA, Deb recalls needing money to build premises for Charuchandra Evening College.

“Classes of the college were being held in a dilapidated school building. As per rules, the government could not give money to buy land. But we found a way. I raised the matter as a supplementary question in the Assembly. As minister, he assured me help to construct the building. Thus we could get around the legal hurdle. The building now stands as Naba Ballygunge Balika Uchcha Mahavidyalaya beside Kasba police station on the Rashbehari connector,” he smiles.

Chakraborty, he points out, also played key roles in the party’s Cuba and Nicaragua standing committees. “He was also the Bengal representative in an Afro Asian Peace Conference which was attended by Frontier Gandhi and Sheikh Hasina.”

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Special Correspondent / June 22nd, 2018

Rimpa Siva gets Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Records, All

Kolkata :

She has been playing the tabla since the age of three. At 32, Kolkata-based Rimpa Siva has been bestowed the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar 2017 by the Sangeet Natak Akademi. Needless to say, Rimpa is thrilled with the announcement and is hoping that her recognition will inspire other girls to play the tabla.

Speaking to TOI, Rimpa said she was pleasantly surprised with the announcement. “I didn’t even know that I was nominated for this award. I came to know about my win only after congratulations starting pouring in. I feel privileged to be getting the award on the same year when the Akademi Puraskar will be given to Haimanti Shukla and Parvathy Baul from Bengal,” said Rimpa, who had bagged first class first degrees during both her graduation and master’s from Rabindra Bharati University.

Awards, however, aren’t new to Siva. Known as a child prodigy, she has already won the President’s Award from APJ Abdul Kalam in 2007, Shanmukha Sangeetha Shiromani Award in 2004 and Anunraj Memorial Fund award from Norway in 1996. Rimpa dedicates the credit for her performance to the guidance received from her father, Pt Swapan Siva.

“Whatever I am now is a result of the blessings and teachings of my father,” she said. At 14, she had first accompanied Pt Hari Prasad Chaurasia on a concert tour to the US. Since then she has been playing with stalwarts. In 1999, a 26-minute documentary film titled “Rimpa Siva: Princess of Tabla” was made in France.

There was a time when Rimpa would face questions about why she had picked up an instrument that was traditionally a favourite with men. After performing the world over and now, having won this award, she finds this question irrelevant. “People feel that since women’s fingers are delicate, they might not be suitable for playing the tabla.

But, I have proved them wrong. I’m glad that other women tabla players including Reshma Pandit and Mitali Khargonkar are also coming up now,” said the player from the Farukhabad gharana who is known for playing Ustad Karamatullah Khan’s intricate “kata gheghe tete kata” composition at a very high speed.

The 32-year-old has also come up with an instrumental band called Nari Shakti. “Apart from me on the tabla, we have Pamela Banerjee on pakhawaz, Nibedita Ghosh on sitar and Atri Mazumdar on vocals. However, we are still trying to find good female santoor and sarangi players for our band,” she said. On being asked about her thoughts on World Music Day, she said she is hoping that more and more women instrumentalists come to the forefront. “It’s time for more women to break the glass ceiling,” she signed off.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kolkata News / by Priyanka Dasgupta / TNN / June 20th, 2018

TCS is largest employer in Bengal

Business & Economy, Records, All, Science & Technology
The TCS campus in Rajarhat. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyay

Calcutta:

TCS has emerged as the largest employer in the private sector in Bengal, having close to 40,000 people on the rolls spread across 15 locations in Calcutta.

The company, India’s largest by market capitalisation, has added 10,000 people in the last 33 months alone. It is expected to add another 2,000 this year .

Even as automation, digital disruption and just-in-time recruitment may potentially tamper the pace of addition of workforce across the company, TCS executives said Calcutta will continue to maintain its share of the overall pie.

The company has close to 3,95,000 people on the rolls as on March 31, 2018 across 50 countries, but mostly in India.

Ajoyendra Mukherjee, executive vice-president and global head of human resources of TCS, said the company has given 20,000 offer letters to students in campuses across the India.

In Bengal, the company has gone to 40 engineering colleges last year, offering employment to nearly 2,000 students. Apart from TCS, Bandhan Bank, RP-SG Group and ITC are some of the large private sector employers in the state.

The special economic zone in Rajarhat now houses the largest facility for TCS in the city. It employs around 17,000 people, operating at 90 per cent of the capacity.

The IT behemoth has 2.5 million square feet space in this 40 acre sprawling campus, out of the 4 million square feet it has across Calcutta, including leased and owned space. The city is one among the top four locations for TCS in India.

The campus still has the space to add at least one million square feet and create at least 10,000 more jobs.

According to Suresh G Menon, vice president and general manager – eastern region of TCS, banking financial, utilities, retail are some of the core areas Calcutta focuses on. “We are 10 per cent of TCS now,” he said.

Tapering curve

Mukherjee said the company’s headcount would not grow at the same pace as revenue like in the past, due to multiple factors, such as automation in the IT world and cost push. The company recorded 7,700 net addition last year.

“Analytics, IoT (Internet of Things) and automation are changing the entire delivery process. We are going for hiring in an agile way which is on-demand,” Mukherjee explained.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Business / by Sambit Saha / June 07th, 2018

Kolkata cyclist to pedal from Ladakh to Sri Lanka

Amazing Feats, Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Inspiration / Positive News and Features, Records, All, Sports, Travel, World Opinion
City mountaineer and trekker Samrat Moulik recently cycled 3,000km from Gangotri in Uttarakhand to Kuakata in Bangladesh

Kolkata :

A mountaineer and trekker from Kolkata, who quit a corporate job to pursue his passion, is preparing for a mega cycling expedition of 5,500km – from Nubra Valley near Ladakh to Kanyakumari and onward to Sri Lanka.

Three months ago, he completed a 3,000km solo cycling journey from Gangotri in Uttarakhand to Kuakata in Bangladesh, traversing the entire length of the Ganga as it meandered through five states before entering Bangladesh.

“The condition of the Ganga – that we consider sacred and yet pollute – prompted me to undertake the ‘Save Ganga’ campaign in February-March. I wanted to know what was polluting the river and its impact on the population living along its length,” said Samrat Moulik. He began the journey on February 8 this year and finished on March 21.

While the condition of the river is good in Uttarakhand, its deterioration was visible after Haridwar. “Pollution actually began at Nagina – a town in Uttar Pradesh. In Moradabad, there is cremation ground at the ghat, a picture that one sees all along the river thereafter. From there on, the river water gets murkier as it flows. The effects of Ganga Action Plan, about which I had heard for years, were not visible. The pollution load of the Ganga increases as polluted tributaries flow into it,” said Moulik.

As the river flows downstream, industrial waste becomes the major pollutant. The situation improved in Jharkhand. But when the river bifurcates into the Hooghly and the Padma near Rajmahal, its condition again deteriorates. “The situation is better in Bangladesh because of people’s dependence on the river,” he said.

Moulik plans to start his journey in September. He will cover several rivers in central, west and south India before travelling to Sri Lanka and cycle along the rivers there.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kolkata News / TNN / June 14th, 2018

Id gift for buddy trio’s business idea

Business & Economy, Education, Travel
(From left) Md Wasim Ali Ansari, Azhar Rabbani and Ayush Singh at The Kidopreneur Summit at Novotel on Saturday. Picture by Biswajit Kundu

Calcutta:

They gave Id celebrations at home a miss to pitch their business module before a roomful of entrepreneurs. Azhar Rabbani and Mohammad Wasim Ali Ansari, along with Ayush Singh, have devised a plan to provide easy accommodation to outstation students through an app.

The three friends beat six other teams to bag the first prize at The Kidoprenuer Summit, in association with The Telegraph, at Novotel on Saturday. Co-hosted by Sonali’s Cubo, Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce and Srei Infrastructure Finance, the one-of-its-kind conclave gave young entrepreneurs a chance to showcase their innovative business ideas.

The OFY (Only For You) Homes project hopes to address the accommodation problems that students of other cities face when they come to Calcutta to study. “More than 60 colleges in and around the city don’t offer hostel facilities and at any time around 30,000 students are looking for a place to stay,” said Ayush, 17, a student of Shree Jain Vidyalaya.

The boys plan to offer standardised paying guest accommodation and flats on rent through an app. “Students can rent a home for any period of time and also share it with a maximum of four roommates. We will offer packages. They can get food, Internet, electricity and other amenities at Rs 6,000 to Rs 12,000 a month,” said Azhar, 18, of Seth Anandram Jaipuria College.

College mate Wasim, 18, said the trio have been working out the logistics for the past three months. “We hope to launch the app by the year end. We are tying up with people who rent out rooms,” he said.

Yubasana Kapas, 14, of Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School won the third prize for her plan to showcase Bengal’s art and culture before foreign patrons.

Three students – Kaushik Sardar, Shane Romel Kujur and Gaurav Bordoloi – from National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, bagged the second prize for Pedals Go, an app-based rental plan for bicycles.

“The event has brought three generations of entrepreneurs on one platform,” said Vayjayanti Pugalia, who curated the event.

The summit saw young entrepreneurs from across the country exchange notes with business stalwarts from the city and share their stories and challenges.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Chandreyee Ghose (additional reporting by Samabrita Sen) / June 17th, 2018

Citizens take inititaive to restore heritage school

Amazing Feats, Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Green Initiatives / Environment, Historical Links / Pre-Independence, Inspiration / Positive News and Features, Records, All
A plaque was unveiled at the school on Saturday

Kolkata :

A dilapidated portion of the Burrabazar branch of Metropolitan Institution, which was pulled down by the KMC on April 7, is getting a new lease of life with a group of residents taking the initiative to restore the heritage structure to its old glory. The initial, rudimentary repairs have been carried out with school funds and the subsequent renovation is likely to depend on government assistance as well as crowdfunding.

Members of ‘Purono Kolkatar Golpo’, a Facebook group that has taken up the project, organized a programme on the premises of the institution on Prasanna Coomar Tagore Street at Pathuriaghata on Saturday, when they unveiled a plaque, with the building’s “heritage status” written on it.

This plaque, they hope, would make Kolkatans and authorities aware of the historical significance of the school, which was founded by Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar.

The unveiling was followed by discussions and a cultural programme, which was attended by current and old students, teachers, neighbours and local councillor, Ellora Saha, who advised to form a development committee that would work towards procuring money from the government. “It is a proud moment that ordinary people have come together to conserve the historical institution. Our aim is to restore the building,” said P N Palit, secretary at Vidyasagar Institute trustee board. He added the initial repair, white-wash and clearing trees and undergrowth from the compound were carried out with school money.

Heritage enthusiast Swarnali Chattopadhyay said, “It’s high time we did something to save such structures of architectural and historical significance. For restoration, we are looking to state help and crowdfunding as and when required.”

Till 1954, the building belonged to the Tagores and was known as Rama Niketan.

Thereafter, the Burrabazar branch of Metropolitan Institution was set up on the premises, where the school ran out of rooms on the ground and first floors. Now, with only 60 students on the roll, classes are held only on the ground floor. The Pathuriaghata post office shared the same compound. “To save the building, it is important to save the school.

Different activities have to be started there as the institution and the building are interdependent. A proposal has been given that other small schools in the area may use the huge compound, and if need be, they can be merged into one institution,” said Jayanta Sen, heritage activist and another member of Purono Kolkatar Golpo.

Councillor Saha said, “The building still has Vidyasagar’s chair and it is where Madhusudan Dutta composed ‘Sharmistha’. It is my duty to help people conserve the place.”

Conservation architect Kamalika Bose hailed the initiative: “This is a great example of residents doing something at the grassroots level, without expecting the government to take the first step.”

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City News> Kolkata News> Schools & Colleges / by Dipawali Mitra / TNN / June 17th, 2018

Mathematics prof finds Hemanta’s rare recordings in Bangladesh

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Records, All
Singer-composer Hemanta Mukherjee

Kolkata :

Ahead of his 98th birth anniversary on Saturday, rare recordings of legendary singer-composer Hemanta Mukherjee from Bangladesh have been unearthed by a mathematics professor in the city. The recordings – one which dates back to 1971 and the other being the last ‘basic song’ recorded before his death in 1989 – have perhaps never been seen or heard in India.

Joydeep Chakraborty, the former guest lecturer at Rabindra Bharati Univerity (RBU) who now teaches in Murshidabad’s Nagar College, had earlier collected Mukherjee’s first recording of a Rabindra Sangeet in Pakistan. “The 45 rpm record of ‘Ami jalbona mor’ was made by the Gramophone Company of Pakistan in 1961. It was recorded in cooperation with the Visva-Bharati Music Board. I collected this from a Muslim family in Murshidabad,” Chakraborty said.

Two months back, he chanced upon the rare 1971 video recording from a friend. “After the liberation war of 1971, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had invited Mukherjee over to Dhaka. During that visit, he had performed a Rabindra Sangeet – ‘Tui phele eshechhis kare, mon, monre amar’ – for the state-owned television network in Bangladesh. My friend in Rajshahi sourced the recording for me,” Chakraborty said.

When Chakraborty was teaching at RBU, he came across a student from Bangladesh who wanted his help to covert some recordings in her family’s possession to the digital format. “While doing the work, I chanced upon a cassette that had a recording of a person composing a song. The voice seemed like that of Mukherjee,” Chakraborty said. His guess was confirmed by the student’s grandfather in Dhaka. “The recording was done in 1989 when Mukherjee was in Bangladesh and trying to set to tune the song ‘Lokhi jokhon ashbe ghore’. Nobody apart from that family has ever heard this recording,” he insisted.

During that same time, Chakraborty also chanced upon another rare recording of Mukherjee. “The song was ‘Bhalo kore mele dyakho drishti/Bujhbe Bangladesh bidhatar koto boro srishti’. The song was penned by Abdus Sattar and set to tune by Golam Mustafa. This was the last recorded ‘basic song’ of his,” Chakraborty informed.

However, it isn’t just these recordings from Bangladesh that make his Mukherjee archive interesting. In his kitty are some rare jingles that Mukherjee had recorded for Colgate toothpaste, PC Chandra jewellers and Lipton tea. “I sourced his jingle for Eveready torch from a roadside seller. An old employee helped me get hold of his Bata jingle. I also have a 1958-recorded jingle for Pundinhara that he had sung for Salil Chowdhury. I sourced his 1979-London recording of Ramayana in Hindi from an Anglo-Indian lady from Park Street,” he said.

That apart, Chakraborty also has 200 letters of the legend in his possession, a postcard record of Mukherjee singing for the coronation of the king of Nepal in 1964, recording of a 1973-programme in Rabindra Sadan which had Mukherjee singing live for all the characters in ‘Chandalika’, a harmonium used by Mukherjee during the late 1930s and Mukherjee’s personal collection of books.

Keen to exhibit his collection, Chakraborty will be happy to help if the government plans to host such a show.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kolkata / by Priyanka Dasgupta / TNN / June 16th, 2018

The art of cooking, colours & conversation

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Leaders, Records, All
A painting by Shanu Lahiri from a series on rickshaws, a Calcutta phenomenon loved by the artist, formed the backdrop to the discussion

Calcutta:

One of the recipes that she had created was named Chicken Beparwah.

Shanu Lahiri, painter and sculptor, cooked with as much passion as she brought to her art. Wherever she was, laughter and conversation would flow. So would food cooked by her, as unusual and robust as her.

She would often name them with care.

(From left) Samik Bandyopadhyay, Chaitali Dasgupta, Tapati Guha Thakurta,
Jawhar Sircar and Nandita Palchaudhuri at the launch of Tabled

The warmth and generosity of those afternoons and evenings that she presided over at her Lake Town home seemed to flow directly into the auditorium at Jadunath Bhavan in the city last Friday, at the launch of Tabled, a compilation of Shanu Lahiri’s recipes, anecdotes and art.

Shanu Lahiri, a member of The Group, a women’s artists’ collective in the city, was the sculptor of Paroma, a Calcutta landmark that had been installed in 1987 on what came to be known as the Science City island. The city woke up on a November morning in 2014 to find the statue, a woman’s form with children, vanished and replaced by the multi-colour globe of the Bengal government’s Biswa Bangla brand.

Damayanti Lahiri and (right) Damayanti Basu Singh

The book, launched by Jawhar Sircar, chairperson, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, is the labour of love of Damayanti Lahiri, Shanu’s daughter. Damayanti, however, pointed at her namesake, Damayanti Basu Singh of Vikalp publishers, as having played a more important role in the project.

Tabled has been designed and structured by artist Chittrovanu Mazumdar, who happens to be Shanu Lahiri’s nephew, and who refused to show up on the stage despite several calls, remaining doggedly in the background.

The black and white cover of Tabled does not quite prepare one for what lies within: an explosion of colours, forms and recipes. But that was Shanu Lahiri. Close friends and loved ones remembered her lovingly.

Historian Tapati Guha Thakurta, who grew up in the south Calcutta house where the artist first lived with her family before moving to Lake Town, chose to speak in Bengali. “The language of “Shanu mashi’s” art was international, but the language she wrote in, or that of her inner self, was Bengali,” said Guha Thakurta. All those conversations that Shanu Lahiri seemed to be always having were conducted in Bengali. Guha Thakurta spoke about Shanu Lahiri’s food-loving husband, without whose large and benign influence the artist would not have grown; neither would the eccentric cook have been born.

TV personality Chaitali Dasgupta, who had interviewed Shanu Lahiri for a cooking programme on Doordarshan, said the sculptor had refused to put on the slightest make-up for the shoot. “Let the sweat show. It will look like garjan tel, garjan tel,” remembered Dasgupta. The Durga idol’s face is painted with this oil.

When social entrepreneur Nandita Palchoudhuri, who was conducting the conversation, asked scholar Samik Bandyopadhyay about the correspondences between cooking and painting, Bandyopadhyay spoke about “Shanudi’s passion for work as activity”. “Her lines move madly,” he said. She painted as if without a desire to control. “There was a kind of continuum in the ways she lived, worked and cooked.”

It is probably not a coincidence that when he received Shanu Lahiri’s book, Bandyopadhyay chanced upon a newspaper article on an exhibition in Barcelona on works by Picasso that are about cooking and utensils.

The evening evoked memories of a time that is difficult to imagine now: a flow of spirit over conversation and food, without the interruption, or aid, of mobile phones, ordering food from outside, and in the Bengali language. The previous city has disappeared, as the missing statue of Paroma proves.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Chandrima S Bhattacharya / June 15th, 2018

Story of a Messi Fan: Tea stall owner paints entire house in Argentina colours

Amazing Feats, Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Records, All, Sports, World Opinion
Shib Shankar Patra’s house (Photo: ANI)

Kolkata :

Shib Shankar Patra is one among thousands of die-hard Argentina fans in Kolkata and there’s nothing unusual about it.

But then die-hard fans at times can be weird too and the 53-year-old Patra has that weird streak in him.

Trying to garner enough savings from his modest earnings through a tea stall, Patra harboured a dream — to watch ‘The Albiceleste’ live from the stands in Russia.

But when a Kolkata-based travel agent informed him that his savings — a princely amount of Rs 60,000 (USD 900) is not enough to fund his World Cup trip (travel agent gave him a budget of Rs 1.5 lakh), he decided the next best thing –paint his entire three-storied building in Argentina colours.

“I don’t smoke or drink. I have only one addiction and that is Lionel Messi and Argentina. I don’t earn much but ensure that bulk of my earnings is kept aside for these indulgences when World Cup comes calling,” Patra, owner of a tea and snack stall in North 24 Parganas’ Nawabganj township, told PTI.

You don’t need a GPS to track Patra’s house once you get down to Ichhapore Railway Station. Ask any cocky teenager or elderly uncle about “Argentina Chaayer Dokan” (Argentina Tea Stall), they will be more than happy to oblige.

The street leading up to his tea stall cum house is dotted with Argentina flags while a giant one flutters high making its presence felt.

Every four years coinciding with the World Cup, Patra, who runs his tea stall from the ground floor of his three-storied building, gives his building a fresh coat of light blue and white shade.

Enter his three-room apartment and the craziness hits you instantly. All the walls are painted in Argentina colour, even the small ‘puja sthal’ (where the idols of Gods and Goddesses are placed). The walls of each room adorns a life-size vinyl flex print poster of Messi.

Addiction can be contagious but if its ‘Messi mania’, Patra doesn’t mind that his wife Swapna along with his children — 20 year-old daughter Neha and 10-year -old son Shubham are equally mad about the fleet footed genius.

“My kids know everything about Messi. The food he likes, the car he drives, everything,” Patra says with a glint of pride in his eyes.

“They don’t miss a single match of Messi. If there’s a late night match during the exams, they will pretend to sleep early but will watch live streaming on their cell phones,” wife Sapna said.

There is one common thread of all Argentina fans in Bengal. The 1986 World Cup, which was aired live on Doordarshan turned Kolkatans into ‘Maradona devotees’. Messi is an extension of Maradona.

“I have watched the Argnetina friendly at the Salt Lake Stadium. I lived a dream that day,” Patra recollected.

It was the first time, he painted his house in Argentina colours, something he repeated in the 2014 edition of the World Cup as well.

Since 2012, the Patra family celebrates every Messi birthday with fanfare like cutting cake to organsing blood donation camp.

And it goes without saying that tea and samosas (staple diet for Bongs during their football adda sessions) is complimentary on all Argentina match days.

With Messi’s birthday coinciding with the World Cup, they have cancelled the blood donation camp, which is held every year.

Instead a 30-pound cake will be cut and 100 Argentina jerseys will be distributed amonmg local kids with Messi’s photograph embossed.

In attendance would be the local MLA and India U-17 World Cupper Rahim Ali.

By his own admission, he has never taken any loans for his personal indulgences.

“I’ve never sought money from anyone but we never fell short, and somehow everything falls in place in time,” Patra said.

“People here also happily come forward. Someone sponsors the food, someone gets the cake and we make it a mini-Argentina here,” Patra says.

Even there will be prayers for Messi with the priest of the local Hanuman temple — his regular client — offering special prayers for the Argentine wizard.

“He gets me the ‘sindoor’ from Hanuman’s left leg (the connection is Messi being a left-footed player) and the vermilion is applied on Messi’s poster during every match. We hope he lift the Cup this time,” Patra signed off.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kolkata News / PTI / June 13th, 2018

West Bengal bags allocation of world’s 2nd largest coal mine

Business & Economy, Records, All, World Opinion
The announcement regarding the coal mine allocation was made by CM Mamata Banerjee on Facebook.

Kolkata :

West Bengal has finally received allocation of the Deocha Pachami Harinsingha Dewanganj coal mines in Birbhum district. Deocha Pachami Harinsingha Dewanganj is the world’s second largest coal mine. The project is likely to bring investment worth Rs 12,000 for the state.

Making the announcement on Facebook, chief minister Mamata Banerjee wrote, “I am very happy to share with all of you that after a long wait of 3 years, West Bengal has got the allocation of the Deocha Pachami Harinsingha Dewanganj Coal Mines in Birbhum district.”

The chief minister added, “With an estimated reserve of 2102 million tonnes, it is the 2nd largest coal mine in the world. The mining project has huge potential of generating nearly a lakh of direct and indirect employment opportunities in Birbhum and neighbouring districts.”

Referring to the coal mine, Mamata added, “It will also involve investments worth Rs 12000 crores in the intermediate run. There will be huge socio economic development of Birbhum, the neighbouring districts and the entire state.”

Necessary administrative infrastructure has already been set up to start the project immediately.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kolkata News / by Ajanta Chakraborty / TNN / June 09th, 2018